Description
OD Photo Prize 2025 | AJ Page Award Winner
Artist Statement | Created during a season of long, meandering walks through the Ahr Valley and the rural west of Germany, Grim is a dark fantasy and an allegory.
The story goes as such:
Once upon a time, a child lived on a hill overlooking the forest. She lived in an old white house, through which the wind blew. It was a cold house, with dusty footprints left wherever she dared walk—colder every year.
Down below, there was the deep, deep forest, where unearthly creatures lived, their ways not abiding by the logic of humans. The forest called to the child, daily. It said:
“Come closer, come closer. We are waiting for you.”
And the child, stern in her upbringing, though starved in isolation, refused.
The house grew colder. Colder, and colder.
Still, the forest called.
“Come, come to the forest. We are waiting for you.”
The winters deepened, and the call of the forest became unstoppable. Irresistible.
And so the child left the dusty, broken, utterly cold house. She went down the hill, shivering, hastening by the step, into the forest—the deep, deep forest, where the sun did not shine but as a thought upon the foliage.
On the third day of wandering, the child met a god. A being not of human nature, law, or rule.
He said to the child, as if to comfort:
“If you give me your spine, then in your next life, you’ll live as a blessed being.”
And the child, in the depths of the forest, said yes.
And so, the god plucked the child’s spine.
And there, where blood met leaves, the god planted it.
And this story—this whole story—is the dream the spine dreams as it is being planted.
The spine enters a world. There are faces. Landscapes. Animals. Creatures. Spiritual beings.
Far away, sometimes here, sometimes there.
The spine dreams.
And this project
is the dream
of the spine.
All print enquiries:
tom@opendoors.gallery
+44 (0)7769922824
