The title of this project, “Nostalgia for the Eternal”, comes from a chapter in John O’Donohue’s book Beauty, The Invisible Embrace. That phrase, nostalgia for the eternal, nicely captures a feeling I remember from childhood, that I was once in a place, now lost to me, where there was light, warmth and peace. I get a similar feeling when I appreciate Nature’s beauty. It’s as if the beautiful is somehow familiar to me, it’s a place I once knew, it’s a place for which I am nostalgic.
Plato postulated that every oak, willow, poppy, and pelican we see is but a diminished representation of the ideal oak, willow, poppy and pelican, that there is a realm that we can sometimes sense but that we do not inhabit. It’s a place beyond time, where the beauty of creation is fully and completely realized. Perhaps when we are struck by the beauty of an oak, or the light though the leaves, or a wave embracing a rock in the ocean, what we are sensing is a message from this other realm, a message addressed to our innermost self, a message of light and hope.
With these images, I am attempting to take the subjects out of the every day and place them somewhere on the path to the eternal realm, so that you, the viewer, might be able to sense, however faintly, the ideal beauty of the eternal.
© Matt Connors Photography
