Traverse D’un Paradis (Crossing A Paradise) A Turkish Odyssey, A new book by contributor James Hughes.
Text from the Book by James;
All the images in Traverse D’un Paradis (Crossing A Paradise) A Turkish Odyssey were made between 2008-14 when I lived in Istanbul. This was a period of loss both for Turkey and myself personally. That slice of time and the observation of people and place that pierced my eve also resonated with juxtapositions and contradiction. It became my footnote to a history in flux, my Hüzün*. Turkey for me was also an evocative place were romanticism clashed with reality as it scraped the present and past.
What is special about this collection is the elegiac tone, the note of longing that suffuses the work and demonstrates how I am touched by those places where damage and grace are inextricably entangled. The work bears witness to facts, be they visible or existential.It unconsciously links fragments, unearths connections and creates anew through the visual like a sacred task.The work also has aspects of history. I find myself continually returning to those aspects that are often hidden or misrepresented in the “official” recordings for posterity. My aim is to explore and present the historically forgotten and place the previously unseen through a discarded past. The message is essentially that: the experience of time and space is paramount to living a life with meaning. Through my practice, redemption could ultimately be found by re-establishing a connection with one’s environment to find a place within the detritus and loss of the society which we now dwell.
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye”. Antoine de Saint-Exupery. The Little Prince, 1943
