Death Masks

The concept of a death mask intrigues me.
We take photography's sheer immediacy for granted.

Without photography, art, or various other forms of self expression, images would live only in memory. Preserved images are a form of immortality. I don't know if death masks were viewed as a form of artistic expression as they served the purpose of documenting and preserving.
Many tribal people are still deeply suspicious of cameras and will react violently if they realise that someone is photographing them. Many believe that you steal a bit of someone's soul with each image.

I photographed these images at the Ripley's Believe It Or Not museum in Manhattan over Christmas.

Believe it, or not.

Goodbye House

We have moved out to renovate the house. It's strange to look back at this photo because the mango tree has been gone for some time now. What I am struggling with at the moment is saving the plants that are living through the renovation. By and large we have left most of the beds and our temporary space is a big large garden.

The sealing wax palm moved with me and when we are ready to go home, it will come home with me again.

The upside of all of this is that I get to start all over again in many areas. The garden has been surprisingly resilient and many things are blooming (even though I know that this is a sign of stress) and there are areas that still look lovely.

The house will never look like this again and that is kind of sad, but she was a bit like an ageing dowager, badly in need of an overhaul. She looked good at a distance but close up the cracks were beginning to show - literally so.