Apostrophe Combe

The original intention of this project was to make a photographic and written record of this one place, the manner conversational, thoughts arising from observations and incidents. So far as form goes, I took as a starting point the poetry of Japan's Heian period (794-1185), when the predominate form was a sedoka sandwiched between two blocks of prose, and whose principal purpose was a declaration of the author's love.

Here, however, there are very few love poems. But, having decided on the form, I then let the material dictate its presentation. In the writing, in the taking and selecting of photographs, the overall thrust was to attempt to create a sense of place and time; that is of the past up to the moment of the writing, up to the moment of photographing. And then - with the words on the page, with the photographs - to create something other, where everyone's experience of the book, as with the place, will be different.