Image and Pilgrimage

Let’s say you dream of going to Rome.

You know, those four letters R-O-M-E and the dot, halfway up the boot of Italy.

You know, the Coliseum, Romulus and Remus, the Vatican, La Dolce Vita, the Trevi Fountain…

And then you actually go there…

During June, 1995; my wife Angelika and I went on an epic road trip – twice across the USA.

It was as clichéd and personal as all journeys are.

While some sites had the importance of pilgrimage to me, the route was broadly improvised – by simply looking at the map and selecting places which had some personal resonance or interest. Like all journeys, some places simply lay on the way to somewhere else, but turned out to be engrossing – unencumbered by expectation.

Against all the accumulated context, the neat narratives, all the expectations and preconceptions that we have of places, these six shorts are a study in the inscrutability of actual places – their stubborn refusal to look and feel like they’re supposed to.

I always relish choosing camera angles or recording durations that evaporate my preconceptions and force me to actually start listening and looking at places and all the things that constitute them – as fragmentary as that may be.

As magnificent, or as historically important as these places are, they very easily just become views seen in a million photos before. Leaving only the nagging question – which one of those views can I copy? And how can I prove that I’ve been here?

For isn’t that what it’s ultimately about, trying to nail our transience, our insignificance, to something eternal – significant.

But then, nothing lasts forever. Everything – from mountains to motels, become motes in the light shafts of eternity.