Ralph Fiennes, by Julie Kavanagh.

On performing Oedipus ...

Now Fiennes’s fear was palpable, with a physical language of agony, like a Bacon painting; his barely audible “Not yet, not yet” sparking the ineffable shiver released by a great performance. The audience was silent, drawn into the moment, but at the end let rip with whoops and whistles, recalling the cast on stage again and again. Sophie Fiennes went twice and said that one performance was the most extraordinary she had ever seen. “It was not acting, it was being. It was a leap of faith, like jumping from one building to another. Ralph had dared to enter that state. Afterwards I told him, ‘Jini’s certainly gone to heaven now!’ Because she would have loved the play, she would have loved his courage on that night.”

From Two Years With Ralph Fiennes, by Julie Kavanagh.

A brilliant article, a brilliant man and the photographer too ... I had to put it someplace safe.

Photograph Jillian Edelstein.

Katherine Mansfield - a symposium on Flanders Fields.

Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.

Katherine Mansfield ... one of my favourite New Zealand writers, the only writer Virginia Woolf ever envied, a woman who truly went out there and lived life. 

Stylistically, the influence of Katherine’s writing was profound. Virginia wrote: “You seem to me to go so straightly and directly – all clear as glass – refined, spiritual…” After Katherine’s death she confided to her diary it was: “the only writing I have ever been jealous of.”

She was a remarkable woman left out of all of my school curriculums - a fact that stuns me now that I realise just how remarkable she was, both as a writer and as a woman.

Anyway, September 26-27, 2015 ...

On Flanders Fields ...

The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world.

Marc Chagall.

Yesterday was one of those slightly epic days ...

Sander and I headed off to Flanders Fields on an assignment that involved using a panoramic tripod head to capture a series of precise images.  I had prepared a folder of lists, directions, and maps however ... we couldn't control the weather.

And so it was that we lost an entire morning of work to raindrops on the lens when taking a particular series of shots.  The umbrella didn't help as the rain varied between wind-blown sideways and simply drifting.  It was never of the straight-down variety ... a fact I wouldn't have noticed unless trying, so desperately, to keep the lens dry.

Bone-achingly cold, we stopped for lunch.  I found myself obsessed and watching the puddle out in front of the fries shop ... to see whether rain was disturbing its surface.

The rain stopped and we headed off again.  We covered the kilometres required to find those specific shots, again.  And the rain held off.  Finally, at the last location and voila, Flanders Fields did what it has so often done to me after a day of trudging about in the rain with my camera.  The clouds shaped themselves into something extraordinary, the sun broke through in places, and the landscape looked like some kind of beautiful painting ... just for a little bit.

I didn't manage to capture it in all its beauty but you get a small sense of it here, perhaps.  Just as the change started to happen.

Just a Note ...

You know ... I don't remember where I found this shot, or ... but I do know it was taken some place in Antwerp and I didn't how unusual it was until I saw it here on my computer.

There's another place I inhabit when I take photographs.  It's difficult to explain.  It simply is.

Meanwhile I'm gearing up for a rather interesting photo-shoot out on Flanders Fields this Wednesday. The panoramic head arrives tomorrow.  Lists and directions are printed and ready.  More on that in the months ahead .. when the story of it all becomes news I can share.

And the exhibition in Brussels.  It's still happening.  More on that as soon as we have dates.