Leah Johnson

http://leahjohnston.com/index.html

Her blog

I really like her ideas behind her photographs. The thoughts behind them are really introspective and her images provide enough narrative to make you think and understand her world.

Valley of Regret

"You came to me this evening
In the shadow of a kiss
I thought that I had lost you
To the early morning mist
You took a humble helping
While I took all I could get
You took my heart and hid it
In the valley of regret

I trembled in your branches
Like a newly opened leaf
I was a shipwrecked sailor
That was waiting for relief
Who sacrificed his body
To the ocean in your debt
And took his final breathe inside
The valley of regret

Eclipsed by lust, we reveled in
The irony of youth
I took to magic mirrors
That did not reflect the truth
You took to making altars
To a secret statuette
Who ever would have thought
we’d find the valley of regret?

You damaged me with rainbows.
I ravaged you with rain.
I thought the only way to love
Was through a path of pain
We sang our sappy love songs
As our summer sun was set
Then burnt our angry torches
In the valley of regret

I’m fighting on the battle lines
I’m giving it my best
I probably will die here
But at least I took the test
I’m raging for the glory
And I’m running for the sweat
I’m taking all my chances
In the valley of regret."

"I brace myself for another
repeat.
The inhale/exhale of all things.
I ask myself
If I can handle
The ebb and flow
Which will sustain
And eventually damn me.

Does it matter if I don’t have a choice?

I feed the meter.
I read the scriptures.
I heed the words of my elders
Who tell me
To stitch sturdy knots in the fabric of my potential
Who tell me
To fear the great and inevitable
Consequence.

My skull is seething
I feel my bones begging
For a revolution that may never come
When I may cast off the shackles of polite existence
And go back
To eating berries."

Cycles of Sadness

                                            

                                         Step 1:Reach till it hurts

                                                         Step 2: Break

Scatter

I think I gave up too quickly on this idea. This one I took yesterday night again in my bathroom with a sheet of black paper behind me and my desk lamp to one side. The idea was that I would chuck the glass chess pieces up in front of me, and I would watch them fall. I picked certain pieces out, of course the king, queen, knight, bishop and a couple of pawns and threw them up in front of me because it was supposed to be as if my "kingdom" was falling apart around me, everthing was in disarray and all I could do was stop and stare.
The photo didn't turn out to too well, because the focus was not quite right and the shutter speed wasn't fast enough to capture a better outline of the chess figures. If I was to redo it, I probably would hhave zoomed out abit more, to capture more onf the pieces in the shot and framed and focused it better.