Paul Gaffney: We Make the Path by Walking
With a hike to Santiago de Compostela I associate mainly: People, crowd, pain, and in between a bit of self-awareness. In Paul's book I find what is wanted: Peace. There are calm landscapes which could actually be anywhere, blooming trees, coppice at the roadside. Marks of humans nearly everywhere, but they are not seen at all. What is present in other photobooks about landscapes, is missing over here: the melancholy, the darkness. This is great as therefore the book is pleasing, it is irresistible in a way; I just have to scroll through it again and again to gloat over the peace in it – maybe because it is rousing primary instincts, the desire for inner silence, and in the end also for arrival. As with a hike.
