In this series of photographs, titled Another Planet Seems to be too Close to Me, I sought to demonstrate the ambivalence of feelings that a picture can evoke.
These pictures are highly personal – in the sense that they show the process of my inner feelings – as well as highly detached. In my experimentation with distance and landscape, I try to conjure feelings of being far from and too close to things at the same time.
As a child, my worst nightmare was that other planets – whether celestial or other, metaphorical bodies – were too close to me. I could almost feel their presence pressing down against my own body.
Despite undergoing long-term psychotherapy and analysis, I was left with no concrete answer as to what these feverish dreams represented. I am unsure if they had any meaning at all – though one thing of which I am certain is that many nights of my young life were haunted by these dreams.
One day, whilst in a state of dramatic detachment from reality that is altogether not too uncommon to me, I decided to visit a place that was still, to me, unexplored. To visit it, then to expose it.
I had seen images of Vashlovani before. I knew of its rough and rugged cliffs, which generated some anxiety in me. To behold them in person, as well as through my own lens, was at once troubling and cathartic.
I imagine my anxiety regarding the cliffs of Vashlovani stemmed from their otherworldly appearance, their possibility of being alien planets right here on my own Earth. Planets can hardly get much closer!
In Another Planet Seems to be too Close to Me, the images I have taken feature subjects that appear to be incredibly close yet are in fact great distances away. In the void between the two, my insecurities can be found.