A TESTAMENT by Sarah Ducker
“How we live cannot stay the same. To ride the stormy waves of our heating planet,
we must think feel and act in radically different ways ”
Sally Gillespie
The burnt landscape stood bare before me, still defiantly magnificent in the face of devastation. A testament to the majesty of the bush.
Over a summer of terrifying fires, ferocious winds, suffocating smoke, I felt heartbroken.
Unable to come to terms with my sense of unfathomable loss, I drove into the bush. As I walked across the earth still pungent with the fire storm, surprisingly, I was uplifted by the transcendent glory of the naked trees.
In the midst of this apocalypse, emerges not just the possibility of transformation, but the insistence of it. Sparking potential for radical changes in culture and consciousness.
GRATITUDE by Sarah Ducker
“The soul wants to walk in that
cleansing air and not come back”
Rumi
When I was in Byron Bay I saw these wondrous creations on the beach made by crabs, silt and algae.
But I had to act quickly. The morning joggers, oblivious to their beauty, were trampling all over them.
It was a clear metaphor for the cavalier destruction we wreak on the environment.
In our struggle to survive the day, in our battle to manage our lives, we can neglect to enjoy that which surrounds us.
And if you cannot see, you will not know,
If you do not know, you will not care.
In nature, I descend into a quiet place where all activity ceases.
I spend time in the landscape, in the light and dark, silence and sound, heat and cold.
Perhaps my photographs can transport you for a moment into that space and elicit from you a desire to enter the landscape, to reside quietly with nature from time to time.
FRAGILITY by Sarah Ducker
“ New creatures whirl in form non-existence,
Galaxies scattered around their feet”
Rumi