elusiveworld

Cameras were recently given to blind people. The results were enough to show that anybody can take a good photograph. It is not necessary to see the world around you in the conventional sense. With other senses heightened it becomes startlingly clear that we have control over so little. The photographic process turns the person who presses the shutter into a kind of puppet when the end product is as unusual as this photo.

Shot near the Korean border in 2007, this formation of starlings were merging in waves above Daechuri in South Korea.  As the birds swooped over head at dusk I felt the sense of spine tingling wonder experienced when in communication with something  more powerful than one self.

We were photographing the landscape of international policy centred on an area of farmland and communities being reclaimed by the ROK authorities to create a strategic base for US Military forces.  Since the Korean War, South Korea has continued to be influenced by US global policy in contrast to the North who have taken a firm foothold in resisting 21st century globalisation and materialism.  

 The 38th Parrallel, the most heavily militarized border in the world, aka the demilitarized zone is a stark place representing a wide gulf in political thought.  A ridiculous line drawn up by dull minded fiends with little interest in villagers for whom rice production and a refreshing cup of makgeolli, the local korean tipple, are life.   

It is unfortunate for them that they were evicted from their family homes in order to perpetuate a divided peninsula and provide land for military.  They held out well against the demolishion with artists contributing sculptures and murals around the village it became a haunting installation on the frontline of international politics.    Huge wickermen marked the gateway through the fields to the village where three thousand armed korean police fought farmers with hoes and sickles in the fields in the summer of 2007.    Inside the village a large hall played host to a nightly candlelit vigil where Koreans with a history of protest continued to air their rights.

The demolition date was imminent and the art was not to survive for ever.   As they lit the candles two weeks before final demolition we stood on top of a roof where squatters have lived without running water and electricity for two years. There was a steel template of the Korean peninsula erected on a post on a far building, then the starlings arrived.   They flocked together in their thousands, swooping low in perfect synchronicity across the rice paddies. Moving in vortexes as their wings beat in unison at a precise distance from the next flier, never colliding.  An example of harmony if ever i have seen one.   Like a giant tongue, the flock unrolled across the village, diving, merging and coning into the most incredible organised display I have ever witnessed. I heard the Pyongyang  Games were the most impressive example of synchronicity in the world. These birds were pretty cool too.