To make a visual interpretation of a poem creates certain problems, you can either do it in a literal way, or you convey the feeling a poem creates. In the Neruda project, I work with some of Pablo Neruda's many odes to food; the images are visual readings of the odes but as the ways of experiencing a poem are as many as its readers, I have tried to give these images both a personal and more general interpretation.
Poetry has always played an important part in my life as my past as a literary historian testifies to and this project had been on my mind for some time before I was ready to pick up my camera to work on how to convey the feelings and thoughts the odes evoked in me into visual images, photographs. To do literal visual readings of the odes felt reductive, it would have meant that I remained at the surface of the text, reducing Neruda’s work to one level only and I also I decided at an early stage not to let the photos decide the feel and style of the series but the odes themselves and what they evoked in me. The photos are private and intimate but I hope they will stir something in someone somewhere.
