New Year - New Books
The new year always seems to bring about a change in energy, accompanied by a sense of renewal. Thinking about the months ahead in light of this vigour, I find it all too easy to succumb to the #new-year-new-me mentality, which has me planning all manner of projects and undertakings.
Around this time, the lifestyle sections of the news and current affair websites that I frequent usually post articles extolling the virtues of unplugging from technology and living a more simplistic life - often with the aim of increasing productivity. Even the app store on my phone highlights the latest killer app which will allow me to achieve all my new-year goals (at last!). What these approaches typically entail is an abrupt change in lifestyle.
However, after a recent conversation with my Dad over Christmas dinner, I think the trick is to simply avoid over-commitment. Taking this into consideration, the best course of action for the new year is to stay the course of my established habits and routines. The overarching goal is to see what I can do from within that consistency.
Some recent photo-book purchases include Katrin Koenning's Between the Skin and Sea, and Adam Broomberg & Rafael Gonzalez's Anchor in the Landscape.
The work within Koenning’s book was largely produced during the COVID-19 lock-downs, when the author’s movements were restricted to a five kilometre radius from her home. An excerpt from the work reads:
At the tail end of the fires, through pandemic time; there in the chaos and the madness of it all were five kilometres where we belonged - between the river and the sea. Love was in a closer way; it was a time of endings and beginnings, noise and change.
Bloomberg and Gonzalez have created a visual document highlighting the Palestinian people’s relationship with the land through portraits of olive trees. A description of the work states:
The olive tree is a totem of Palestinian identity, culture, and resistance. It supports the livelihoods of more than 100,000 Palestinian families, is a centre of traditions and identities, and has long been a target of destruction and theft. Since 1967, 800,000 Palestinian olive trees have been destroyed by Israeli authorities and settlers. Over the past eighteen months, photographers Adam Broomberg and Rafael Gonzalez have been photographing olive trees in the Occupied Territories of Palestine, many of which are thousands of years old. This book brings together their studied, absorbing portraits of these trees, which act as fixed points in a historic and transforming landscape that is constantly disputed, altered, and increasingly destroyed. Each portrait bears witness to the presence and resilience of the Palestinian people and their relationship with the land.
