Drive by Shooting

Bali has changed, radically. It was inevitable as we all know and those who live here see it ravenously digesting itself and reconstituting that matter into something different, its origins strewn amongst the waste but still prominent, hiding behind a curtain of pseudo westernisation. This is most prominent in its southern regions, a victim of its own success and phoenix like quality of literally rising from the flames to begin a new path to destruction in a different sense, the uninhibited pursuit of wealth instead of happiness. But amongst this renovation of thought and form lies a new beauty, oxymoronically, a beauty in its ugliness.

Bali has changed, radically. It was inevitable as we all know and those who live here see it ravenously digesting itself and reconstituting that matter into something different, its origins strewn amongst the waste but still prominent, hiding behind a curtain of pseudo westernisation. This is most prominent in its southern regions, a victim of its own success and phoenix like quality of literally rising from the flames to begin a new path to destruction in a different sense, the uninhibited pursuit of wealth instead of happiness. But amongst this renovation of thought and form lies a new beauty, oxymoronically, a beauty in its ugliness.
Images taken by various photographers hide these changes and try to create a sense of the antiquated Bali; the way it was before we came and became solo colonials (read my blog titled so, to fully understand this phrase).
I say embrace this change in all its filth and gluttony and see amongst it the facets of human nature that cannot be changed, only then, through acceptance and understanding can we re-asses the past to forge a different existence in the future, one without regret.
As Socrates put it “pleasure is something that is not temporary but survives time and is pleasurable now and in the future” Paying great heed to this axiom could save mankind from the regret of literally paving paradise to put up a parking lot. Jodi Mitchell, the Prophet, we the uninvited guests throwing concrete around and fashioning it into something we deem pleasurable until we realise that 50,000 other people are doing it and seriously blocking our view.
So here’s what I did, I got in a car and shot from the comfort of the rear passenger seat covering a great many kilometres in search of beauty, I found it everywhere. Here it is.