pilgrimage

Pilgrimage is ‘a visit to a place that is considered special, where you go to show your respect’ & as people we have an unanimous capacity for showing respect and that is through being in awe. Human senses can be lead to awe & it is curiosity that lends itself to awe seeking. It’s our internal compass leading towards the view point of ‘I’m-overwhelmed-by-something-greater-than-me’. I don’t think exercising our curiosity has to be far journeying, but a pause at around the corner kind of beautiful.

Lens has a certain rapport with an awe-point and although it often fails the view itself, vastness surpassing the frame, it gives a sober birth to the photograph. Photograph like awe is of its second and of a momentary recognition. It is accepting, faithful & above all, full of itself.

I go back and forth with this thought: ‘Do I wish a country upon a photograph?’ I have known photographs put into collections ‘Japan 2025’, ‘Italy 2019’ and I have known my family albums to be labeled so. Maybe I should have labeled my photographs the same, because temples & people have risen different to mountains and have had their knees bent to countries. However, even when we rise temples facing away from one another, in a fistful of a valley, we look upon the mountains and awe doesn’t divide us. Come warmth of a fog at the slope, we might find ourselves so welcome, that with no division but clarity, we will look upon a close face of another and a facade they raised by the mountain side see as holly.