My session with Lanre Olusola was so spiritually potent, I found it hard to even look at the images for months afterwards. What if the Presence that filled my studio didn’t ‘come through’?
I was half hoping he’d ask to view the photos so I’d at least be forced to confront them but he kept saying it was cool and I should take my time. I knew that what ever lay in the drive would be the ‘truth’. So much was at stake. It had taken me a decade to begin making this body of work.
This idea that I carried for years but was too afraid to create; always sitting at the edge of the waters wondering if the deep would emerge true art. If my evolution did not take place here or if It was never going to happen.
But the shoot was too perfect, too easy. So I stalled. @lanreolusola has always been sent as a gatekeeper to usher in new seasons of creative expression for me. I knew the images I created of him would be some kind of a tipping point for what I was trying to do. This made me prepare.
Chewing on Segun Lawal’s material on the Zoe prior to the shoot, going over all I learnt from Lois Greenfield on moment and movement, etc. I was ready! So why was I afraid to review the images afterwards? I had a clearer narrative for what I wanted my images to say and a loose aesthetic direction but I still wasn’t sure I knew how to go there.
I had birthed so many false starts with my images of dance and I wanted it to be real this time. When my schedule quieted down, I knew the only way to see the work and understand what it was saying was to be in the same state I was when we made it. I needed ‘the bubble’, that Space of Peace the that only true worship brings.
I found ‘the bubble’ and as @amandalindseycook played in the background, I was slowly in over my head. I began to comb through the portraits and realized I had no reason to fear at all. His Art was the perfect Love song. I was free. Here, once again, I found love in digital form. My Sacred place. Embraced by a Love most Holy. Fear erased.
Finding new ways to express Spiritual truths, I was Immersed .
