Happy New Year!

Overland Park (Postcard from Home)

I wish everyone a wonderful, inspiring and creative new year, full of amazing, unexpected and beautiful experiences - may they continue into the next.

Thank you all so much for your support, enthusiasm and continuous inspiration.

It is a wonderful world.

I wish you all my very best.

Cheers - with love

Simon X

Remains To Be Seen

For a while now I have been working on a personal project called 'Never / Together' which I have now recently re-titled 'Remains To Be Seen'. It has involved a direct exploration and an awareness of what photographer Harvey Benge referred to in his wonderful Photo-book 'Vital Signs' as the "I-ness in Other-ness". It is a recognition that when photographing we bring our entire personal histories with us when making pictures and that we see not only with our eyes, but with our minds also. For me this project has been a kind of ghost hunt.

 

This difficult new series of what are actually psychological landscapes constitutes a search for an understanding of one particular aspect of my own personal photographic vision and some of it's roots.

The images which make up this series are almost now complete and it rests uncomfortably as an incomplete document of psychic markers gathered here in the present, yet separated by 7 years and thousands of miles. My intention is, when finally edited, is to make a book which will both include these images and also a selected scattering of recently discovered poems and personal snapshots, which were brought with me to America and some other documents which were written at the time of the events it explores.

In my memory

Your image

Hangs in my heart

Like a beautiful

And timeless

Oil painting.

It is lit by candles

In a dark room

To which I have

The only key.

My expression

Is drawn

And flickers

In the low light

Of my fond

Recollections.

Yet the shadows

It casts distort

And make strange

Your features.

Sometimes.

A truth all the same

That I dare not describe

For fear of tainting

Your spirit which is

Captured in this portrait,

Which unlike you

Was beautifully

Executed.

More images from this series can be seen in previous posts on this blog or search 'Never / Together' here:

http://simonkossoff.blogspot.com/2010/08/never-together.html

http://simonkossoff.blogspot.com/2010/09/never-together-ii.html

Overland Park, KS (XI) Central Library

Continuing my project about Overland Park, where I live, these images were made at the Central Library, located on 87th street and a 5 minute walk from my home. The library is a place I often visit and I almost always seem to make one photograph when I am there. Other images made at this library can be seen in previous Overland Park posts.

Overland Park has been consistently ranked in the top 10 best cities to live in the United States, by CNN/Money magazine. Additionally, the city was ranked one of the ‘best places to raise your kids’ and also ranked 3rd for ‘America’s 10 best places to grow up’. As a photographer this news comes as an inspiration and something of a shock to me and I have decided to explore what it is that gives Overland Park this status.