Lakruwan Rajapaksha
Blue-tailed Bee-eater’s Dreams, 2023
45 x 57cm and 38 x 47cm, Photographic Prints, Framed
Blue-tailed Bee-eater is a name of a British migrant bird. Working as a paper delivery person in Surrey, I get to drive through pastoral British landscapes when most people are still asleep. At the break of dawn, I look at things in a less literal way. This is the time when I consider all the varied components of my migrant life and photographic practice. This is an important part of my process. The tools and techniques used in each project or series vary, but the images’ perspective, cinematic aesthetic, and nostalgia remain consistent.
I have discovered that photography, like writing and music, is a means for me to step out of the chaos and prison of my identity, out of my own egocentric world of thoughts and feelings, to arrive in the present moment and enter a state in which I do not perceive myself as separate from the things around me. Although with the actual process of putting my camera in between the world and myself I take a distanced position of an observer, I feel more connected.
It may seem paradoxical and counterintuitive, but it is quite simple. By distancing myself from the world, and everything that I know about it, and about myself, by consciously taking on the role of the observer, my gaze and my heart widen. The sense of separateness from what surrounds me is suspended. This state of presence and belonging is what I hope for.
