It's a lonely night

Autumn trail rides and designing a business card for myself have occupied most of my non-writing time these days, so I shall share another artist with you in lieu of a photograph--Beth Moon.


Before I say anything about her work, I just want to say that I love her website. It is simple yet effective, remains within the color tone of her images, and doesn't detract from her work at all. Plus the layout makes it very easy to navigate. I also love that every portfolio starts immediately with her artist statements (which are all very well done, in my opinion). Sadly, these things are not always the case for photographer websites.

Moving onto her work, Beth Moon shoots mainly in medium format and hand-prints everything using a palladium process (platinum--which is the most archival of printing processes out there, allowing prints to last centuries). All of her image collections feature a beautiful ethereal, tranquil quality especially present in her Thy Kingdom Come series (depicted above).

Thy Kingdom Come is my favorite collection of hers. At first the images are a mix of spiritual and creepy--children dressed as medieval religious pilgrims with (dead) animals either bound to their backs or held against their faces. But then I study them closer--the velvety detail and soft background haze, the delicate positioning of limbs, the perfectly meditative faces--and the pieces become much more profound, each one like a dream-path unfolding before my feet, a stirring of other-worldly spirit.

"The title, in this case refers to the animal kingdom, where animals in an older world move, gifted with senses we have lost, living by voices we do not hear. With a metaphoric language these images examine the relationship between man, animal and earth.

The child intuitively walks these meridians in a pure state of living in the moment, embodying the unreflective consciousness of the animal. Migrating between the two worlds, they carry this awareness on their backs. They are the tangible form of this fusion." -a clip of Beth Moon's TKC artist statement

I simply love this idea. Allow me to repeat a phrase--The child intuitively walks these meridians in a pure state of living in the moment, embodying the unreflective consciousness of the animal. It is spiritual. Shamanic, even. For this reason, these images are very powerful for me. Some of you know that I consider myself to be a therian. Therians, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, are people who consider that part or all of their soul either was or contains the soul of an individual animal. It is a very spiritual thing, for me, and for years I have come to know the animal (canis dirus) consciousness within myself, her instincts and reflexes, her cravings and likings. I say her even though she and I are one in the same, because it makes it easier to talk about (and to understand). I won't go into it further here, but my point is that because of my therianthropic experiences, I keenly identify with Thy Kingdom Come's inner expression. A part of me, like the children Moon depicts, always wears those black over tunics and belts, the body of a dire wolf strapped to my back.

Favorite images: "Three Figures", "Way of the hare", "Listening to the Sky", and "Last Comes the Raven".

Her series, Portraits of Time, is a collection of portraits of ancient trees. The soft tones, contrast, and memory-like haze lend an air of discovery to each image. I imagine walking for hours through forests and suddenly coming upon one of the trees in these photographs, stepping directly into a sublime, timeless world where everything feels familiar. My favorite images: "Much Marcle Yew", "The Yews of Wakehurst", and "Queen Elizabeth Oak".

I'll leave it here and let you explore Seen But Not Heard and The Savage Garden on your own, if you'd like to.