KATRIN KOENNING

> spend the morning learning with my students, then gather my things ~ walk through the cemetery, think of living and the chaos of death, performing mourning and a recent ritual grief ~ go to the big park, loop around, re-photograph like often jackie’s tree and let my left hand touch it ~ missing jackie ~ lie down in the grass to see sky ~ close my eyes to know the moment (this one) ~ eyelids flicker in warm summersun ~ a magpie is an urban lyrebird ~ radically tender, high and low ~ make a magpie thing of love, i note ~ hear a far dog ~ wind is through everything and carries laughs and chitchat ~ what if i could simply stay this way, leaning with earth looking up looking in + my hand touches tree again after i rise, this one small soft silky ~ summer flirts with me from garden beds < walk towards the sea and then turn left, pet archie and his ice pack ~ walking always gives me language ~ make a picture of shadow and light ~ turn a corner ~ try to photograph a butterfly ~ buy an almond ice-cream, sit on the sidewalk to lick it ~ if you practice slow looking, the street may offer a reading for every occasion ~ here is another broken book, the bitsy pages give me this: something about breathing and being a rock * my mind goes to drifting + is it the multi-positional (meandering, non-directional, liquid, open) that lifts the spirit high? ~ i think of words i shared with sean in which we trace a kind of floating-like-a-river with intent, a delicate entanglement of meeting, senses, revelation ~ exchange is magic ~ send a message to john, carry on walking, a man in a delivery car smiles and i smile and together we lift our hands to each other, hello! oh hello to you, too, it’s a beautiful day! ~ when the moment is over it’s not really gone, it stays in lifted corners of my mouth and maybe his, the face is always witness ~ a greet that is meant is a meet ~ walk on and make a picture of a light grey cat sitting in a window high ~ she sees me and I see her too, light begins to fall a little lowly now, while life is life goes away + humdrum of the street, i hear a summerradio ~ pass by the yard that re-appears in pictures through the years and through the seasons ~ the exquisite delight of returning to things ~ to be present may seem like a thing of no motion (resting, stationary, certain, here is this and there is that) but I feel it to be oppositional to this: that presence is liquidity, a perpetual non-arriving, transitory and transitional ~ my eyes see a young woman with a dachshund and a deep yellow skirt, we hold each other with a smile across the street ~ a different dog makes a light bark ~ the air is a caress, i smell faint fire ~ the beauty and the madness of it all ~ a little boy bounces a ball, the ball is green, his right hand does the bouncing and his eyes look soft and happy, i think of privilege and peace ~ one two three four five other smiles with masks that mark our time + a slowly sinking sun ~ to see the sunset is a miracle ~ the act of photograph as love not distance ~ wind is still in everything (hair bird balloon bike soul) ~ trees tremble ~ I see a swans sign in a window, mind goes to lakes and animals, I sit on a bench while cars roll on by, an ant is in a rush ~ ~ today i think that slowness is resistance ~ my fingers smell like grass ~ a banner on a tree says lost cat roy <

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01. notes, september (lockdown), december 2021
02. magpie lark, three steps, 2018
03. three daffodils in spring, 2020
04. conversation with my friend Sean, december 2021
05. double setting sun, 2005
06. portrait of Wendy, 2020
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Katrin Koenning is a photographer from Bochum, Germany. Today she lives and works in Naarm (Melbourne Australia), on unceded Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country