Apocalypse(s)

Originally written for Stillpoint Magazine Issue 004: APOCALYPSE

How do you imagine the apocalypse? These images emerged as an exploration of common depictions around the “end of the world”, though there have been many apocalypses; transatlantic slavery, indigenous genocide, and a climate crisis approaching irreversibility.

In her book In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, Christina Sharpe describes the period we are currently living in – the extended apocalypse that is the after lives of transatlantic slavery – as The Wake. Its multiple registers include wake as awakening, as vigil for the dead, and as a region of disturbed flow in the ocean, caused by the movement of a ship.

The original idea for this project was to shoot the models in canoes on The Atlantic ocean – itself a site of particular importance in slavery and its unfolding afterlives. However, the wake has deposited us on many different shores, with this particular shoot occurring at Southend-on-Sea. Whilst it was happening, we were intimidated by biker gangs with a reputation for racism, and battered by Storm Dennis (Storm Ciara meant we had to move the original shoot date). Apocalyptic became a whole mood.