crossing points

Manuscript of poems, work in progress.

 i protect everything everything that speaks

i look across the gap, the criss cross and step

a small step. very small. and very slow

a slow walk, the slowest you could ever imagine

pace, unreal

slowing down everything

to listen

to every thing

the island

Edition 2 acquired by Scottish Poetry Library

'the island' is a book work of five parts. Each book contains a different poetic work created by radically editing an original poem ‘Salamis, in Cyprus’  by modernist Greek poet George Seferis (1900 - 1971). Designed, printed, constructed and bound by hand with a japanese stitch binding, with black and white cover images which I made at the ancient site of Salamis in Cyprus. In the process of editing I use a technique which I call ‘scratch writing’. I photocopy the original text five times to end up with five different text works. Each individual text then goes through three or four ‘scratchings’ until a distillation text is left. The work explores themes of loss, love, dreams and the change of place / persona through time.

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nicosia poems

Published in 'Nicosia Beyond Barriers' by Saki Books, London, 2019

Calliope

Walking a deserted edge
come to broken growing up

See me fear a gun
I walk in front, he walks behind.

One day I don’t see the thing itself
Look! Mystery cracks open
Voices, girls, shoes

The world book drones on
a continuous line of imaginations, of propagandas.

Turn to the green beginning, blink.

Darkroom Delay
Shadows cross nothing streets

Watched across minutes
a soldier slowly appears
is gone.

Crossing point reflecting a riddle:
Each day a map stops

Day unfolds, irrespective,
paces the maze

Yet distance makes the story remote
strange erasion of sky-washed identities.

'Nicosia Beyond Barriers'

eyes open / eyes closed

Central Nicosia, Buffer Zone Green Line, Eyes Closed Walk

18 June 2015. 7.30 – 10.10 am

Walk downhill to meeting place. Meet Captain Iain Walker.

Unwrap cameras. Look across to starting point. Take glasses off. I close my eyes.

Start. The sound of the jeep’s engine following from behind (then it draws much further back). Walk forward, it starts. Feels pastoral, rural, birdsong, sound of trees, swifts. Small inclines and declines. I feel like I’m in a wooded path in English countryside. Trees all around. Ground low, banks and ditch at one side.

It feels a while until we come to any buildings. Changes in temperature depending on walls or open spaces. Pigeons flock up from a tree; sound of wings flapping. What felt like the first street, a chill. A feeling of something cold, intractable. Move through that. Feels like trees overhead, branches.

Rest. Pause. Have a seat on a curb, the resting place feels like a small triangle of rough ground, grasses growing up, dried mud, uneven. We all smoke a cigarette. Things feel very close in. The world comes closer somehow, and distances become much cosier. There was a dog, a brief appearance apparently.

Start again. Go up and into a building. Steps up, feels quite confined. No image making allowed after top of stairs. Walk around on a roof. The height of it feels really interesting. (It’s the only time I feel tempted to open my eyes – but I don’t.) Feels like a domestic height to observe the city, views north, south, east, west which I don’t see but somehow do in my imagination. Roofs, trees, horizon.

Down stairs through building and out. Sounds of building work, some voices. Getting closer to Ledra Street crossing. Atmosphere of commercial activity. Sound of gates and chains unlocking and locking most striking after a walk that felt unrestricted and comparatively normal. The locking and unlocking the only real indicator of prohibition.

First section after Ledra, cool, clear, quite beautiful in feeling. Could feel the smooth stone then the (slightly unbearable) confusion of the last building. In, up, quite restricted, narrow staircase. Strange stale smelling space. Damp. I’m reluctant to make images here or on the roof. I don’t want to look down onto streets with people on them from that position – it feels intrusive, aggressive.

Walk around roof to parapets, I want parapet to be in the image. I feel impatient to end. I have a feeling of wanting to get my feet on the ground. Down steps and then down last set of external metal stairs. Walk to entrance gate to the Buffer Zone, cross over back onto the civilian street.
Open eyes. Bright light. Put glasses back on.
Not exhausted. 

Suprisingly normal.

 
On eyes closed photography

I don’t want to see what you can’t see.

Through a lucky connection I get a chance to walk through the closed part of your city. How do I have this right and not you? I’d been thinking about the street shop shutters as eyes  and the camera’s eye and it felt completely right to do this walk without seeing it. Before this opportunity even came up, and even before arriving in Nicosia, I knew I wanted to feel those streets more than see them.

I have taken away visually aware photographic decision making that is based on angle, framing, and essentially, subject. I do have an idea what the camera may see though – there are 100’s of images I could look at of these streets, archive images and recent ones found on the internet. Even the day before this act I was at the Ledra Crossing looking at an exhibition which documents the Nicosia Master Plan which showed many pictures of the streets in the BZ.

The types of images that have been taken of these streets are either documentary (to preserve architectural facades and record dilapidation) or aesthetically forensic (signified towards conflict or loss). As with my other body of work of black and white images made with eyes open I am not seeking to make aesthetic images, I try to make open images – neither aesthetic nor documentary – images that do not seek to dictate their significance but allow the viewer to find their own.

 I chose to walk with my eyes closed because I don’t want to see what you can’t see. I chose to walk with my eyes closed because I want the camera to be a democratic eye. I substituted my eyes for it. I let my guide be my eyes and the camera a cipher for all the senses. By closing off my sense of sight I want the camera to record more than just the optical.

 Is this photogenie? An idea put forward by the early Russian filmmakers that transference of more than material conditions onto the emulsion film was possible.

You might wonder how I did it. I’ll tell you: disposable cameras and two guides, one a soldier from the UN peacekeeping core, and the other my creative collaborator. To be led on a walk with one’s eyes closed involves a high level of trust, and patience. People always ask – you really didn’t open your eyes for a full 2.5 hours? I did not. It is surprisingly easy to keep one's eyes closed.

What I ask of the image here is quite a task. But I think it is up to it, I have always understood photographs as kinaesthetic devices capable of containing much more than an imprint of the light and shade of the material conditions it (re)presents.

eyes open / eyes closed