Falling Leaves / An ode to the unspeakable by Paul Phung

In the shadowed corridors of movement and stillness, Falling Leaves emerges—a photographic journey that dances on the precipice of chaos and serenity, immortalized in an extraordinary debut book published by Ex-Coda. Photographer Paul Phung, known for his hauntingly monochromatic lens, defies convention by weaving an intricate ballet between form and abstraction. Working in symbiosis with choreographers and performers, Phung unfurls a series of five visceral acts that interrogate the unspoken lexicon of the body.

This debut publication, seven years in the making, unravels like a dream suspended in perpetual motion. It offers no clear start or finish, drawing the reader into its pulsating core, where weightless figures grapple with their internal soliloquies. Through life-size clippings, each frame invites not just observation but participation—a subtle but deliberate manipulation of the voyeur into performer.

Here, the boundaries blur. Photographer and choreographer become indistinguishable; reader and performer coalesce. It is a dialogue, raw and unvarnished, where every turn of the page becomes a step in an unchoreographed waltz. Writer Maisie Skidmore lends her voice to this symphony of stills, her poetry threading through the sinew of each act—a ghostly whisper in a hall of echoes. Enveloping this treasure is a tactile sheath, adorned with the imprints of its creators: Connor Scott, Courtney Deyn, Edd Arnold, Harry Ondrak-Wright, Joey Barton, Max Cookward, Oscar Jinghu Li, Owen Ridley-DeMonick, and Will Thompson. These hands, captured mid-expression, shield the book—or perhaps, they cradle it.

Falling Leaves does not merely document; it devours, exhales, and transmutes. It is a hallucinatory tribute to dance, a fever dream where euphoria and vulnerability coexist. Phung’s lens does more than capture—it speaks, and in its language, we are all complicit.

To hold this book is to hold a piece of the ineffable. Each page drips with the tension of unspoken truths, urging the reader to move beyond passive consumption and into the realm of introspection. The weightless figures, caught mid-motion, remind us of our shared fragility, yet they also exude an undeniable strength—a paradox that defines the human experience.

The collaboration between Phung, the performers, and the writers transforms Falling Leaves into something more than a book. It is a testament to the power of collective creation, a visceral reminder that art is not just to be seen but felt. From the subtle curve of a dancer’s hand to the explosive energy of a leap frozen in time, every image pulses with life—an invitation to lose oneself and find something deeper within.

“Falling Leaves dares its audience to question: where does the body end, and the soul begin? In this space of tension, Paul Phung invites us to linger, to breathe, and to dance in the silence between frames.”