Cherina Hadley, Australia
Seeing in the Dark

His heart sees in the dark, like a white hare in the new snow, that the desire to be free and the desire to be unencumbered are not the same.
-‘Seeing in the Dark’, Shevaun Cooley © 2008

The writer W.G. Sebald once said of the German people that they were “always looking and looking away at the same time”. He could have been talking about any of us. There is of course an infinity of things we do not see while we are busy getting on with life. My intention has always been to attempt to capture that which we pass by, that which goes unnoticed.

These small yet intrinsically significant moments, these glimpses, often represent the kind of freedom that we forget to notice and forget to cherish. This is a personal freedom that transcends race, religion, gender and cultural boundaries. It is encountered here, in these images of protest, of childhood, of contemplation, of back alleys and brief beauty.

Freedom is not always found in the biggest of things, but comes in little revelations, little epiphanies. It is the things people write on walls when alone. It is the uncanny black cat you didn't quite see. It is there in the odd melancholy of a wind farm against a stormy sky, or in moments of quiet joy, a balloon lifting past a sullen city building.