As an artist and photographer I frequently find myself distracted by the tiniest of things....the color of the sky before a storm, that hint of a smile behind an otherwise stony facade, the way a shadow falls across a road....
Perhaps as a side effect of all the new construction and freshly tarred roads turning up around Lusaka I'm noticing not the slick new surfaces, the freshly painted signs and clean windows....but the patina and character that comes only with age.
From my days in my Fine Arts programme at University, one concept that I embraced, particularly in pottery, was the aesthetic derived from Buddhism called wabi-sabi: beauty in imperfection. Wabi-sabi characteristics include asymmetry, irregularity, simplicity, austerity, modesty, intimacy and the "appreciation of the ingenuous integrity of natural objects and processes."
Last week I grabbed by camera and put together a study in celebration of age which I'm calling Patina. These images are from a bigger collection of photos from Lusaka's Olympic Pool (dedicated just before Zambia's independence in 1964.)
