We have just received the following press release:
In early 2011, Jimmy Edmonds’ son Joshua was killed in a road accident in SE Asia.
RELEASED is a photographic essay and a personal response to the tragedy of his son’s death. Intended for publication both as an exhibition and as a book, the project features a mix of Edmonds’ powerful photography and personal poetry.
The title refers to the label on the container holding Joshua’s ashes on which the word “released” appeared. This becomes the starting point for a personal journey in which Edmonds navigates a way through his own grief to an exploration of photography itself. The “chaos of meaning” he finds lying at the heart of photography mirrors almost exactly his own confusion surrounding the loss of his son.
The result is a work of remarkable depth and drama.
As indeed it is. Here’s what one of our regular reader, James Showers, thought of it: “I literally gasped at the way you worked with the ashes – treating them with such delicacy, as beauty not as leftovers.”
You can read the entire book fullscreen online here. You can find the Facebook page here.
View this with awe – elemental, brutally raw, beautifully open. A stunning, heartbreaking and breathtakingly powerful glimpse into the bewildering parallel world of grief beyond imagining. The dark beauty of the images is beyond anything I have seen before. Thank you Jimmy for sharing this profound personal journey of trying to comprehend the mystery of death with the world.