Somersault

Inspired by his daughter’s entrance into adulthood and her imminent departure from home, Raymond Meeks studies the centrifugal forces of the places we live – how they anchor us, repel us, and return to us – through scenes that appear both fragile and immovable. In these photographs, gardens give way to thicket, houses are suspended on stacked railroad ties, and telephone wires and train lines suggest the networks we build to find our way through the world’s wilderness.

Among these domestic landscapes are portraits of Meeks’ daughter, which capture the introspection and inquisitiveness of early adulthood while paying tribute to the ultimate mystery of their subject’s consciousness. Following the success of Meeks’ previous book, ciprian honey cathedral, Somersault is a concise, poetic reflection on home and the ties that bind us to it — all the stronger as they fade into the half-light.

‘We live our lives in widening circles, rarely appreciating their nature and how they bring us back. In a year, my daughter will be leaving home and is no stranger to a similar wanderlust I once knew. As a father, I always felt it was important to instill a profound sense of place, to identify with a certain place as home, even as these ideals have, over recent years, taken on relative meaning. I photograph close to home as memory loses structure, its architecture, trying to make light speak from the fixed edges of rooms long vanished.’
– Raymond Meeks