Between Me and the Sea

Between Me and the Sea is about the feeling of living in a perpetual state of uncertainty. After the death of my husband earlier in life I always knew the time to leave our family home would come, but I didn’t know when.

For 35 years, home was The Moorings, an enchanted cottage overhanging the water near Chinaman’s Beach on Cammeraygal land. It’s a place where a sense of home, self and environment merge and feel a reflection of each other. The light and weather echoed my life: days of sublime beauty and joy and others of fear and sadness. The coast is a place of impermanence - the sand, rocks and water ever shifting below me. It taught me that whatever is happening, will pass.

The cottage is suspended at the intersection of land and sea, and I too was hovering between firm, familiar ground, and feeling “all at sea”. With these images, I explore the idea of a “liminal space”: a transition zone, between love and loss, the known and unknown, presence and impermanence.

Photography is a liminal medium, capturing moments in time. It is something I feel compelled to do, to help make meaning of personal experiences through a visual expression that may also resonate with others.  

Between Me and the Sea series of 17 photographs is exhibiting at Mosman Art Gallery, 1 Art Gallery Way, Mosman 2088 Australia

Jennifer Blau In Profile: 9 November, 2024-3 February, 2025.

Intersection

Intersection was composed by my husband, musician Steve Blau, in 1998, not long after we received the devastating diagnosis of his terminal illness at age 37. He described Intersection ‘as dealing with the inevitability of a partner of a long-standing relationship dying before the other and the thoughts and feelings that accompany that situation.’ It was performed as part of a musical score for a contemporary-dance theatre production Life, Love, Death and the Weather including his cousin Patrick Harding-Irmer and partner Anca Frankenhauser both formerly with the London Contemporary Dance Theatre and renowned singer Jeannie Lewis.

Today, Intersection feels ever resonant as after the loss of Steve, I also processed my thoughts and feelings about the inevitable loss of our precious family home where I continued to live with our children Annika and Zigi until 2023.