With dirt on my face

There is something profoundly satisfying about having the earth ground into my skin. A primal feeling, a recognition of where I came from and where I am going.  Dirt is realness, an unmediated, unedited offering from under our feet, without which we would die. When I imagine being born, I feel the body emerging from deep crevices in the earth. Dying is a scattering that returns to the same place. In between is life, and it is dirt that makes me feel equally humble and powerful.

When photographer Angela Rivas and I were conceptualising our From This Place project we asked each of the artists to cultivate their own ‘Essence’ photoshoot, to be seen the way they wanted to be seen. And we also realised we could not ask this of others without being prepared to do it ourselves. It actually took me many months to gather the courage to do my Essence photoshoot. I had many ideas, but as soon as an idea started growing in complexity, I realised I was trying too much and wasn’t finding my Essence. The question ‘who was I without anything else?’ lingered, and I recalled a time years ago when I had come walking out of the desert near Alice Springs after a 5 day Vision Quest. The was the closest I felt to me, covered in red dust, unwashed, unkempt and feeling expanded beyond myself. I was wild.

I was home.

Yet even on the day of my photo shoot, knowing I needed this ancient wild, dirt covered woman to emerge, I had ideas – ideas to involve my horse somehow as my wild companion. Of course, my horse had other ideas, the light reflector being way too scary for her to stay in the frame. And the day loomed ominously. The weather rainy and struggling to reach 10 degrees.  So I took a deep breath, stripped away my preconceptions and walked into the dam in the paddock my horse lives in, covered myself in mud and faced the camera.

There she was.

These photos can be seen on this website and as part of our book and exhibition. They aren’t publicity shots, they are the barest part of me, the part that writes and lives and does shit in the world.

There is one image in particular that Angela shot that day. At the start of our book project I wrote a piece of poetry that is now the foreword. It speaks of the water writing my hand. One photo, a ‘happy accident’ where I appear to be conjuring water up into my hands takes both our breath away. It is as if the camera has perfectly captured the poetry without us even realising it. This is the photo that shows me in our exhibition. It’s unmediated, unedited, wild, me.

With dirt on my face.