(19.11.2025)
The alarm has been sounding for days now. Whitewater churning, rings reverberate over frog bob echoes and cricket chorale… My hand runs the exterior of the dam wall – rough, smooth, layers, lines, cracks, moss. The paper crackles and pops under the pressure of graphite, embossed by repetitive marks that chart the surface.
You know, I'd like to have a peephole and wonder how you're doing from time to time.
Junction Dam performs as a provisional darkroom. I coat my paper on black plastic in the darkest section of the inner passageway, the walls soaked with dripping yellow and green from the cracks and corners high above, much like the Cyanotype solution I apply to each sheet. I move in and out of the darkness, placing sheets of slippery substrate within the brighter internal perimeters of the structure. Sunlight exposes, registering the space between wet chemicals, architecture and movement of light.
The dam writes photographs, their imprints read like deep rolling seas, washes of high flow conditions, sudden interruptions and downstream diversions. Flows of water may vary suddenly - keep clear of the sun, while the dam is spilling.
My Blu-Tak is where I left it yesterday. I package the prints in black plastic, and walk the length of the path, counting my steps, recording the silence, sounding into the space. I reach the end of the walkway to an image draped on the fence line – humming a cascade, an auxiliary spillway within these walls.
Don't be sad, we enjoyed each other as much as we could, we don't have to regret anything.