On The Farm they tie themselves to the land.

Their blood and flesh, toil and dirt, early to bed for relief from the hurt. The land gives and she demands. Symbolic and literal death and birth are all around and the cycle of life is perhaps nowhere as pronounced… the animals seem to know it, what is their lot and their wild, rolling eyes dart back and forth to succumb to their toil and their violent fate. Veins boiling across muscle and fibers with fear and surrender and the clock ticking away, no deviation from the cycles of time and place, the rotation of the life and the merciless race... the pulse clock is ticking… the heartbeat goes, the muscles burn and the end is comin', it will be here soon... it knows.









And Johan Emanuelsson's brother is dead.

Twin brothers born and then schizophrenia engulfs and takes the one… suffering and pain floods everything and cloaks all like a blanket, the brother has taken his own life. The parents of The Farm are aching and bodies rip with pain, their little boy is gone. Johan is still there but his blood brother is no longer. Grief changes everything, nothing is ever the same… things even look differently as if vision or the surroundings have been altered. You gain some normalcy back but life is altered, your eyesight is a bit hazed. So, the parents survive and The Farm goes on… the animals stir and the family who owns them trudge along and life ticks again with its twisted turns. And it’s gonna come to all, soon it will be their turn, every one of them. The land has a permanent feel but the living on the land… there's no permanence there... they are on borrowed time and you can feel it. For every living comes the end. Johan’s brothers death leaves a dent… no, not a dent... a crater and nothing can fill that and so the earth is then full of craters and the loved ones are full of craters – all of them in their craters and pits. And the earth goes on and it doesn’t stop ticking and spinning, the sun comes up again and the sky turns to black… so is the story of the land.









The hearts beat and the blood flows, the rain and the mud come and the season goes. Grief opens wide and the rain pours from the sky, right on your weary head. The living will grow and then away they will go. Hope comes hard. Johan’s work is from this cycle, like his photography instructors and countryman kin, Anders Petersen and JH Engstrom, bringing the textures of the land with the flesh of the man... and on Johan's Farm, the short time of the living and the loss... the crying for the dying.

Here...

www.johanemanuelsson.com

Regards,

Doug Rickard