Reality +

"Is this the real life is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?” - Freddie Mercury, Queen. Using David Chalmers' book, Reality+ as a guiding template to help articulate three of my photographic projects. Part 1: Zhuangzi’s Butterfly Dreams - Can we know anything about the world about us? Part 2: Narada’s Transformation - Is our world real or illusionary? Part 3: Plato’s Cave - What does it mean to live a good life? Plato’s Cave: (Part 3 of 3) When the escapee manages to get above ground, exiting the cave, he later returns to his companions, yet they do not understand his new found knowledge, insight, and reject what he has to tell them. Knowing that his previous existence had been mere shadows on a wall, he implores his companions, those still in the cave, to seek enlightenment, above ground. They reject his newly-found version of their reality. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates then wonders whether those who remain in the cave can continue to live a good life, can their lives continue to have value and meaning, leading to the question: “What does it mean to live a good life? Part 1: Can we know anything about the world about us? Part 2: Is our world real or illusionary? Part 3: What does it mean to live a good life? Choosing the Gypsy, Traveller, Romany (GTR) community, and photographed, in a ‘cave’ (an underpass under the A66), I have sought to posit this epistemic question, do they as communities simply abandon their traditional ways of lives, join mainstream society, on the say-so of others above ground, those who consider themselves to be somehow more ‘enlightened’ than they?