Sean Lotman is interested in the narrative potential of photography. In an ongoing project called I Do Haiku You, he composes haiku and senryu poetry to companion images taken with a Diana F+.
Asilah is a small artists’ town in northwestern Morocco, about an hour’s drive south of Tangiers. Facing the Atlantic, it’s a small, quiet place full of brightly colored houses. I met this musician on the way to the town’s most famous spot, a promontory facing out to sea where couples often come to whittle their time. It was taken with a Diana f+ with Portra 400VC.
The Busker’s Blues
a man wails sadly—
passage from a song on loss
performed for strangers
In Sean’s own words, “These varieties of Japanese verse are concerned with physical and human nature, composed in a taut structure as to suggest a moment, much in the way a photograph does. Haiku poetry, like photography, has an instant, strong, fairly emotional resonance. Put together these two art forms enhance each others power so that, very briefly, a story is told.”
Photo and words by Sean Lotman. Originally from Los Angeles, California, Sean now lives in Kyoto, Japan. Read more I Do Haiku You series here.
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