At the culmination of years of work on my craft, I forged a new style that is absolutely unique to me. I say that with confidence, because I know the nights I spent awake, and the days I spent thinking,
What encapsulates the true nature of the way I see this world, and
How can I add a challenging new perspective that is also a thoughtful spectacle?
Because it’s a hard ask for any viewer, to relate to the surreal.
As always I revisit some of my older work to glance, to learn, and at most times to see where I could do better with the study I’ve done.
I remember xynae (the featured model) approaching me to do a shoot at the beach.
whereas most photographers see this as an opportunity to capture the beauty of anatomy, the surrealist within me must have waited to learn and express a new perspective.
To express a new perspective that doesn’t rely on anatomy but to create an innate emotion, purely detached from reality.
Where the individual is immersed back into the surreal, to distort, and to feel blended within the world of surrealism.
“So Long, Forget Me” isn’t just an afterthought, it's a carefully constructed surrealist picture that frames a disappearing memory.
So why did I choose memory?
Memory has always been surreal to me, almost dreamlike, our memories are unreliable narrators in an evidence-based world.
Something to doubt? Maybe. But I see it as a point of origin for creativity.
A distorted simulation of events that runs in various directions. Any artist's dream.
I look back to the timeline of events that led to that day when I revisited the picture, the relationships that broke, the ones that dissipated to the proverbial ether of memory, and thought to myself where I would be if I took a different step. Here or there.
A multiverse of realities that I could have stepped into, a butterfly effect if you will,
A foot at the door of "the what if?"
Would the sequence of events make up what is j_edak at this time? is it favourable?
I guess in posing these questions to myself,
I find it a liberating feeling when I not only think but have the ability to capture the answer on canvas.
I speak in a visual tongue, as I see my memories with glassy eyes, to paint their disappearance
thankful for the experience of their existence and feeling free from the finality of memory.
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And so I walk across these chapters in a book that's still being written, driven to show my surrealist world but also acknowledging what it takes to reach that infinite point of possible plausibilities,
I tell my memories to run their natural course.
So Long, Forget Me.
