By Kalina Nedelcheva

Unspeakable truths— Capture my soul, It is negation; I’m drowning, Twisted in thoughts of a present singularity… That is a sovereign to my being. Searching for a mediation between what is right and what is wrong— It exists in the crevices: Beauty and the grotesque I am told these are universal truths, Of reality. But they are absent, Like bird songs in winter; Reverberations of hope— Unknown; To me, they are Escaping my ego which is Broken. Lost in translation. Dead. Are these abject apologies Truths or Lies That ring in my ears… Is it my comfort, That stops the heart; Belonging to those who struggle? Weighted down by all that is known? Venerated spectres— It is impossible For the cruel and insidious, The holy and benevolent that transition To follow these narratives; These spectacles of chaos… To the depths of the psyche; One relies on destruction, Resonating loudly, Like a cacophony of crumbling realities… To create meaning… Is to captivate; A distraction wasted on The Drowned; The Saved— The human and nature; There is no difference Only devastating similarities… The sameness of the damned; As moments Are captured, Histories are written, they are Passing through time, unnoticed; Screaming for remembrance; Unmarked and unidentified. They swirl like typhoons; But no one notices… The ugliness diverts the eyes, Intertwined in devastation— We move on, Change course; Somewhere close to truth again… We forget who we are; No one wants to look in detail Into the chasm Of human origin, Because there lies the promise of Resilience; We don’t know what to make of it self-destruction Is The only answer— A ticking bomb, Waiting… To erase; Waiting to implode; To take my captured soul with it, And forget; To devastate, Those who are left are Negations that propel you to oblivion, And the only thing that stands in the way— Expecting The rejuvenation of life is time. A return of what is lost. Gone.

Eldon Garnet’s Saved & Drowned consists of 21 images, displayed as seven Cantos of three images each; the photographic works depict pleasure and destruction. The exhibition is described as “a small narrative of our time,” and I attempt to mimic the artist’s work (form and themes) with poetic structures. The result is a triptych of poems—titled “To Move;” “To Struggle;” and “To Live;”—that can be read as either independent or related.

Saved & Drowned by Eldon Garnet is a photographic series, exhibited online and published in book form by Christopher Cutts Gallery.