As is the French way of being able to send New Year messages well into January, we were ironically still in the process of sending out this email to friends and colleagues when we received the terrible news of yesterday’s killings in Paris.
Planned around 2/3 months ago, at the height of the tragic Ebola outbreak and the horrific Isis beheadings, I was searching for an image, a thought, to send as our New Year message when I came across this photo I had taken in the summer. A butterfly had flown in through the door of our Welsh cottage and settled in a window near a small heart that had for many years been propped up by the glass (no Photoshop used, I absolutely promise!).
When I re-read the words in the photo, I realised that in a time of fear around the world, this was perhaps the only message of love and safety that I had wanted to send to our friends and loved ones for 2015. The other two photographs were once again images that Terry or I had taken during the year that we felt might communicate this feeling.
Now, as I wake in the too early morning of a Woodstock new dawn, I say it again but with the utmost humility;
“To be very clear: Love must always be stronger than hatred… freedom must always be stronger than fear and repression.”
In the amazing images of solidarity from around the world we prove our humanity, our love and our belief in tolerance and respect for all faiths and all beliefs that reject violence and seek for greater understanding and love between each other.
Remember – it’s important: “United we stand, divided we fall!”
With love and thanks for your time in reading this / passing it on,
Tricia Jones x
i-D original mum
Credits
Text and photography Tricia Jones