The current exhibition hanging on the walls of Noa Bakehouse is more than a collection of abstract, contemporary photographs.

’Evidence of Humanity’ is a collection of images created by the well-known island writer Janet Lees, and was recently displayed at the inter-Celtic Lorient festival, where she was the visual artists chosen to represented the Isle of Man.

’What I really like is taking abstract fragments, just things that appeal to me and things that give me a strong feeling, give off a really good atmosphere or message of something else,’ said Janet.

Her photographs are minor details noticed in town centres and in the countryside, and capture an essence of, what she describes on her website as the Japanese ideal of perfect beauty, ’Wabi-sabi’, which acknowledges three concepts: nothing lasts, nothing is finished and nothing is perfect.

’These, to me, are more meaningful that, say, just photographing a beautiful landscape,’ she said.

’I get very passionate about the state of the world, or climate change, environmental devastation, the ruination of the oceans, and somehow much of that is reflected in these photographs.

’They are about decay, disintegration and metamorphism, the idea that things can change from one form to another.

’These images can mean different things to different people. But, to me, they are from my heart, and they say something about how I see the world around me.’

Janet said that she feels like, given that she once studied visual arts and writing at university, she has almost come full-circle in her life with this exhibition.

Her journey through creative expression has been key to her recovery from alcoholism and that her photography is a natural progression from her writing.

’I didn’t do my own creative work for a long time, because basically I was functioning addict, a functioning alcoholic,’ she said.

’When you are like that, it cuts you off from the world and from other people, and stops you doing anything creative. It just totally disconnects you.

’It’s like I was frozen, creatively and emotionally, for 20 years. I went into recovery about 16 years ago and, after around eight years, I started to write again.

’My poetry started to come back to me, and I really enjoyed it. I remember thinking "my god, I’ve missed this".’

Three years ago, she started to experiment with visual arts again, and quickly found a connection between her written and visual work.

’The images to me are like little tiny poems, and poems are fragments or distillations of much bigger stories,’ she said.

’There is a correlation between the imagery and the writing that I wasn’t aware of at the time but it is something that I can see really clearly.

’Poetry does have that juxtaposition between the universal and the very fleeting, which is also what you get with photography. You are capturing a moment in time.’

Janet’s work can be viewed on her Instagram page , and also on her website janetlees.weebly.com

by Mike Wade

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