Reflections – the book and the story behind it

In late 2012 I unknowingly moved to Bali, it wasn’t so much that I wasn’t aware of traveling there but I didn’t do so with the intention to stay. What was supposed to be a 6 months hiatus, a chance to create some perspective on my ongoing education as an architect, led to me untying the bowlines that kept me anchored in Sweden and onto adventures around the equator and beyond. As these new experiences opened my eyes to the world it felt natural to shelter them with my camera and capture them the best I could. My interest in photography goes way back and I have dabbled with it since I was a young teenager, even tried to make it a career at some point but the type of work it gave me faded my passion and didn’t resonate with how I had come to relate to the art. I remember sitting with my father at the dinner table one evening announcing I was going to pursue photography as a profession and how his response was loaded with deep concernment for the uncertainty that line of work involved. He would rather see me aim for a line of work where there was more stability and security. I heard him but I didn’t exactly listen.

With Instagram becoming the platform for sharing creative work around the same time I made my way to Bali, many years after that conversation with my father, I began to post my captures with a fascination for the response the pictures spurred. It was not much more than a documentation of my experiences and the reflections that came with them as a new path of my life began to unfold. As I realised that my home was now based in Indonesia the feed on Instagram also became my way of consistently corresponding to family and friends back home. Instead of phone calls and emails I documented and shared my surroundings and thoughts through the social media platform, much to their expressed enjoyment and appreciation.

There was just one person who couldn’t keep up with this improvised story and that was my father. With his deteriorating health as a victim to Alzheimers decease his ability to handle a smart phone diminished and I felt a gap growing between what I experienced in the life that he had supported me to explore and his opportunity to witness it. There was so much that he missed out on.

So in 2015 when photography had become a daily routine for me and I basically brought my camera everywhere I went, I decided to gather a selection of the pictures I had captured over the last few years while in the tropics with the intention to create a physical album that I could show my father on my next visit to Sweden. As I began to select highlights I realised that the pictures alone wouldn’t tell the whole story. My life had changed, my eyes saw the world in a different light and so the way I described and thought about the world had evolved as well. It only felt appropriate to include some of the reflections that had gone along with the experiences and instead of just displaying a gallery of images I included some of the texts that had gone along with them when they were originally published. Which in turn led me to write more and elaborate on my thoughts. Before I knew it I had something that was more of a book, albeit a very short one and very fragmented from a narrative point of view but anyway, that is the story of how “REFLECTIONS – captured on a tropical island” came to be.

There are a handful, I think about 75 copies, of this book spread across the globe, purchased by friends and followers who showed a kind interest in this spontaneous project. My father received his copy and we looked at it together from time to time when I visited him. At that time I wasn’t sure what he thought about it, he never really expressed it and to be fair as the texts were written in English and my train of thought (as you may have noticed) tends to express itself with double connotations and in a way that require a bit of internal reflection to be appreciated, it was a tall order to expect him to find that kind of appreciation considering his mental state.

My father has now passed away and “Reflections..” is a project of the past, his copy disappeared somewhere in the care home where he spent his last years. The interest in photography and sharing captures with the world faded again around the time of his passing but between then and the printing of the book I kept my gear with me wherever I went as I did, and still do, with my dad. I traveled the world, updated my equipment, began to dabble with moving images and new techniques to capture and display the results. All the while keeping my father and the rest of my family at heart and mind.

A few years before my fathers passing I visited him and I brought some of the more recent captures of my adventures. At this time his state of mind had gone so far that the conversation we had had some 15 years earlier was no longer in his recollection. As I sat with him, scrolling through images on the tablet and telling him the stories and updates of where I had been and what I was doing with my life his eyes began to shine. In, what I would hope was a state of clarity he stopped me and asked “You did this? This is amazing, you make sure you get paid for this. This is special”. To this day, even now when writing this, my heart fills with love and I get tears in my eyes when I remember this conversation with him. His spontaneous reaction and the pride that filled him while understanding that somewhere, somehow, he played a part in all of this is one of my most precious moments.

It’s ironic how at the time he advised me to not pursue photography I didn’t listen and when he later encouraged me to make a living of it I was already too busy doing other things that I just smiled and ensured him I was happy doing what I was doing at the time. I was still actively taking pictures but it was never with the intention of turning that interest into a business. Photography is, as my father already had told me, an uncertain line of work. This in combination with the feeling that the impact of imagery has been numbed by the overstimulation we get from constantly being exposed to the same sceneries over and over again through various platforms. The appreciation that my father felt was genuine as to him it was new, something he hadn’t seen before, also there was a biased affectionate connection to it and these things are hard to create these days in the saturated jungle of content created.

Anyway, if you wish to read the revised version of “Reflections – captured on a tropical island” I have posted a link to it below, just click the text and download it at your own convenience. I hope you enjoy it.

Sincerely
CJ Kimell