Those of you readers who have known me long enough also know that I have written a series of six (so far) fantastical short stories based in Svaneti, and based on photographs of the things I have seen. Dragons made of ice, a phoenix in the clouds, the face of Death himself in a lightly-snowed rock face, and so much more. These stories (in their original form) have been serialized in Georgia Today and can be found there.
I thought I was done. But, oh so true is the maxim that writing is never finished, only abandoned. The writer either decides that it is as good as it’s going to get, or that it is rubbish not worthy of sharing, and then either strives for publication, or sends it, balled up, to the garbage can.
Some sessions with an editor helped me get someone else’s opinion on the writing, to which I had been too close to see some problems and areas which needed improving. The outsider’s view really helped. I began thinking of that longed-for publication, asking a few questions of printer friends inside Georgia.
Then another trouble started. The thing is, I may never really be done with the finding and recording photographically more images of Svaneti’s “other” life, and that of other places too. And some of these new images are just as important, beautiful, scary or inclusion-worthy as the original ones which inspired the stories in the first place. What do I do?!
My immediate response has been to decide to add some more text to the original stories, along with the new images upon which it is based. It might be as small as a sentence fragment, or might mean a whole paragraph. More I’m not sure of: no whole new story has emerged. Yet. You never know, it might.
But given that the flow or trickle of new photos might well be lifelong, always offering or threatening to give rise to new writing, how can I ever call this thing finished, this cycle of stories? This is my dilemma. Even leaving my beloved Svaneti will not dam the rush. I can find it anywhere, as recent rust, ice and more images from many other locations demonstrate. Neither is the whole country of Georgia the only place: anywhere at all will do, now that Georgia has provided the initial, original jump into full-fledged pareidolia which has been my main source of pictorial inspiration for some years now (although the stories’ setting is only Svaneti, with the odd mention of other places in Georgia. And I am committed to keeping the locations of images in the real world as their locations in any stories).
I am delighted to no longer be simply recording patterns in clouds, ice, rust, rock, snow and so on. It’s the seeking and finding of forms, and beings, in these media which drives me, and gives me something unique to record. I don’t at all disdain others’ nature photography as pictorial or landscape art: some of what I choose to shoot will always still be this too. The “perfect” version of THAT watchtower and surrounding landscape from THAT upstairs window, which I have shot hundreds of times in all seasons and lightings. Finally, to get one image of that scene which I likely will never surpass. But the creatures beckon and call, not to be ignored. They are too insistent.
Brevity might well be the soul of wit, as the saying goes; and this should prompt me to cut words, rather than adding them, for maximum impact. But the addition of each new image to the set which are an integral part of the written stories demands that new text accompany them, text which is as long as necessary to explain their inclusion. So this problem is a rare one for me as a writer, I think, among other writers. Not often do images and text play off and feed each other so much, coexisting in a way which maybe shows that each medium needs the partnership of the other to work fully. This is the special nature of what I have, I plead.
There must come a point, though, at which I say, “I need to get this published. It’s not just enough: it’s as good as I can make it.” And yet, and yet… the images will continue. Perhaps a fixed print version, alongside an online one, the latter only which continues to grow? Maybe this is my answer. In any case, it does seem to me that my labor of love must enlarge itself while I yet live.
Blog by Tony Hanmer
Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer and photographer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with over 2000 members, at www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/
He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri: www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti
