Imagining, Reimagining, the Ephemeral—Photo Essay

It was a Saturday evening walk on the beach. The clouds were becoming dark and dense and it was going to rain sometime soon. Perfect weather for a walk. The sand was damp and my feet were sinking in a way it rarely does on this stretch of the estuary, but it’s been raining a bit so no big surprises there.

But what did surprise me were the sand patterns I walked into. Animal skin textures. I could see a panther or snake skin. Kind of eerie, but fascinating. I took tons of photos.

I’m not exactly sure why these traces of dark black integrate into the grey sand, perhaps it is the silt from the river. It’s the conclusion I’m inclined towards, but whatever it is, the contrast creates patterns that are mind blowing.

So focused on the hundreds of variations, I didn’t see what the footprints were doing until my return. Wind swept sand, silt churned from the river—black and grey with a grey sky, I was in heaven—or thought I was until I started noticing the footprints.

Some of the recent photographs that I’ve embroidered study the idea of pattern disruption. Patterns here are not just visual—I’m equally interested in the psychological ones.

The patterns on sand are ephemeral, the next tide will wash them away or alter them significantly—creating totally new ones. The photographs allow me to create an impression that stays. The embroidery and crochet enable a sense of what happens when these patterns are disrupted.

The footprints in the sand did that in a way that caught my attention—it wasn’t a staged or external disruption. The feet dig into the earth and break the seamlessness of the natural flow in the most organic way possible—sometimes doing nothing more than deepening the undulations in places.

In these photos I’ve edited the feet to add greater contrast to bring attention to them.

It’s a study in pattern disruption. It’s a question of whether the landscape and by extension one’s inner patterning—the mindscape—is better for the disruption or without it.

We are encouraged to disrupt our patterns of behaviour—those learnt as children which have become subconsciously ingrained. It’s cited as reason for pain, disappointment and more. Psychology today has made an industry of it. But standing on the beach, knowing the next tide would erase everything and begin its own new pattern without effort or intention, I felt it differently. A reminder that like these patterns I’ve recorded—life too is ephemeral. 

These footprints in the sand are evocative of that. Making me wonder: is it even possible in one lifetime to consciously change our ways of thinking, seeing, being? And if the sand simply receives the foot, deepens where it must, and moves on—what does that say about the marks we spend our lives trying to make, or unmake, in ourselves?