The night's chorus builds Crickets and frogs Compete for the stage Singing and calling Into the night Desperate and cloying Hoping to find A swift urgent coupling Under cover of darkness
Arachne's descendants Spin and weave A delicate tapestry Of threads and Beads of dew Like captured stars Acrobats and architects Quietly dancing Beneath the light of the moon
Fireflies drawn To the smouldering remnants Of a starving fire Seeking out carbon to Ravenously feast Dipping and diving Blinking in Morse Floating like embers Quickly extinguished by morning light
2022 Nikon D3500, 55-200mm Lens.
Photographed in situ, without the use of artificial lighting or staging. Photoshop only used for resizing.
1024x683 300dpi JPG
Poem written 2023.
I am a multiply disabled creator, with many compounding conditions and intersecting symptoms. After my symptoms began to increase in frequency and severity, I became frustrated with the reduced quality of my artwork. I began having motor and mobility changes, including tremors and rolling paralysis. These changes affected my hands, balance, pain and capacity to create. I hibernated as a painter for a long time, instead turning to photography as a means to express myself. While I photograph, I physically compensate for the tremors to create clear, detailed images. For a long time I hid the tremors from my work with this compensation, discarding pieces that were too blurry and simply not photographing some incredibly beautiful scenes because the tremors and other symptoms were too severe to create clear and detailed work.
In this series I have leaned into the tremors, accepting them into my creation process and exploring the effect on my work. My subject - the full moon through the bare branches of trees in a mixed deciduous forest - is photographed without the compensation, allowing my tremors to roll freely and flick the lens across the subject, tracing the motion of my hand with the ever stable and constant form of the moon. I photographed for an hour in the sharp deep freeze of a winter night until my body could no longer tolerate it. From that photography session these pieces were selected, each accompanied by an original poem. I am still processing what this means in relation to my work and how I create. I feel full.
Moon Tremor Series - XVI