︎ Nature of Walking (2019)
There’s a difference between solitude and loneliness. As one can’t fully cope without the other, they take turns. For a long time, I’ve been thinking about what draws me to places like these. And for a long time I just merely felt the longing.
The irony of walking alone, anywhere, is that you spend most of your time looking down. I’m watching my feet move, stepping from stone to stone in steady rhythm, but I’m not really looking. I can hear myself breathing, but my mind keeps drifting off. It all seems like a dream sometimes when you’re by yourself. As if you’re floating.
Watching the path disappear underneath you while stepping from stone to stone.
I like to take pictures. It calms my mind. I like to take pictures of people, landscapes or houses. There is this focus I get into when I photograph and I only seem to find it when I go here. You could say it’s meditation. This is a pilgrimage. With the road my destination and my camera a tool for confession.
Solitude can take a heavy toll. It is like a mirror to where - or whatever you’re looking at. You always see yourself. It is also the reason I like photography because it’s all projection. Everything you look at, with or without a camera, is a subjective focus. I believe you only see what you recognize. And the camera makes you choose.
I’ve walked in many places for a long time. Through heat, cold, emptiness, altitude, through old and new forests, endless steppes and the highest mountains.
It seems we all need our demons. If only to make us feel.. something. For me, there is this love-hate relationship with feeling down or deep. Whatever you wanna call it. Struggle and reward. Catharsis.
The simplicity of it all. No etiquette, rules or boundaries. Here, there truly is freedom shaped by the limitations of your own mind. Thoughts swaying in the wind, leaning together like trees, cracking. Feelings rooted deep and profound, stern like mountains. Longing to get away from all the inabilities, nerves, worries, duties, and guilt. If only to deflate. But it is not all deep or dark. Often I feel very light. Like a young boy walking in this beautiful playground. Where colours, shapes, smells and sounds seem to dance around me. Like a natural psychedelic drug.
And sometimes you come across this gem, a gorgeous view and I just simply forget.
- Harm vd Poel
︎ The Good Ancestor (PRE-PRODUCTION 2023)
- the documentary looks at the behavior of the business of slave trading and its impact on society. It raises questions about whether we are still engaged in similar practices today and whether we are still putting profit above people and the environment. Finally, it y seeks to identify ways in which we can create a better future by learning from our past.
- the documentary looks at the behavior of the business of slave trading and its impact on society. It raises questions about whether we are still engaged in similar practices today and whether we are still putting profit above people and the environment. Finally, it y seeks to identify ways in which we can create a better future by learning from our past.
︎ Bronze Casting (2021)
fugacious, fleeting, transient, transitory, volatile,