It usually doesn’t take me more than a week to read a book, of course it always depends on the book and how big it is. But for the past week I’ve been reading Haruki Murakami’s new book, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, and it’s a wonderful book. So being in that Murakami world, I wanted to create something based on one of his books for the 52 Week Project. Last week’s theme was animals, and at first I thought I’d do something inspired by Little Red Riding Hood, but then I decided to do something.. different than what I’d usually do.

A while back, when I had my very first meeting with the gallery where I had my exhibition, the manager told me that this piece is his favorite of mine because it reminds him of Rene Magritte:

And since then, I’ve been wanting to create stuff inspired by his paintings. He’s my favorite surreal artist. I remember writing a research paper on him back when I was in university and I instantly fell in love with his work.
And then it hit me: HARUKI MURAKAMI MEETS RENE MAGRITTE.

Yes, I got too excited.
Then I started thinking about this one scene from Murakami’s Kafka On The Shore where it rains fish. No joke. It was like the most normal thing ever. What’s so incredible about Murakami’s books is that it feels like a dream. Not like rainbows and butterflies dreams. No, you know that feeling when you’re dreaming and things just don’t make any sense but they’re real and they’re happening right in front of you? That’s how his books are.
Back to raining fish – so I started looking at Magritte’s painting and of course, this was perfect for what I wanted to do.

So that painting was inspiration #2.

I’ll be honest, at first I was afraid (I was petrified – sorry, I try to be funny sometimes) of posting this, because I kept thinking (I could never live without you by my side) what if people don’t like this? It’s kinda different from what I usually do. People keep commenting how there’s so much movement in my pictures, with flowing dresses and hair. But then I thought, so what? I had so much fun making it, I thought it was kinda funny, and well.. I like it. So here it is, image 19 for the 52 Week Project:

Title is from the book, Kafka On The Shore.
I used Brooke Shaden’s textures again for this, and cloud pictures taken by my friend TJ.

Soo this week’s theme is: cemetery.
Ooh I like this.
Okay I cheated. I got two sucky themes. The second one isn’t so bad but the first one made me go like WHY in the WORLD would I put that in there? haha

*sorry about the random lyrics, the song’s been stuck in my head all day.

2014-2017 52 Week Project Thoughts 52 week project amani alshaali fine art photographer fine art photography haruki murakami inspiration kafka on the shore photography photography challenge photoshop photoshop edit rene magritte thinking process thoughts