Our memory originally evolved as a survival tool. In its most biological definition, you may say that our memory has merely been there to help us learn from our past, so that we can recognize danger and avoid it in the future. Almost all species have some level of memory installed, for this purpose. But at … Continue reading About my new book, Photographic Heart
It was the century when Earth’s systems got a complete makeover. And the planet got an expiration date. It is a word that is still not recognised by the spelling thesaurus. Yet we have been living in the Anthropocene for many decades now: the geologic time period, according to the textbooks, when the planet is … Continue reading Media, Money, Machine: Tales of the Anthropocene System
20 years ago I was living in a liberal America. Or at least I thought so. I was living in an open-minded college town in back woods Massachusetts that had constructed a beautiful utopia. It was a version of “liberal” made for itself, made to measure for the lucky few: The white. The artists. The … Continue reading My America
It is perhaps the most bizarre feature in the Earth’s landscape. A straight line out in the far distance, which almost looks like the edge of a Hollywood set. It is where the props have probably ran out, and all that you see is the line where the wall meets the floor. We call it … Continue reading Reassuringly Delusional
Before I even knew anything about biology, mathematics or astronomy, I was always captivated by the mysterious shapes of seashells. Like computer models of mathematical equations, they always looked man-made to me. Their organised, perfectly symmetrical and geometrically accurate shapes came in sharp contrast to the disorderly, amorphous and irregular shapes of everything else around … Continue reading The Carbon Universe
When I was just a few years old, our family went on our first proper summer vacation. I remember being quite confused about the concept of a rented villa. This was, after all, my first time ever living in a new “home”. My mother tried to explain: “this is not a real home, we have … Continue reading Borrowed Planet
The ocean’s emerald waters are always a welcome relief for tired eyes. They are a cure for the abuse that the retina has suffered during the day, inflicted through repeated exposure to the same light wavelengths: the cheerful but blinding whites, the brutally monotonous hay yellows, and the dusty, dull browns of the height of … Continue reading Blue Rainbow
However thick its walls, a beach house will always be transparent to the sounds of the sea. They tend to disregard obvious entry points like windows and cracks, preferring to infiltrate directly through the wall, roof, even the floor. Faraway crashing waves can be the most mysterious: by the time they reach the house, they … Continue reading Beach House
(From the upcoming book Photographic Heart) My hometown has always sustained an unusually large population of seagulls, even by “normal” seaside town standards. The birds here are just larger, feistier and more active. Twice as big as your average chicken, they are the true owners of this city: constantly patrolling every rocky or sandy corner … Continue reading Seagull City
The riot against capitalism has begun Thousands of years of oppression are enough. 300 years of extinction, slavery and genocide are far too many. 2020 will be remembered as the year when Earth’s uprising against humans finally began. The planet’s latest bioweapon, COVID-19, is a surgically precise attack on what has been plaguing our planet: … Continue reading Earth’s Life Matters
Just as the night fallsThey begin to change their tacticsUsing scent rather than colour to paint the landscape As they come together from different parts of the garden, to bake an invisible cake. Sweet honey suckle Addictive jasmineEarthy, August hay Their balmy scents embrace each other passionately in thick, dark swirls.They are in control now, as they begin to … Continue reading Synaesthesia
