Left: rowandevoe
Right: Bronwen Hyde

From rowandevoe's Flickr post:

Selkies are Seal Faeries from Irish and Scottish Myth. In the sea, they are seals who swim with their seal sisters, but they also come on land on nights of full moons and transform into women and dance with their seal sisters. This is when men can steal their seal skins to marry them, as they are known to be the best of and most loyal wives, and they go on to have children and a family on land. But, the Selkie woman is always longing for something. If they discover their seal skins, they have the terrible choice of staying with their human families on land, or returning to the sea with the constant call of their seal sisters, which is so much stronger than their mortal family.

I love this story and concept so much, but was really struggling to put together something I felt captured the idea in the vivid way I would have liked.

My full time day job and other distractions have been a real inspiration-killer for me lately, though I'm working on fixing that [which is also the reason I'm posting this so late...]

My image is a montage of a swirling, animal skin-type cloak I borrowed from a friend for a shoot as part of my 365 days series, and a self-portrait from about 2009. I wanted to capture the sense of the sealskin mingled with water. Merle flipped my image to face right-to-left and adjusted the colour a little in this version to make it work more harmoniously with her wonderful, dreamy image.

Week 21 - Bee Brady and Bronwen Hyde - Memory

There is nothing new except what has been forgotten. - Marie Antoinette

Over: Bee Brady
Under: Bronwen Hyde

Bee Brady and I were paired for the first time in this round of The Divine Diptych Project, and Marico Fayre distributed some lovely and inspiring quotes for us to work with in creating our images.

Attributed to Marie Antoinette, the phrase kept circling through my mind as I was shooting a series of self-portraits in the bathroom at my friends' apartment in Edinburgh last month.

The memory aspect hinted at by the quote played a part in my thoughts, but for me it also spoke of the repeating cycles that we go through in life. The way that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Or that perhaps the more you think things have changed, that you have changed, that often you find yourself back in the same place, a place you have tried to avoid and steer clear of for so long, but before you realise it you are falling back into.

Though both of our images are somewhat overwhelming in terms of detail and objects in the images, I feel it suits the theme, as memory is like that: overwhelming, cluttered, complicated and messy. Every time you recall a specific moment or place you remember more or different aspects, and there is often too much to take in to really remember everything as clearly as you'd like to think you do.

I enjoy the various references to memory and nostalgia in Bee's image: the mirrors, the camera, the clock, the candelabra, the vintage items. The sense of reflection and angles, and being submerged in the moment.

Week 21 - "All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware." ~ Martin Buber - M.Fayre and Geekgirly

Top - Geekgirly

Bottom - M.Fayre

Our themes for this week to interpret were quotes. Our quote was "All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware." ~ Martin Buber As you can see we both interpreted the quote differently but also I think quite complimentary!

Week 20 - Bronwen Hyde and Pia - Nightmares

Left: Bronwen Hyde
Right: Pia

This round of The Divine Diptych Project, Pia and I were paired for the first time, and given the theme 'Nightmares' by geekgirly.

Those who have followed me for a while, will know I dream very vividly, and have quite bizarre dreams. Animals, especially strange ones, or animals behaving strangely, have featured in my dreams regularly over the years, but lately I've been having even more dreams and nightmares that have featured animals.

So when deciding what I wanted to do for this theme, something involving an animal was the obvious choice. The carousel in the square below Montmartre, re-visited on a recent trip to Paris, provided the perfect subject: a creepy, startled, angry-looking horse, which I've processed to bring out the colours to give that vivid, high intensity feeling I often experience in dreams.

I really like how Pia's choice of image of a Venetian mask reiterates the sinister feeling of exaggeration, artificiality, and creepiness. That mask hanging in a dark hallway, lit by the moonlight, would definitely give me nightmares!

Week 19 - Lililly and Bronwen Hyde - All Through The Night

Left: Lililly
Right: Bronwen Hyde

This round, I again had the task of choosing the themes.

Sticking with the musical motif, I decided to select themes inspired by track names on Cyndi Lauper's She's So Unusual album, an old favourite of mine.

I gave myself and Lililly All Through The Night as I figured my chances of being able to sort out an image in the evening after work (or even on the weekend) was more likely.

As it happened, we were all a bit tardy this round, but Lililly and I both went with a double-exposure / long exposure image, conveying a feeling of sleeplessness and restlessness (a concept I'm, unfortunately, far too familiar with).

Week 18 - Up Stairs - Geekgirly and Bronwen Hyde

Upstairs: Geekgirly
Downstairs: Bronwen Hyde

This week there are only four of us participating in the project, so I took on theme duties since I've been work-free for the month, undertaking an artist residency at Hospitalfield.

I have a tendency to trawl my music collection for titles for my images, and having been looking for a title for another image, decided to work the themes the other way around, where the title of a song would form the theme for each diptych.

Being a fan of Michael Nyman's film scores for The Piano and The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, I went with two of his relatively simple song titles, so as not to make things too hard for us all [I love his more obscure / descriptive titles myself!]

Knowing I was planning to shoot in one of the turrets at Hospitalfield, I chose the theme Up Stairs for myself and Geekgirly. The piece is from the Gattaca soundtrack, and is quite dramatic and suspenseful, which I think fits with the feel of both of our images.

Week 17 - Reflect - the Tiger Moth and Bronwen Hyde

This week I jumped back into the fray with recent recruit, the Tiger Moth.

Things have been hectic for me lately, with a move halfway across the world, but I was keen to get back into things with the project.

Bee Brady gave tTM and myself the theme 'Reflect', which you would think would be a dead easy theme to work with, but both tTM and myself found ourselves at a bit of a loose end. There were some ideas thrown around, but various constraints worked against those.

In the end, with the forest at her disposal, tTM took a mirror out and produced her wonderful self-portrait above. I love the tones, composition, feel of the image.

I wanted to work more with the 'contemplate' side of the word reflect, whilst still including an image of a reflection. Initially I was concerned that none of the images I was thinking of using would fit with tTM's detailed image, but when I tried this one, taken at the Redland Bay Cemetery in Brisbane, the tones and composition actually seemed to work with her image, for me. I'm still not sure I can explain why!

Week 17 - Private MaryElise and Geekgirly

Week 17 - Together / Joined - Pia & the melody censor

tmc: I was paired with the lovely Pia this week for the theme together/joined, so we decided to have a tea party. We invited her cute little boy to join us too!

Week 16 - Bee Brady and The Tiger Moth

Top: Bee Brady

Bottom: The Tiger Moth

Bee Brady: Hanna and I live thousands of miles away, but I love how the theme of us both being lost in the stark wintery landscape has come through in both our photographs. The first thing I thought of when brain-storming ideas for my shot was trying to find the right path, that confusion. I see hanna's shot as finding a solution for my lost deliberating self.

Week 16 - Doors Geekgirly and Pia

Left: Pia

Right: Geekgirly

After a little bit of a hiatus the Divine Diptych Project is back! I was happily paired with Pia for this week and our theme was "Doors".

Pia had a photo that she had taken in the summer of some beautiful doors and a lovely garden. I think that it fits beautifully with my stark winter door. I took my photo with a lensbaby...still trying to hang of it.

Week 16 - Signs - sandandbeautiful (Sarah) & the melody censor

tmc: For the first week back I was paired with the wonderful sandandbeautiful (Sarah). Our theme this week was Signs.

It has been rediculously cold here, so venturing out to take photos wasn't really a valid option, so I too photos of the sign in the gallery I work in.