Last summer (2023) I was at a residency at the Relais de Camont in Gascony, France (what a magical part of the world!) where I was inspired to experiment with text and image. For a long time, I have been wanting to bring together these two media that I love - photography and poetry - but I was never quite ready. Havng been trained in analogue photography, I found the jump to digital photography challenging; I see them as two different – though related – art forms, and I was most comfortable in the darkroom. Yet being in this beautiful location, this place that I had never been to but nevertheless spoke of home, made it seem possible. And so, inspired by my environment, I decided to give it a go. No, it wasn’t a decision per se. Rather, the confluence of circumstances brought me to it organically. Since then, I have been gradually developing a series of photo poems, some using new mages, others from my archive. I choose an image and then write a poem that comes into conversation with the image. It has led me to think a great deal about the relationship between text and image and has influenced my compositional style in both media. I’m not sure where this will lead, but it has certainly been fun and rewarding to play and to take my creative practice in a new direction. Below is the first of my photo poems that has been published. I was invited to submit to the Action, Spectacle Winter Issue (2023), and the editors graciously agreed to include “en face.”
Photo Poem: "en face"
jpiudik
Updated: May 25, 2024
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