Last year, we featured the duo Samana – Rebecca Rose Harris and Franklin Mockett. Their journey has been unconventional, from rebuilding a Georgian farmhouse in the wild Welsh countryside to a trip to the Pyrenees in France and an extended lockdown stay that helped shape their album All One Breath.
I mentioned in the premiere of their video for ‘Begin Again‘ that Samana was a much broader project stretching beyond their music and also encompassing poetry, striking photography and fine art. It is no surprise that they’ve been influenced by the polaroid work of photographer Mike Brodie. Like Samana, Brodie’s approach to life is as much a determining factor of his photography as is his ability to frame an image and choose the right moment to press the shutter release button. Brodie’s work was heavily influenced by the “transient subculture of freight train riders”. Brodie hopped his first at the age of 17, close to his home in Pensacola, Florida and ended up going in the wrong direction. Fate seemed to constantly play its hand, from discovering a camera behind a car seat to his decision to start taking pictures of the many characters and friends he has spent time with when walking, hitchhiking, and train-hopping for free across America.
That fancy-free approach can be seen and felt in the work of Samana – their pastoral photos of life in rural Wales, which could easily have been taken in the early 70s, may seem far removed from the grime of Brodie’s anarchic travels but that sense of freedom still pervades both creations as they set out with the intent to escape the conventional repetitive nature of existence – pursuing the dream…living.
The image used for their new single ‘Two Wrongs‘ is a photo that was also chosen for the cover of Brodie’s excellent photo book Tones of Dirt and Bone. One thing that makes Brodie’s images so special is that he quickly learned to work with the constraints of the camera and film he uses. Polaroid was undoubtedly not the cheapest option around for him at the time – the Time Zero film he used stopped being made by Polaroid in 2005, but the colour tones of that film are timeless and are perfect for the subjects he captures – it’s like that film emulsion was made for him. With just 10 sheets in a box, each photo is a deliberate choice.
Like the constraints that helped shape Brodie’s work, there are parallels to the lifestyle of Samana and their new modes of creating as they push at those boundaries – to escape the mundane and live life with a new meaning. With the music of ‘Two Wrongs,’ you can almost hear that train in the shimmering percussion and feel the wind in your face. It’s an ode to being free.
“This song gives rise to the reverent and unrelenting intensity that burns inside the hearts of so many and their yearning to voyage beyond the perimeters of societal convention, in stepping beyond the control of predictability into the unknown.”
Samana are playing the Other Voices festival in Cardigan, Wales; dates and social links below.
Upcoming Dates
4th November – Other Voices Festival – Cardigan
5th November – Other Voices Festival – Cardigan
19th November – The Globe – Hay On Wye
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