Exposures
Anima

Exposures · Volume One

Anima

A private mythology of metamorphosis — sacred and profane turning into one another — moving from grey toward colour.

Introduction Colophon

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AI-generated (Midjourney) + Photoshop · prompts by Hulki Okan Tabak · December 2024 · made with Claude · © the author.

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees

Is my destroyer.

— Dylan Thomas, “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower”

Prologuethe threshold — the one living face

A composed, near-photographic portrait of a young person, the sides of the head shaved, encircled by floating golden seed-heads against a soft grey ground.
1The Stranger

IThe Greymatter · the carved · the dead · the sacred ground

A single small tree on open ground beneath a turquoise sky, the grass burning orange.
2The Clearing
A tall standing stone beside a faint path in a desolate field under a darkening storm.
3The Menhir
Two dark, steep-roofed houses standing among bare trees in a cold, muted landscape.
4The Chapels
A dark copse of trees in a snowfield, ploughed furrows streaming toward it.
5The Grove
A snow-domed burial mound topped by one bare tree beneath a black storm.
6The Barrow
A black weather front swallowing a green field, a lone tree at the edge of the dark.
7The Visitation
A weathered human skull fused to the top of a tree stump in a field of cut stumps, on a cracked sepia, tintype-like surface.
8The Grandfather
An ancient face carved in cracked bark, one living eye watching, foliage breaking from the head.
9The Green Man
A tall face carved in cracked white wood, skull-like and weathered, like a cult-post.
10The Idol
A faceless standing figure built of stacked bark and earth-strata in a bare winter wood.
11The Golem
A pale, cracked face hollowed by dark empty eyes and ringed with thorns.
12The Husk
A sorrowing young face fracturing like old plaster, cracks running across the skin.
13The Ruin
A fractured marble head with a second profile hidden in its cheek.
14Janus
A dark carved-wood profile, head bowed, the grain catching a low light.
15The Penitent
A gaunt, capped elder whose face is made of the grain of weathered wood.
16The Mariner
Three cracked white faces pressed together, ancient and unblinking.
17The Fates
A pale, urn-like head on bare ground with a dead tree bursting out of it.
18The Remains
A man in a death-white mask and a sickly-yellow shirt, his shadow looming large behind him.
19The Double
A dead, figure-like tree bowed in mist, as if grieving.
20The Mourner
A great frontal tree crowned by its own black storm cloud, breathing weather.
21Stormcrown
A tree whose canopy darkens and rises into a storm cloud.
22Tree of Smoke
A tree whose trunk-body opens its arms in the fog, vast and sheltering.
23The Mother
A pale figure standing in winter mist, arms rising into bare branches.
24The Revenant
A cloaked, masked figure striding through black brambles.
25The Pilgrim
A hooded wooden saint in mist, a small skull set in its breast.
26The Saint
A pink, doll-like totem with hollow eyes, standing in a child’s place.
27The Changeling
A tiny hooded figure walking a tunnel of arching bare trees toward a far light.
28The Cathedral

IIThe Turning & the Dyadmetamorphosis · the couple · colour seeping

A face turning to bark, a single living eye remaining, foliage blazing around it.
29Green Fuse
A face dreaming inside a dense magenta thicket of roots.
30The Sleeper
A calm dark face beneath a turquoise vortex, one temple becoming a bare tree.
31The Reverie
A red-robed wooden idol above a line of conifers, a burning orb at its chest.
32Sacred Heart
A white woollen totem with a single orange leaf set on its breast.
33Heartwood
An aged face slashed with a red cross of paint.
34Ecce Homo
A faceless, red-robed presence among black trees, bare branches running through the robe.
35The Cardinal
A figure in a vivid orange hood standing alone in a white winter wood.
36Ember
A contemporary figure half-hidden behind two ink-painted discs, an eye gazing from one.
37The Diviner
Two bare trees standing apart in a burning-orange field.
38The Companions
Two wooden figures leaning together, one serene and one a blank log-end, fused into one.
39The Embrace
Two profiles nearly touching, veiled by bare branches, in stark black and white.
40The Kiss
Two faces leaning close with closed eyes, one warm yellow, one cold teal, threaded with branches.
41The Lovers
An upturned face in cool blue, a hand at the throat, a ghosted double behind.
42The Swoon
An ink-drawn face drowning in magenta, blue tears running down.
43The Weeping
A veiled, bowed figure with bare branches at the breast, pink rising behind.
44The Widow
Two figures in a blighted pink wood, one of them fading into magenta.
45Orpheus and Eurydice
A red-coated figure seen from behind, legs dissolving into brush, the head a blur.
46The Vanishing
Stark black and white: a luminous, sorrowing face beside a dark figure dissolving to ash.
47The Parting

IIIThe Eruption · Animathe soul — full polychrome

A bone-pale figure seized in a magenta storm, head thrown back.
48Rapture
A veiled, skull-faced death-Madonna carved in pale wood, flanked by white blossoms against orange and black.
49Santa Muerte
A gaunt, white-faced figure with bruised eyes in a riot of colour, a second face emerging.
50The Witch
A green-haired painted mask scrawled with invented script.
51The Trickster
A bowed woman cradled by a white crescent moon, her hair falling like black rain.
52Selene
A single eye gazing from within a violet iris flower.
53Iris
A carved wooden idol-face set in a fanned halo of petal-like rays, in warm sepia.
54Sunflower
A branch-filled sun rising over a crowd of small tree-figures.
55Matins
A still life of vivid magenta petals beside bleached botanical bone on a black ground.
56Vanitas
A dark, scribbled head above a body erupting into multicoloured plumage.
57Phoenix
A symmetrical, polychrome face that is also tree and butterfly.
58Epiphany
A grey carved profile erupting into polychrome flame — magenta, orange and cyan — down one side.
59Psyche
A face peeled into shifting planes that reveal inked eyes and other faces beneath, in black and white.
60Palimpsest