 |
This will be my first (and hopefully not last) exhibition. This project has been 3 years in the making: 53 photographs shot on 5 continents. I have named this SOUTH OF HEAVEN, because I did not want to narrow my first show to one theme - therefore anything and everything under the heavens has been covered. Sales will be available on the spot. The event lasts from the 27th to the 31st of May. However the 27th is the opening night and I’m planning a cocktail event full with waiters, musicians, models. Hope to share this special moment with you. - video presentation -
For the past three years, I tracked thousands of miles from Saharan sands to Himalayan snow. And during these travels, I searched for the perfect place, the perfect spot, a heaven. Occasionally, in unexpected places – in a hut in Abidjan, in the shade of a Mayan temple in Copan, in a gin-joint in Casablanca – I felt it. Sometimes – when I walked from Europe into Asia in Istanbul, or when I rode a horse on the old Silk Road in Osh – I felt it was simply a few steps ahead, laughing at me, and that if I hurried fast I could catch it. But no matter how I tried, I was always south of heaven. My quest acquired the character of a pilgrimage, and I came to see that it in itself became a religious act, a form of worship, a re-affirmation, a re-invention of the world. I searched and read and travelled, but the moment I thought I had heaven in my grasp, it eluded me, laughing, and appearing somewhere else. And so my journey continued. In the end, I realized that there was no real heaven at all. There was only my own reflection in a glass: heaven and I were two facing mirrors reflecting each other to eternity. At last, in the cold loneliness of the Sahara, and the great empty desert that is the Himalayas, I finally knew that the observer is part of his subject: and I understood that there could be no definitive heaven, but only an infinite number of heavenly perspectives. What I discovered was my heaven and my truth. And this I would like to share with you - a collection of south of heaven, south of the heavens. Step right up, what you see is what you get.
For the past three years, I tracked thousands of miles from Saharan sands to Himalayan snow. And during these travels, I searched for the perfect place, the perfect spot, a heaven. Occasionally, in unexpected places – in a hut in Abidjan, in the shade of a Mayan temple in Copan, in a gin-joint in Casablanca – I felt it. Sometimes – when I walked from Europe into Asia in Istanbul, or when I rode a horse on the old Silk Road in Osh – I felt it was simply a few steps ahead, laughing at me, and that if I hurried fast I could catch it. But no matter how I tried, I was always south of heaven. My quest acquired the character of a pilgrimage, and I came to see that it in itself became a religious act, a form of worship, a re-affirmation, a re-invention of the world. I searched and read and travelled, but the moment I thought I had heaven in my grasp, it eluded me, laughing, and appearing somewhere else. And so my journey continued. In the end, I realized that there was no real heaven at all. There was only my own reflection in a glass: heaven and I were two facing mirrors reflecting each other to eternity. At last, in the cold loneliness of the Sahara, and the great empty desert that is the Himalayas, I finally knew that the observer is part of his subject: and I understood that there could be no definitive heaven, but only an infinite number of heavenly perspectives. What I discovered was my heaven and my truth. And this I would like to share with you - a collection of south of heaven, south of the heavens. Step right up, what you see is what you get.
Later photographic exhibitions organised by Andrew Simes: Walk with Levantines, Revelations