Sometime in late April 2024, I found a dead body in the creek near my home. I don’t go back there anymore. It didn’t change my life, it didn’t shift my worldview. It was just a dead body in a creek on a path I like to walk and photograph. Still, I don’t go back. Later I found out that it happened to be a boy my age from my neighbourhood. I didn’t find out how they died. Maybe it’s better I didn’t. The truth is most definitely something mundane. Things like this are normal and regular. Dying is not new. Part of me was shocked by how unassuming of an experience it was. No more than an hour of my time was taken up. Of course it must have been a tragedy for their family, but for me it was just about an hour. Despite the infinitely small amount of time it took out of my day and my life, I can’t get the image out of my head. It’s burnt-in, like the lens of a projector that’s been on one slide too long. I’m sure I’ve replayed the memory in my head so often that it’s no longer even real. That said, I feel so acutely aware of every single detail. I know where I stood, I know how high the water was, I know the shape of the tree that had fallen into the creek, I know how the body had gotten caught on its roots. It’s all there. It will always be there.
Liam Valyani-Perera is a half-man, half-beast. The world melts him down everyday and leaves only a pile of goop. Bravely, he reforms himself each night and heads to bed. His work as a photographer and writer mentions none of this. Instead it often delves into his many anxieties about the world in both how he perceives it and how it perceives him. Sometimes he likes to do weird stuff to hopefully weird people out. Despite this, many describe his images as serene and relaxing. This makes him nervous that maybe he isn’t doing a good job, but he also likes his pictures so it’s probably fine.