Time Stays, photo essay by Aananda Antahleen
[T]rees fascinate me. Their lifelessness, asepticism, drabness. Their introvertness and apprehension. How still and daunted… And yet they are conscious, sensible; and often subtle.
Death excites me. The dead animals and their pathetic body parts. Just hanging there. Lying there. No worries. No urge for acquiescence. And yet they live on. O’ how aroused I get seeing them! They talk. They have memories. Bitter ones. Even sweeter ones perhaps.
The brightest of sunlight can be the most horrific of darkness. Blind us. Tame us. As the most excruciating pain will evolve out of life. Hatred overcomes envy. And what life, what time there exists without envy.
Sklavenmoral… masses are blind. ‘Die Heerde’ becomes the power. Authority. Transforming cowardice into virtue. Submission becomes obedience. Sexlessness is purity. Weakness, paraphrased as forgiveness.
And yet, we conform to existence and it’s colossal imperfections. Not once we are sceptical of ‘Das Sein’. Until we are sucked into ‘Das Nichts’. Throwing us into the world. Expecting us to survive.
Q&A with Aananda Antahleen
Photography is…
The essence of Death, mortality, time and existence.
Photography and writing…
Photography with writing can be ancillary and sometimes even a burden. To me writing and photography are two very different mediums of creating images and has their own significance. And a proper combination can be the most convincing of fine arts.
Who left the biggest impression on you?
The biggest impression… I think was Film maker Luis Buñuel. His surreal, anarchist films have made a huge impact on my perspective of state, society, laws and art.
Tell us a little about yourself
I don’t consider myself to be a photographer. For me photography is just another medium to express myself. And to be brutally honest, the moment I find some other medium which expresses me better, I would without a second thought grasp it ardently.
