I invited Beth to share her story of grief, loss and upheaval. To hold a mirror, as it were, to my own. Her poem brought to mind a series of images I had been working on of cloudy skies. When I showed her these images, Beth thought that Michael would have loved them, as he spent many decades painting small watercolour seascapes with large areas of sky and far horizons. So the words, the photographs and Michael’s own watercolours have happily folded themselves together.
My connection with Beth started on a project where we embarked on a journey to understand peace through people who have experienced war. At the same time, I was trying to comprehend a shocking circumstance where a close relation of mine was detained and confined for 5 years. Beth was there listening to my commotion and guilt.
Michael was originally invited to be part of our first peace project because he had fought in the Vietnam War and held the value of peace so deeply. Michael declined, being an intensely private person. In many ways this book continues our peace project – searching, finding and folding together. And in these ways it is an artwork – not a linear journey but a back and forth, across word and image, past and present, connecting voices, criss-crossing lives, revealing stories within stories, carried within.
…there is no end
Louis Lim & Beth Jackson
Self-published
2018
Concept, Edit and Art-Direction
Developed in the 2017 photo book-making masterclass by Yumi Goto, Sandra van der Doelen and Teun van der Heijden, in collaboration with Reminders Photography Stronghold
218 pages
25.5 x 20.5 x 3 cm