'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

Those words, written 200 years ago by John Keats, seem simplistic - but simplicity often has a lot going for it.

A spring morning, warm sun on our backs, a deserted beach, amazing rock formations and colour patterns on wave-wet rocks, the sounds of waves crashing on the beach - and an angel of a model as bare and beautiful as nature, in tune with nature, responding to nature.

And a camera to capture the play of light, the interplay of form between body and rock, the emotional connection between person and place.

It's primitive - and wild. And more important than most things we do in life. So many of the trivial things that obsess us day to day seem blissfully insignificant here - in fact they don't even register. Time stops. This is an eternal scene. . .

A boatload of hoons cruises past, wolf whistles, rebel yells.

We climb the hill - return to our worlds. The moment of magic is past - but the photographic images remain.

I thought that rather than give you a statement full of artistic jargon I'd give you the simple picture above. That is what I've been trying to do for several years now. Trying to capture that moment and share it.

I don't think anyone has ever captured so well the artist's obsessive need as did Samuel Taylor Coleridge, another Romantic poet, in the words below

A damsel with a dulcimer
in a vision once I saw.
It was an Abyssinian maid,
and on her dulcimer she played,
singing of mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
her symphony and song.
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
that with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air!
That sunny dome! Those caves of ice!
and all who heard should see them there!
and all should cry, Beware! Beware!
his flashing eyes! his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
and close your eyes with holy dread!
for he on honey-dew hath fed,
and drunk the milk of Paradise.

Could I capture that scene - that light, the sounds, the emotions, the freedom - and share it all with someone through a photograph, then I really will have achieved something worthwhile.

Andre