Twilight Island
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Dates2016 - 2022
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Author
Twilight Island is a poetic contemplation of a time spent on a volcanic island. What seemed unchanged for millennia probed the question as to what could have been a very different trajectory had the human species chosen to live in accord with nature.
ABOUT TWILIGHT ISLAND / POEM AND STATEMENT:
Twilight Island
A silent equation unbinds deep rings of fire,
Palpable in damp ravines
And oceans gathering around the island's edge.
Out of the parabola of the skies,
Summer galloped in with its sad stillness
Full of slow time and blinding rays.
As time slips into stones,
Shallow moons fall into tepid lakes
And girls hover in their reflections
Living scene by scene.
I once lapsed into numbness,
Perhaps I am here, or lost dreaming of
A colony of peaks soaring into orbs of distance,
Rhythmic forest that swell as lunatic terrors
And, diagonal rains which seep into
Shadows of feathers, shadows of needles,
Full of breath and the holler of myths.
We are at the end and the beginning.
STATEMENT:
War and Wilderness are often there in my work because stories of warfare and of our abuse of the environment stem both from man’s quest to control, tame and own the wilderness.
This photobook focuses on the wilderness we live in and continue to see ourselves separate from.
Twilight Island is a poetic contemplation of a time spent on a volcanic island. What seemed unchanged for millennia probed the question as to what could have been a very different trajectory had the human species chosen to live in accord with the natural environment.
The book resonates with several subtexts of themes and cycles. A succession of vistas, from volcanic craters to desert plateaux, is juxtaposed with landmarks, memorials and recreational spaces where spectacles are set to unfold in a succession of endless tourism. A polarising axis is drawn between the earthly transformations over eras, laid bare on this island, and the minute cycles of summer seasons and the coming of age of two girls, my twin daughters. My daughters belong to one of the generations that will have to face and survive this crippling legacy.
Within this brief reflective bracket lies the vast wilderness, an earthly stage on which generational rites and rituals come into being but to which, we remain oblivious to.
Leslie Hakim-Dowek – 2022
