Lony Rockafella | Photography's photostream

Lony Rockafella is a photographer from Galiano Island, BC. He first visited the island in the summer of 1969 after he graduated from UBC with a major in theatre and a minor in psychology. He’s called Galiano home ever since.

The Island Life
Lony lived on a communal piece of land where him and his friends grew their own food and played music together. It was there that he had some transcendental experiences which totally opened him up to the world and the nature surrounding him. Soon, Lony and his wife Johanna, started the first co-op on the island. They would spend every Friday at the Community Hall selling fresh organic produce, and eventually groceries as well. The couple also traveled to the Queen Charlotte Islands, Tofino, Denman, Hornby, Saltspring and other local islands providing fresh food wherever they went. In 1978, they purchased the property that is still home to what is now the Daystar Market. The 10-acre plot began as a host to the infamous produce truck, and as the business became sustainable, they began building the Market - the original truck is actually built into the current building! A few years later, the couple had their first daughter, Tahirih, followed by Josli and Oleann in the mid-eightes.

The Photography
Always having an interest in photography, Lony purchased a quality camera in the early ’90s and started creating a visual record of Galiano: “My priority was to record the beauty of this island so that people making the decisions would perhaps incorporate the enhanced structure of the place - work the building and planning to blend with the physical beauty of Galiano. That was my driving desire, to depict the island so that it could be developed in an organic, natural way, coexisting with the landscape. I began to put up the images in the store. People saw them and had a riveting reaction - they continue to ask where the shots were from and how I possibly got them that way. It is about timing, terrain, and the tripod. It involves being really familiar with Galiano Island - where the sun is, what the clouds are like, if there’s a wind, what the ocean is doing… It also involves getting up really early or staying out late at night, standing in the forest for quite awhile and waiting - waiting for that shot, camera on tripod ready to click. It’s about being one with nature - the timing - I have to intuitively know the conditions surrounding me, my senses have to be wide open. One day I might get the picture, the next day I won’t. It’s all about timing - it’s when the Infinite reveals itself the most, and I have to recognize the moment and go with that. Sometimes I go out and just turn back because I realize that “it” is not revealing itself.
Now I have started to “mirror” the images in nature in my photos and come up with a mystic representation of Earth Love. Like the sandstone images that I have reversed together, suddenly you see all the things you couldn’t before. It’s like a big mandala, the reversals offer truth. You can see faces in the sandstone, the duality becomes one - that is the theme, to see oneness, a unity. It is hoped that through these works we will experience the unity and see each other as part of themselves.”