Fiona Pardington: Still Life with Mussel Spat...

I think its best to understand my still-life photographs as small alters or Tu Ahu. A table top is place for concentration and you could call it ritual, but it’s also just the thing we do what we are focussing or decorating or creating a little space for ourselves in somewhere where we work – a studio I suppose in my case or maybe your lounge or your bedroom - something that helps focus your mind or strengthen you.  

My still life activities mean that I have to collect and I have to look very hard and I have to intensely think about objects for long periods of time and sometimes just find things and use them immediately, trying to find a balance. Certainly, for me, these are all activated spaces and there’s a certain amount to ritual associated with the collection of water especially, because if you look at the fluids in these different bottles, some is seawater so I might collect seawater on an outgoing tide which is something for getting rid of certain energies or certain things you would like out of your life, or you could collect seawater on an incoming tide and bring things towards you.

Rainwater, I collect a lot of that. If you collect rainwater in thunderstorms for instance, that’s very powerful water and if you use the water you collect and then leave the water out in the moonlight, every moon, every month has something associated with it like a wolf or in the spring it might be wheat, it depends on whether you’re talking about the people in western places or Indians they’ve all got different aspects that they relate to certain full moons.

So this water was collected during the wolf moon and a lot of people would leave out water or maybe their jewellery or something that they feel needs cleaning and let the moonlight do it. So all these things come together for me, even when you’re looking at photographs of mine that have got flowers in vases, you can be quite sure that the water comes from a specific place and its been collected at a certain time or maybe form a creek that has a name a family name associated with it for me or is from a lake or a river that has some special meaning to me.

我觉得我的静物摄影是一个小小的神龛。聚集在神龛桌面上的是宗教仪式所用的器皿。但同时这些东西也让我联想到了经由每个人装点和布置的属于他们自己的小空间：对于我来说是我的工作室，对于你来说或许是你的客厅，或者是卧室。总而言之就是一个帮助你集中精力或是赋予你力量的地方。

我对静物摄影的创作促使我去收藏并且思考我所接触的事物。有的时候我需要对它们修饰一番，有的时候我会不假思索地立刻将它们付诸使用。对于我来说，放置静物的空间是一个活跃的空间，而这个活跃的空间需要某种仪式来保持它的活力。对承载在容器中的水的收集就是这种仪式的一个重要体现。请观察一下这些容器里的液体，有一些是海水。我会有意地去收集一些退潮时的海水，由于它代表着把一些不想要的东西从生命中舍弃。我有时也会收集一些涨潮时的海水，由于它代表着把一些正面地事物带到我的身边。

同时，我也收集了不少雨水，因为在风暴中收集的雨水具有巨大的能量。再比如你把收集的水放在月光下。由于月亮在西方文化中，有很多东西会和它产生关联，比如说狼，或是春天的麦田。西方或是印度都有关于满月的奇妙传说。有些容器里的水是在狼月，也就是一月份的满月间收集的，有些村民会在狼月的夜晚把水或者珍贵的珠宝放在外面，让月光来洗涤它们。

所以说这种种仪式对我来说都是有意义的。在我的摄影作品中看到的插着花的瓶瓶罐罐里的水都是在特定的时间从某个特定的场合获得的，或许是从一个名称和我的姓名相似的山涧或是峡谷中得来，抑或是从某个对我有着特殊意义的湖泊和河流中得来。