Follow the #project_223pm_365 and go T H I S W A Y.
Some people may remember my last (and first) 365-project. It’s not finished yet and I didn’t want to start another one as soon as I did now. The new one wasn’t really planned but it started with a plain and blurry Instagram picture of the completely blue sky above my head on 07th July 2013. Then out of a sudden after a short discussion with my Twitter friend Kay Winter I came along with the idea to take a photo every day at exactly 2:23pm (my local time) for the next 364 days (plus this blue pic I had already taken).
Just the sky above my head for 365 days? That must be boring you might think. But the idea behind this project is to picture the sky in every facette of blue / grey / white beauty without politics and war. There is just peace up there and here in Dresden there is also peace on earth. But if you look at these pictures it could also be the sky over Damascus, Kairo, Bangladesh or any other place on Earth where terrible wars and fights take place at the moment. You just need to imagine and the pictures will tell.
I hope that this project goes on and take place until 06th July 2014. If so who knows by now how many places have to fight war then and from which sky you can see peace.
Eire + Alba 
Mandela Day seemed like a good day to share my admiration for Seamus’s creative photography project.
Several months back, a friend shared a photo of a sign nailed to a telephone pole: “Stop now. Take a minute. Look up at the sky.”
“What a great way to get a moment’s inner peace,” I thought.
Then, just recently, Seamus posted his picture of the bluest blue sky in Dresden and shared his thoughts about taking a photo of the sky every day for a year as a way to think about and hope for a peaceful world.
We can look up at our own sky, and experience inner peace. But as we do, I think we must also acknowledge that on most places on earth that we stand and look up, we have stained the earth with blood and suffering. My hope is that we can look up, take the peace of the sky into our hearts and turn again to let that peace extend to those around us and into building a peaceful world by seeing our own humanity in everyone’s face, even in the faces of our enemies.
I believe that those people who have done this, such as Mandela, Gandhi, and King, show us our best and most enduring answer.
My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,
And sunlight beams on clover leaf and pine.
But other lands have sunlight too, and clover,
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
O hear my song, thou God of all the nations,
A song of peace for their land and for mine.
– From This Is My Song, based on Finlandia by Sibelius
Good luck with the project, Seamus, I can’t wait to watch it unfold every day!
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Thank you very much for your warm and detailed comment! Mandela Day indeed is fitting for such a project to point out a bit and reflect. In Ex-GDR there were many projects about and for Mandela when he was still in prison so him still being alive is quite a wonder to me sometimes.
Once back in Bochum I watched a music show in the planetarium called ‘Nordland’ with music by Edvard Grieg. I knew some music by him but thought it was quite boring because I haven’t listened to it in a fitting surrounding. So in Bochum I have given him another chance and together with all the peaceful pictures and also some great sky plus aurora borealis instantly it was great. I really miss these shows – probably that’s one cause why I really love to do this project.
One of my three smartphone alarms is set for 2:23pm and I’m looking forward to it every day although I’m just twelve days into the project. Infact my days are now pre-2:23pm and post-2:23pm – strange, ha? 🙂
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Isn’t it remarkable what experiences will inspire creativity years later? I have been fascinated with the sky since I was small and would lay down in an open field so there was nothing but sky sky sky all around me. And I have stood in the snow at 3 a.m. in my pajamas, coat, and boots, oblivious to the cold, just to watch the northern lights. Perhaps those experiences are why I remain fascinated by this project. And why I don’t find it at all strange that, as the artist, you look forward creating a piece of this work every day. I find I must wait for the picture to each day to begin mine.
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