Camelia Elias

Being Besides Myself Camelia Elias

This is a book of photographs and fragments. As a spell and as a talisman. In other words, a grimoire. Gelatin silver prints developed in the darkroom prompt reflections on sensuality and magic. It's not only about what you hear, taste, smell, see, and touch. It's about how you do it. But there's no instruction. Who can teach others how to sense the world? The only thing you can say is that in this sensing, what you experience is the astonishment of realizing that you're always besides yourself when you eat, see things, touch others, smell a flower, or hear music.



Sensing the world is similar to the power of being in love, when you're really besides yourself. When in love, you're beyond time. If you speak at all, then your words hit the other in their gut, displacing their common sense. The effect is like a powerful witchcraft. It makes you snap out of your cultural conditioning, and start seeing things as they are.



The words and images in this book explore the dimension of eradicated time in the face of the sensual that's fraught with anguish, unfulfilled desires, and a zest for life that only the immutable death can give us. The aim of this book is thus not even modest, as it seeks to capture the eternal spell that lovers cast on themselves when they are besides themselves, at the mercy of timelessness and infinite displacement.