In Search Of Last Time
Mei Cooper & Mark Burrows >

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The Same Infinite Possibilities
Mei Cooper & Mark Burrows
2010

New ideas arise and it’s as if old ideas were never new. Newness becomes oldness, and all becomes sameness. Like the ocean in unknown countries, newness is foreign, yet we are entirely familiar with the general idea.

Looking out into a world full of distinct mysteries where each and every component of life is unified by it’s essence. We search for subjects with a distinct poetry, in a natural base language that we hear and understand.

Multitudes of photographers are drawn to the same images, the generally same but specifically different places, to interrogate essence and experience presence. In confronting the infinity of the sea, each individual sea related narrative is compressed and unified in a moment of photographing the same situation.

Man connects with the environment, then steps away to process what has been experienced. The experience is filtered through the lens of the camera and through the architecture of the mind. The photograph places us in an objective present of evaluating the now distanced narrative.

Perhaps with the many versions of the image it is interesting to shift the focus from the product to production. Moving from asking the question: Why this image? To the question of ‘Why make and remake the image?’.

Is it futile to make and remake the same revisions? And in short, no, not at all. Year in, year out, farmers plough and till their land allowing for new growth in the next season. Old roads are torn up and tarmac is relayed to create new routes for different and theoretically ‘quicker’ journeys. Different material provides new housing for old narratives.

It is without the excitement and noise of originality that it is possible to surrender to old ideas, and to turn over old ground.