Joya: AiR / Sally Stenton / UK
photo Chris Stenton
“From the house it is possible to walk in all directions. The unevenness of the ground encourages the use of existing tracks. A few routes are compacted with certainty, and become the default entry points into the landscape, before branching sideways at intersections that carry a resemblance to paths inviting human incursion. The house is the returning point, out and back, and the leaving point, a flow of people, coming and going with small intense windows of overlap enabling rich interactions. Connection is fostered by the nourishment of bodies together, within the unfamiliar envelope of pale clay, almond trees and aromatic shrubs.
I step into the image of the landscape, at first as observer and then then feet sinking into the clay, thorns draw faint lines on my arms and ankles. Loose rocks unsettle the body and the environment begins to absorb me. I press against trees, lie on the earth, drape my body over rocks and assume the shapes of the land. The photographer, caught between landscape and portrait, conspires with the imitation, losing the false sense of where the human body ends and nature begins”.
Sally Stenton
Joya: AiR at nigh time by Chris Stenton