"It was a proverb more eloquent than ‘snooze you lose’ for a victim made chairless. He said it swooping onmy spot by the fire, quick–grinning in the flickering light and clutching his rusted prize with tight, tiny knuckles."
Where the Owl Left the Eagle Comes to Sit - Pabva Zizi Pagara Gondo is a print exhibition and photobook (Australian Photobook of the Year finalist 2017) that builds on an expression in Zimbabwe's Shona language.
The project visually allegorises legacies of colonialism, civil war and mass emigration amongst fragments of the author’s experience as a de facto ‘mukwasha’ (son in law) visiting the family towns and villages across Zimbabwe. The images are proposed as poetic fragments, starting points, cues for questions, for reading and exploring the central metaphor of trading places.
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“In my imagination Tazi and I became the eagle and the owl, our different backgrounds and modes of seeing crossing in the dark, trading places over continents. We had flown to the former industrial hub of Redcliff, Zimbabwe, where Tazi grew up. And though we landed on the same perch, for each of us the view was different.”
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Cameron James Cope is an image burglar, purveyor of words and frequent stowaway based in Narrm (Melbourne), Australia. His personal projects and photobooks explore how the past is embedded in the present through visual allegory, narrative form and conceptual documentary.
Where the Owl Left the Eagle Comes to Sit - Pabva Zizi Pagara Gondo is a print exhibition and photobook (Australian Photobook of the Year finalist 2017) that builds on an expression in Zimbabwe's Shona language.
The project visually allegorises legacies of colonialism, civil war and mass emigration amongst fragments of the author’s experience as a de facto ‘mukwasha’ (son in law) visiting the family towns and villages across Zimbabwe. The images are proposed as poetic fragments, starting points, cues for questions, for reading and exploring the central metaphor of trading places.
-
“In my imagination Tazi and I became the eagle and the owl, our different backgrounds and modes of seeing crossing in the dark, trading places over continents. We had flown to the former industrial hub of Redcliff, Zimbabwe, where Tazi grew up. And though we landed on the same perch, for each of us the view was different.”
-
Cameron James Cope is an image burglar, purveyor of words and frequent stowaway based in Narrm (Melbourne), Australia. His personal projects and photobooks explore how the past is embedded in the present through visual allegory, narrative form and conceptual documentary.
