Memories, moons and moments

Off to Bristol this evening to a friend's exhibition preview; 'all we do we do for you' www.centrespacegallery.com Then I came across mention of Sarah Moon, who, unbeknown to her, was part of the bricolage of my youth. A poster of her hung in my Bristol flat, with her smoky eye makeup and a look that said, ‘I’ve been there, I know’.

As a photographer, Moon's work is as haunting as her image and I quite forget my original thread as I lose myself in its labyrinth.

The caption to accompany this picture reads:

'Avril, his fiancée, follows him everywhere and stays silent. She is ready in her mask and her golden dress. She keeps hearing her name being called as if her turn will come.”
© Sarah Moon

Appealingly she says about her fashion photographs:

"Of course, if something is really bad then I will retouch it but only very little and never trying to make a woman more beautiful. I don't need to do that. They are beautiful and it is my job to work with the light. I don't feel it is my place to make any sort of moral judgement on people who choose to work in that way, but I suppose it does falsify the approach to a human being."

What I like about this photograph, (not Moon’s work) is that the soles of the model’s feet are dirty. Well of course they are she’s been walking on dusty floorboards. Souls become dirty too when the protective

layers of religion are removed. But I think we see our humanity better with bare feet.

Choosing music to accompany this post is easy. Hot summer night in that city flat, full of youthful yearning, leaning out of my window listening to this song waiting for life to start, a voice in the darkness spoke, expressing the same feelings. Spiritual experience? Nah, the bloke in the flat next door, also leaning out, yearning into the night and loving the moment and the music. I wonder if he remembers…