the following images offer the exploration a woman—fully such—and her beauty booming, blowing, remaining in midst of the tension of movement and expression of freedom upon the land which the blood she now carries had once been spilled.
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the second photo haunts me a bit more beautifully the more I look at it.
first, surprisingly and off-puttingly so, I think of a lynching. maybe not so surprising given the origins of my history here, in this land. but, it’s the matter of a strung-up thing that births the haunting.
then, I am called to wonder about the freedom of a loose thing—a scarf, a grocery bag, a lone balloon, an orphaned kite— in the blowing wind. a woman. I think of the free felt whenever wind sculpts itself around a body; not because it desires to be loose or ungrounded, but because it doesn't. because its feet are planted, reawakening to that truth which says, "You have, indeed, been fortified, built up and rooted, for the narrow path before you."
and this— is the bit of beauty. this is where the haunting is overcome. in how tightly a made-to-be loose thing can be kept by that which is rooted, fortified, built up.
that freedom is not, indeed, just a strung-up thing.
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january 2020
creative director
