Bombus Press

On Beauty

What does it mean to belong somewhere? What does an arbitrary patch of square- footage have to fulfill, in order for it to become a home? In an age where we’re always connected, and ever travelled... is there a need to belong somewhere at all?

These questions and many others like them were posed to a number of people from all over the world. Here, you’ll find a selection of photographic portraits, poems and reflections, inspired by these interviews.

Images: Timothy Percival/Dimitra Gkouma
Words: Louis Pollard

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David’s outlook on life is laced with sentimentality. He remembers, for example, his rural upbringing. He remembers positive interactions with both strangers and acquaintances alike. In one sense, he adopts an optimistic worldview: where if we all just acted more mindfully, life would be a better place to live. On the other hand, he sits reproachfully, waiting for the rotten fruits of humankind’s labour to beat that positivity to the finish line.

It’s a farmyard,
an oaky voice,
a kind act,
a good friend.
It’s inevitability.
It’s doing what you can when you can

for the right reasons,
in the places that make you feel most alive, before the world
sort of eats itself
like a wild animal protecting its young.

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Like many of us, Sebastian searches for a place to call home. As a man who immigrated to the UK, he’s unable to find that tacit feeling of belonging no matter how hard he looks. That is, until he discovers an unsuspected artifact that transports him back to his native New Zealand. In this minute snapshot, we reflect on how emotionally powerful the smallest of sensory inputs can be.

Smile at strangers all you want...
It’s not the people. The light’s different; bluer, colder,

so it’s not that either. Running fingers along the table, exploring

the grain like braille, somehow zen. Suddenly,
I’m at a familiar desk, an Earth away.

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Yole’s alternate lens on beauty and ugliness offers up a distinct irony: that which is beautiful is strived for, thus relatively commonplace, thus unremarkable... and so on, until she arrives at the conclusion that actually, whatever beautiful thing is being examined is in fact ugly. Conversely, the opposite is true. The poppy, for instance, despite all its affiliations with death and war, offered Yole a welcome break from the uniformity of the boilerplate landscape of the city.

Home is not a place that’s half-snowing, to the beat of backwards cars.
A home made in ugliness -
a distinct rhythm from the slums - warmed by lavender,

reveling in the simple poppy:
in its mane,
there is hope,

there is beautiful silence.

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