Self-Portrait #22

Tim Moss, , , , 2 Comments

Here’s #22.

Everything is fine [pt.1]…

I’m always fascinated by the creative process for me. In my ‘normal’ professional life, I’m a planner. I love milestones, deadlines, objectives, and will prepare far beyond what’s required for any kind of event. I’ll spend the better part of a day preparing for a 10-minute presentation. Better to be ready, whatever that means.

Photography, for me, becomes a different kind of endeavour. Instead of planning, I just play around for a while. Until I can see what it is that I want to say, hiding away in what I’ve said.

And so, I figured that at some point in this project, things would sort themselves out and start to make some kind of sense. And in a way, they have. Well, sort of. For now.

The idea emerged as a kind of emotional coagulation, some time around my third or fourth funny dog video on Facebook for the hour. It struck me that what I was doing was so very normal, so very wholesome, and so very not real. All around, the world is burning, societies are dancing on the very edge of chaos, governments are sniping and undermining public health efforts to score a few points with the Murdocracy, and still the numbers go up and up. How do I deal with this? By not dealing with it at all. And there is the absurdity. I am living in the ‘This is Fine‘ cartoon. I can’t think about all of that; I just can’t. I can’t think about family, all elsewhere. I can’t think about bushwalks, or waterfalls, or rainforests, or eating out at a restaurant. I can’t think about the ever-rising flood of toxicity on social media. But still, it’s there. It’s all there. So the only thing to think about is nothing at all. Or at least nothing out of the ordinary. Think about taking out the rubbish. Vacuuming. Tidying the garden. Don’t think about aerosol spread, mystery cases, anti-lockdown protests, the sensitivities of those who are not living within the ring of steel. So, this is fine.

Everything is fine.

I don’t know exactly how many images I’ll do for this little sub-project Matryoshka doll, but I do know that for now, for me, it seems real. It seems authentic. It seems, perhaps, just a little bit like a way to make some sense of all this.

I hope you’ll enjoy this little trip through domestic absurdity. As someone living in the very heart of it, I can tell you my take on it – it’s fine.

Self-Portrait #22