Dive

On the Mekong in southern Laos, where the river splinters into islands before the Cambodian border, two local children claim a rock breaking the surface as the sun goes down. In the four frames, shot in sequence and folded into a single image, the duration of play is allowed to inhabit a single space. The two figures are reduced to silhouettes against the liquid gold of the water and shed any precise identity. Their anonymity makes them stand for every child who has ever dared a companion to jump first. Here the river is kin: for those who live along it, the Mekong is a daily passage, crossed, fished, played upon, and these bodies belong to it as naturally as the current.

The dive that names the work is never shown. It lives in the suspension between the four poses, in that threshold between before and after where childhood decides itself.