Mother/photographer Niki Boon has chosen to raise her children sans digital interference, documenting the experience in a photo series that is as breathtaking as you could imagine.
The digitalisation of the world has its inhabitants treading an ever-expanding wake of superseded devices, desperately grappling for the latest and greatest piece of technology to save them from drowning in the terrifying sea of “old”. Nowadays, it’s the norm to ride that speedy wave alongside the rest of society, and miss out on all of the beautiful scenery along the way. This is why Boon raises her children without television or smartphones.
Growing up in the simplicity and beauty of rural life on a farm in Bay of Plenty, New Zealand, Boon wanted to replicate her own rich childhood for her four young children. Choosing to homeschool them on an acreage, she lovingly documents their daily exhibitions from behind the camera lens in a photo series she has titled “Childhood in Raw”. She told metro.co.uk:
“I photograph as physical record of their childhood, life as it is… the real… but also as a reflection of a childhood rooted deep in my own past …a most sincere place of freedom…a childhood I now pass on to my own children.”
The images are then offered as gifts to the children on each of their birthdays; a truly unique and poignant reminder of an upbringing drenched in meaning for them to hold onto for their lifetimes.
The images strike a chord in the hearts of all who were privileged enough to have grown up in a simpler time; or those who didn’t, but who are left with a foggy instinct for basic pleasures. Either way, most can relate to the simple joys of eating ice blocks on hot days, getting covered in mud on wet days, and letting their imaginations run wild and take them to any place their hearts desired during their golden childhood days.
Boon reinforces that the pictures indeed have an air of familiarity despite the nature of the subjects, saying that, “Although deeply personal I believe that others will also connect to some aspect of their own childhood.” Her ethos of draining every last drop of pleasure from the sponge of life without the numbing effects of smart phones, televisions and computers is charmingly manifested in the photographs. You can indeed see that her children benefit from a life free from the kinds of interference that we experience daily as an inevitability of living in modern society.
Boon uses a black and white filter for each of the images, forcing her audience to look deeper beyond a circus of colour or an overuse of digital touch-ups. What we see is quite simply a mixture of candid and loosely posed shots with a perfect balance between dark and light. A “yin and yang” between the activities being carried out and the emotions of her children whilst in action is what Boon has captured, allowing viewers to transcend beyond just looking at an image to actually experiencing these feelings for themselves.
The children’s synergy with their environment echoes the undeniable human appetite for a connection with nature. On her blog, Boon states,
“They belong here wild and free and earth connected in a way where the landscape begins and there little souls end.”
That is a statement to which we can all relate. Human kind would benefit from looking up from their smartphones every once in a while to drink in the beauty of nature and remember that we are, indeed, a part of it.