OTHERNESS (2018)

It is funny to think that only half a year ago, I couldn’t have predicted that photo would become such an essential part of my life, that it would become my day and night. . I had been doing photography for many years, but as it turns out there is a difference between doing something with the clear vision or doing something just for fun. Now it has become something so indispensable like your morning workout or the first sip of your morning coffee. You can’t imagine yourself without it anymore, cause it gives your life a certain meaning. It works like a point of reference, helping you to navigate your way out of life. It reminds me these amazing bonds we get with a good book. It’s so good that you have hard times putting it away, and the thought of it ending soon breaks your heart. So goes with photo-making. This bond between you and photo, can be an everlasting play and mixture of your endless drowning in each other until you reach to a point where it has become harder and harder to differentiate between you two. You become them, and they become you. I remember hearing someone once say: “We turn out looking like the people and places we are fortunate to meet in our lifetime,” and I haven’t forgotten this ever since. Photo is reciprocal. And even though I can feel this similarity and familiarness with the object or a space so often, there is always “something” that is left in between me and the object, something that gets always lost in translation and is almost impossible to explain in words. But I feel that photo can be the best partner and medium in trying to explain that “void”. Here is my attempt to put this dear “void”, this everlasting “otherness” that always haunts me, into a way of visual language.

Eliis Laul