Travelling is hypnotic: only when the journey ends can sleeping hours be separated from waking ones. It is at homeward bound junctures that memories first become balanced, organised, and firm; in the process we artfully misplace “pointless” or traumatising memories and continue to reshape our recollections to correspond with our present. 

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The mutability of personal reflection stresses the key role knowledge plays in ideas surrounding utopia. We all have blind spots, and an acknowledgement of our ignorance allows us to see how invaluable access to a diverse range of opinions and ideas is. It is only with this access that our eyes can be open to assessment. 

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Photography is a medium where insight can be gained from new perspectives. A camera does not produce an exact replica of what the eye sees. Instead it can alter colours, accentuate shadow, and/or highlight the specific shape or texture of its subject. 

 

As with any tool, photography can be misused. A landscape can be candied beyond recognition with neon colours and the round, stretch marked, lived in body can be made to look contradictorily static in its plasticity and flexible in it’s willingness to please viewers. These photos perpetuate the smog of falsity that often clouds our judgment on who we are, what we are supposed to do, and who we are supposed to be. 

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Instead of altering photos to ascribe to one of the trending mixed messages on beauty and life goals, this collection explores how photos can provide a new perspective on fleeting moments in time. Without these photos many captured moments would have easily been forgotten. 

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Each photo in this collection was taken in a rush, either hurrying to catch a train, on a train, or waiting at a street crossing. The concept of travel is intensified by the moments of transition these photos were taken in. The photos explore how the present was too chaotic to even start to make sense of. The relief of clarity these photos provide, away from the jet-lagged confusion of a culturally overwhelmed traveller, is captured. 

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Against these moments of foggy and dizzying immersion are snippets of clarity. A clarity that comes from reflection. Image one captures this state; travelling can cause a reevaluation of all that was deemed normal, and all that we push into our subconscious to make daily life tolerable.

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Reflection refers to the process of thinking about our past, and also of seeing a duplicate of the present on a reflective surface. A camera combines the two; we are able to reflect on the past with the help of an inclusive visual medium. 

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Photography allows us to reenter the past through a less filtered frame. Our recollections and the photographic depiction unite. It is not quite our eye but, the shapes, colours/or lack of, and angle captured in each photo are a way for us to reinterpret our experience with more detail and stimulus than recollection can do alone. Triggers are in a photograph, the events before and after it click into place, and you realise that it is only that split second in time that you can see once more through the eye of the lens. 

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The adaption of memories, and how a photo can help or hinder this process, becomes evident to the photographer, and as a result, the nature of personal knowledge, and our need to reflect and assess it, becomes evident. 

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In this collection we seize the sense of urgency, chaos, and moments of brief clarity experienced while travelling. All the photos present transitory moments that are over in a split second, and ones that we must return to if we wish to strive towards a clearer, more utopian existence.