Tao of Photography

Revery of the Unknowable

2012-01-30T22:11:00.000-05:00

"Science of nature has one goal:

To find both manyness and whole.

Nothing 'inside' or 'Out There,'

The 'outer' world is all 'In Here.'

This mystery grasp without delay,

This secret always on display.

The true illusion celebrate,

Be joyful in the serious game!

No living thing lives separate:

One and Many are the same."

...

We can never directly see

what is true, that is, identical with

what is divine: we look at it

only in reflection, in example,

in the symbol, in individual

and related phenomena.

We perceive it as a life

beyond our grasp,

yet we cannot deny

our need to grasp it.

...

The highest achievement

of the human being

as a thinking being is to

have probed what is

knowable and quietly to

revere what is unknowable."

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Goethe on Science

Discarnate Muses and Artists

2012-01-29T16:22:00.000-05:00

"To take photographs. Such was the entry point into photography. Along the creek beds and waterfalls seeing was always possession and camera affirmed ownership. Since then other modes, other doors have superseded, for example, to make photographs. The greed, however, has never really disappeared. Ownership seems to be the force that opens all the other doors. Yet, possession is not all. As I become more in harmony with the world around, through, and in me, the varieties of time weave together. Chronological time, the time my psyche takes, and creative time were once always at odds with each other. Less so now that the manifestations of inner growth are seen to be set in my path as if by an invisible discarnate friend. When I have sensed his presence, the photographs, afterward, seem like footprints... his or mine is the question!"

- Minor White

Rites and Passages

"The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate; I know of Borges from the mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship; I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to no one, not even to him, but rather to the language and to tradition. Besides, I am destined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive in him. Little by little, I am giving over everything to him, though I am quite aware of his perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things.

Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him and went from the mythologies of the suburbs to the games with time and infinity, but those games belong to Borges now and I shall have to imagine other things. Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him.

I do not know which of us has written this page."

-Jorge Luis Borges

"Borges and I"

Inseparability of Life & Cosmos

2012-01-28T16:37:00.000-05:00

"The Western man who claims consciousness of oneness with God or the universe ... clashes with his society's concept of religion. In most Asian cultures, however, such a man will be congratulated as having penetrated the true secret of life. He has arrived, by chance or by some such discipline as Yoga or Zen meditation, at a state of consciousness in which he experiences directly and vividly what our own scientists know to be true in theory. For the ecologist, the biologist, and the physicist know (but seldom feel) that every organism constitutes a single field of behavior, or process, with its environment. There is no way of separating what any given organism is doing from what its environment is doing, for which reason ecologists speak not of organisms in environments but of organism-environments ... The difference between Eastern and Western concepts of man and his universe ... extends beyond strictly religious concepts. The Western scientist may rationally perceive the idea of organism-environment, but he does not ordinarily feel this to be true. By cultural and social conditioning, he has been hypnotized into experiencing himself as an ego- as an isolated center of consciousness and will inside a bag of skin, confronting an external and alien world. We say, "I came into this world." But we did nothing of the kind. We came out of it in just the same way that fruit comes out of trees. Our galaxy, our cosmos, 'peoples' in the same way that an apple tree 'apples.'"

- Alan Watts,

Psychedelics and Religious Experience

Dreaming with Open Eyes

2012-01-22T14:18:00.002-05:00

"From the mast-head the mirage is continually giving us false alarms. Everything wears an aspect of unreality. Icebergs hang upside down in the sky; the land appears as layers of silvery or golden cloud. Cloud-banks look like land, icebergs masquerade as islands or nunataks, and the distant barrier to the south is thrown into view, although it really is outside our range of vision. Worst of all is the deceptive appearance of open water, caused by the refraction of distant water, or by the sun shining at an angle on a field of smooth snow or the face of ice-cliffs below the horizon."

- Sir Ernest Shackleton, South!

(from Captain's log of "Endurance")

“...you go into a state almost like an aware kind of sleep, which means you’re all free, just let it be, let it become, and with tremendous compassion towards everything—maybe human beings, or nature, or objects—you incorporate. It’s almost like a... in Buddhism, you would say incarnation. You become things, you become at atmosphere. And if you become it, which means you incorporate it within you, you can also give it back. You can put this feeling into a picture. A painter can do do it. And a musician can do it, and I think a photographer can do that too. And that I would call the dreaming with open eyes."

- Ernst Haas, To Dream with Open Eyes

Postscript: Kind readers/viewers wishing to learn the "truth" behind the surreal dream-like seascape depicted above, may reveal the unabashed "reality" by clicking here; but be forewarned that doing so will also unavoidably strip away all essential meaning. Perhaps there is an aesthetic / semiotic analog of Heisenberg's unrcertainty principle at play here, wherein one cannot simultaneously both "know" (the truth behind) something and "understand" it equally well ;-)

Dissolution of Consciousness

2012-01-21T17:27:00.000-05:00

"Seeing is perception

with the original,

unconditioned eye.

It is a state of consciousness

in which separation of

photographer/subject,

audience/image dissolves;

in which a reality beyond words

and concepts opens up,

whose "point" or "meaning" is

the direct experience itself."

- John Daido Loori

"We look at the world and

see what we have learned to

believe is there.

We have been

conditioned to expect...

but, as photographers,

we must learn to relax our beliefs...

if you look very intensely and slowly,

things will happen that you

never dreamed of before.”

― Aaron Siskind

Mind and Mystery

2012-01-19T20:42:00.000-05:00

"The state of mind of the photographer while creating is blank… For those who would equate 'blank' with a kind of emptiness, I must explain that this is a special kind of blank. It is a very active state of mind really, a very receptive state of mind, ready at an instant to grasp an image, yet with no image pre-formed, pattern or preconceived idea of how anything ought to look is essential to this blank condition. Such a state of mind is not unlike a sheet of film itself – seemingly inert, yet so sensitive that a fraction of a second's exposure conceives life in it."

- Minor White

"In my search to find an opposite to reality, I discovered that if reality is the knowable and the potentially knowable, the opposite consists of things that the mind can’t comprehend. Among those things are keys to the existence of everything. The further we delve into what we are and what things are, the more mysterious we and they become."

- Wynn Bullock

Eternal Purity

2012-01-16T17:34:00.000-05:00

"O King, you say that Atman is infinite. Well, that which is infinite must be unconditioned by time and space. Absence of duality in Atman renders it incapable of being a cause. A cause exists both before and after the effect, as clay does in respect of the jar. But, in Atman there is neither beginning nor end. Besides, a cause must modify or change itself to produce an effect. Atman being all and absolute is free from the possibility of change or modification. Atman is indestructible and immutable. It has never fallen from its nature. As there is no duality in Atman, so it is neither subject nor object. Nor is there any action in it. It is eternally pure like the blue sky or space. O King, and it is your own nature."

- Yoga-Vasistha

Where is the Universe?

2012-01-15T17:02:00.000-05:00

"A Buddhist scholar named Nogaguna, who lived about A.D. 200, invented a whole dialectic and founded a school where the "leader" of the students would simply destroy all of their ideas - absolutely abolish their philosophic notions. And they would get the heebie-jeebies and see that the leader did not have the heebie-jeebies, that he seemed perfectly relaxed in having no particular point of view. 'Teacher, how can you stand it? We have to have something to hold on to.' And the teacher's response: 'Who does? Who are you?'

Eventually, of course, they discovered that it is not necessary to hang onto anything, to rely on anything. There is nothing to rely on because you are IT. It is like asking the question 'Where is the universe?'

Where is it in space? Everything in it is falling around everything else, but there is no concrete floor underneath for the thing to crash, because the space goes out and out forever and ever and has no end.

What is it? What else could it be?

Of course, it is you."

Alan Watts

(1915 - 1973)

Wynn Bullock: Color Light Abstractions

2012-01-07T18:33:00.001-05:00

"Light to me is perhaps the most profound truth in the universe. My thinking has been deeply affected by the belief everything is some form of radiant energy." - Wynn Bullock (1905 - 1975)

Wynn Bullock is arguably one of the greatest fine-art photographers to have graced our world with his soulful mind, heart, and eye. He is also one of three photographers (of a bygone generation, relative to mine) that I deeply lament not having had the opportunity to meet and get to know personally (the other two being Ansel Adams and Minor White). Though I was certainly alive when Bullock passed away (and I was already "taking pictures"), I was but a young lad of 15, and had yet to appreciate the Buddhist transience of life and everything precious in it. Plenty of time to "get to know the greats..." (or so I thought)

How would my creative life have been different - what alternative paths would I have taken - had there been a chance to learn - and possibly muse with - such extraordinary artists; whose work I have learned to respect and resonate with on ever deeper levels as I grow into the late summer of my own life? Adams first showed me how nature can be seen as its own transcendent reality. And White how the best photographs are those whose "outer appearance" reflect one's "inner perceptions." But it was Bullock, whose work I came to know and admire deeply a few years after studying Adams and White, who (continues to) pave the way for my own creative journey; one that strives to combine - and transcend - the (nominally pseudo-orthogonal) aesthetic, spiritual, and intellectual dimensions of experience, thought, and reality.

Apart from living in slightly different times (I was born 55 years after Bullock) and different places (he on the west coast, I on the east), and apart from the fact that Bullock's work is well-known to almost all photographers and mine to almost none (outside of family, friends, and an occasional tip-of-the-hat from a kind reader of my blog), our respective histories and creative predilections share a few traits; I therefore feel an especially close affinity towards him. For starters, both of us were married twice, the first time rather unsuccessfully in what was more of a "trial" (in both literal and figurative senses), and not-at-all conducive to producing any kind of art - in Bullock's case, I was saddened to learn that his first wife thought his photography was a waste of time (mine was more understanding); she'd sometimes enter his darkroom to tear up his prints in fits of anger! In both cases, our second marriage found us soul-mates and muses. Bullock's second marriage led to two girls; mine, to two boys.

The most important traits we share have to do with our photography: (1) we are both opportunistic, taking advantage of family trips and outings more than Ansel-Adams-like dedicated month-long trips away from home (reveling primarily in finding and revealing the transcendent nature of everyday reality), (2) we both incessantly experiment with new modes of visual expression (perpetually seeking that extra "spark" to ignite a new line of aesthetic inquiry), and (3) we both heavily ground our photography in intellectual - sometimes deeply metaphysical - musings (invoking images of time, space, reality, illusion, ...); a fact that should be obvious (on my side, at least) to anyone who has perused just the topics of my blog entries, much less their substance ;-) Bullock's musings may be sampled on his website (lovingly crafted and kept up-to-date by his eldest daughter, Barbara Bullock-Wilson) and in a few of his books that are still available: (1) Wynn Bullock: The Enchanted Landscape, Photographs 1940-1975, (2) Wynn Bullock: Photography a Way of Life, and (3) Wynn Bullock (Aperture Masters of Photography). (Links to other references are provided below).

And so we come to the point of this blog, which is to introduce interested readers to an extraordinary new book of Bullock's color abstracts - Wynn Bullock: Color Light Abstractions - which also serves as a catalog of a traveling exhibition that premiered on May 15, 2010 at the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel,California. I label this book "new" not only because it has only recently been published (in 2010), but because it contains over 50 color light abstractions that have never before been published! Though Bullock was primarily a black-and-white photographer (another trait we share), he had experimented heavily, in the late 50s and early 60s, with color. Unsatisfied with the color printing at the time, few outside his family and circle of friends ever saw samples of this work, and even then mostly via slide presentations. Inspired and helped by a close family friend (John Hong Hall, to whom the traveling exhibition is dedicated and whose moving story appears in an afterword to the book), the heirs to (and caretakers of) Bullock's work undertook the prodigious task of organizing, restoring, scanning, and printing 50+ year-old Kodachrome color slides.

I will spare readers a "description" of these images, since whatever pale words I may attach to my "experience" of them will so distort their essence - inevitably altering the meaning the images would convey on their own if viewed by your eyes only - that to do so would be an aesthetic injustice on my part. Suffice to say that this collection of color light abstracts is nothing short of breathtaking! Were one not told of how these surrealistic, other-wordly images came to be (a word or two on that in a second), but was simply presented with the finished portfolio, with only the implicit understanding that the images were obviously produced by a prodigiously gifted photographer, one would be forgiven for believing that it was all "some Photoshop trick," albeit an astoundingly creative - indeed, visionary - one! The fact that these images were produced c.1960 using everyday objects like broken shards of thick colored glass, beads, jewelry, polarizing filters, and both artificial and natural light, makes this already exquisite portfolio all the more remarkable. A short description of his method appears here, and also in a superb 30 min documentary on his life and work, Wynn Bullock: Photographer.

I have written before of heretofore having only three epiphanous reactions to photography monographs, to which I simply went "Wow!" upon seeing, and which fundamentally altered my perceptions of the creative potential of photography as an art form: (1) Bruce Barnbaum's Visual Symphony (in the 1970s), (2) Fay Godwin's Land (middle 1980s), and (3) John Sexton's Recollections (in 2006). To this short list I must now a fourth, Wynn Bullock's Color Light Abstractions. This work is, in a word, a masterpiece!

Additional references: Wynn Bullock's biography appears here, and a sampling of color abstracts that appear in the book appear on this page. A 3-min video may be seen here. A portfolio of some of Bullock's black-and-white images appears in Lenswork Issue #55, available in Adobe pdf). A few books may also be ordered directly from Bullock's website. Other include: Wynn Bullock (Phaidon Press), Wynn Bullock (Scrimshaw Press), Wynn Bullock Photographing the Nude: The Beginnings of a Quest for Meaning, and The Photograph as Symbol. As of this writing, copies of Photography and Philosophy of Wynn Bullock (by Clyde Dilley, published in 1984) are also still available.

Postscript: I stumbled across Bullock's color abstractions somewhat synchronistically (at an age close to Bullock's when he first started experimenting with color), insofar as I have recently also embarked on what has turned out to be a multiyear "color experiment" in (what in my case, I call) "Synesthetic Landscapes" (and that I have discussed before). Though the specifics of our methods differ, like Bullock, I am essentially driven to photograph light itself, not the physical forms that light makes visible or otherwise gives shape and texture to. My "color abstract sources" (thus far, at least) have been impromptu / makeshift "in the field" mini studios consisting of doors or bottles of rum (among many, many other everyday "things"); the best results are eerily reminiscent of the hyperreal dimensions discovered first by Bullock: realms of fluidic time and space, ineffably infused with mysterious unknown forms of life and consciousness ;-)

Rhythmic Orders

2012-01-04T19:08:00.001-05:00

"As sounds in a musical composition can be used not to express physical objects but ideas, emotions, harmonies, rhythmic orders and most any expression of the human mind and spirit, so light can be used visually to express the mind and spirit."

"Theoretical scientists who probe the secrets of the universe and philosophers who seek answers to existence, as well as painters such as Paul Klee who find the thoughts of men of science compatible with art, influence me far more than most photographers."

- Wynn Bullock (1902 - 1975)

Postscript: interested readers are invited to peek "behind the curtain" to see the "reality" behind the synesthetic landscape expressed above. I will soon have much more to say about this image, the (still growing) portfolio of images from which it comes, and how it all fits in - synchronistically - with a wondrous new book of Wynn Bullock's color light abstractions (from the early 1960s).

My Dad's Gentle Nudge Forward

2011-12-11T11:48:00.005-05:00

“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”

― Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

Postscript: Campbell's quote appears in my dad's handwriting on a yellowed strip of paper that accidentally fell out of page 133 of a book he bequeathed me - The Spiritual in Art - as I was thumbing through it for inspiration. Two other quotes adorn the page my dad evidently used Campbell's quote as a placeholder for (the bookmarked page is the first page of the chapter "Transcending the Visible" by Sixten Ringbom that appears on page 131 of the book). The first quote is a 1913 muse by Kandinsky that describes his early dilemma of understanding the "meaning" of an abstract work:

"A terrifying abyss of all kinds of questions, a wealth of responsibilities, stretched before me. And most important of all: what is to replace the missing object? The danger of ornament revealed itself clearly to me; the dead semblance of stylized forms I found merely repugnant... It took a very long time before I arrived at the correct answer to the question: What is to replace the object? I sometimes look back at the past and despair at how long this solution took me."

The second quote is by Georges Vantongerloo (1886-1965, Belgian abstract sculptor and painter): "The great truth, or the absolute truth, makes itself visible to our mind through the invisible."

The synchronicity of these quotes becomes clear when one is informed of these basic facts: (1) the title of my portfolio book is "Seeing the Invisible" (which I produced a few years ago, before knowing of this quote), (2) the very next "project" I am to embark on is an expansion of this same portfolio (the "Seeing the Invisible" project is literally the next item on the "to do" list looking up at me as I type these words), and (3) just yesterday, I chided myself with the words "Andy, why did it take so long?" after finally finding a way catalyze a new series of abstractions (and which will no doubt be the basis of a future blog post). Even after 10 years of not being by my side in person, my dad still somehow manages to find a way to gently nudge my art forward ;-)

The "Four Marks" of the Mystic State

2011-12-03T19:47:00.004-05:00

"1. Ineffability - The handiest of the marks by which I classify a state of mind as mystical is negative. The subject of it immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words.

2. Noetic Quality - Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discurssive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority for aftertime.

3. Transiency - Mystical states cannot be sustained for long.

4. Passivity - Although the oncoming of mystical states may be facilitated by preliminary voluntary operations, as by fixing the attention, or going through certain bodily performances, or in other ways which manuals of mysticism prescribe; yet when the characteristic sort of consciousness once has set in, the mystic feels as if his own will were in abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power."

-William James

The Varieties of Religious Experience

"1. True mysticism is active and practical, not passive and theoretical. It is an organic life-process, a something which the whole self does; not something as to which its intellect holds an opinion.

2. Its aims are wholly transcendental and spiritual. It is in no way concerned with adding to, exploring, re-arranging, or improving anything in the visible universe. The mystic brushes aside that universe, even in its supernormal manifestations. Though he does not, as his enemies declare, neglect his duty to the many, his heart is always set upon the changeless One.

3. This One is for the mystic, not merely the Reality of all that is, but also a living and personal Object of Love; never an object of exploration. It draws his whole being homeward, but always under the guidance of the heart.

4. Living union with this One—which is the term of his adventure—is a definite state or form of enhanced life. It is obtained neither from an intellectual realization of its delights, nor from the most acute emotional longings. Though these must be present they are not enough. It is arrived at by an arduous psychological and spiritual process—the so-called Mystic Way—entailing the complete remaking of character and the liberation of a new, or rather latent, form of consciousness; which imposes on the self the condition which is sometimes inaccurately called “ecstasy,” but is better named the Unitive State."

-Evelyn Underhill

Mysticism

Cosmic Consciousness

2011-12-01T20:52:00.006-05:00

"We want to pour oil onto the fire,

fan the tiny glow into flame,

span the earth;

make it quiver,

and beat more fiercely,

living and pulsating cosmos,

steaming universe."

- Johannes Molzahn

(1892 - 1965)

"The Infinite, therefore, cannot be ranked among its objects. You can only apprehend the Infinite by a faculty superior to reason, by entering into a state in which you are your finite self no longer—in which the divine essence is communicated to you. This is ecstasy. It is the liberation of your mind from its finite consciousness. Like only can apprehend like; when you thus cease to be finite, you become one with the Infinite. In the reduction of your soul to its simplest self, its divine essence, you realize this union—this identity."

-Plotinus

(204 - 274)

Suprematicheskoe Zеркало

2011-11-20T18:45:00.007-05:00

"Amongst all the changing phenomena

the essence of nature is invariable.

A1. The World as human distinctions

(God, The Soul, The Spirit, Life, Religion,

Technology, Art, Science, The Intellect

Weltanschauung, Labor, Movement

Space, Time) = 0.

1. Science and art have no boundaries

because what is comprehended infinitely

is inumerable and infinity and

innumerability are equal to nothing.

...

8. There is no existence either

within or outside me;

nothing can change anything,

since nothing exists that

could change itself

or be changed.

A2. The essence of distinctions.

The world as non-objectivity."

- Kazimir Malevich

Artist (1879 - 1935)

Spirit, Light, and Harmony

2011-11-12T19:34:00.004-05:00

"It is not always needful

for truth to take a definite shape;

it is enough if it hovers about us

like a spirit and produces harmony;

if it is wafted through the air

like the sound of a bell,

grave and kindly."

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"A man should learn

to detect and watch that gleam

of light which flashes across

his mind from within."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Pikes, Minnows, and Parks (and a Lesson, Oh My)

2011-10-30T12:03:00.012-05:00

"The hardest thing to see is what is in front of our eyes." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

During a visit to see my mom on Long Island the other week, my younger son and I stumbled across a beautiful park - no more than a stone's throw away from the house I grew up in - that I never knew existed! Well, I knew of the place, and of its beauty, but not of the park's presence. And therein lies an important lesson that owes its origin to pikes and minnows.

Years ago, I read of an experiment in which some biologists used cameras to record the actions of a large northern pike inside of an aquarium filled with small minnows. Initially, the pike did exactly what one would expect a pike to do under those circumstances; namely, it enjoyed a feast of a lifetime, since it was surrounded by its favorite food.

But then the researchers placed a glass barrier between the pike and the smaller fish. Each time the pike attempted to grab a minnow, it struck its head on the glass. After many repeated failures, it simply stopped trying altogether. The researchers waited until after the pike was clearly hungry and removed the barrier, thus allowing the minnows to swim toward the pike. What did the pike do? Absolutely nothing! Having "learned" that feeding on the minnows was anything but productive (indeed, even painful), the pike blissfully ignored an aquarium-full of food source. It eventually died from starvation. Despite being immersed in a field of nourishment, it believed none was attainable.

And so we come to our newly "discovered" park... I have known about this place ever since I was about 10 or so (i.e., 41 years ago!). My family and I must have driven past it dozens of times a year. My attention was always drawn to a picturesque little "house" (well, I always thought it was a house, which I now know is an old unused mill, which appears in the image above) overlooking a pond with lovely water lilies. The property itself was on a tiny cliff overlooking a harbor, and surrounded by gorgeous trees.

I very clearly remember wanting to take pictures of the "property" when I started doing photography (when I was around 15), but never got around it; too "embarrassed" (as a youth) to act my resolve to ask the owners for permission. What I did not know - having inadvertently taught myself an incorrect truth (as the pike taught itself that its food was inaccessible) - is that this was a public park! Having gone through so many days in my youth during which I would wake up resolved to "go knock on the door of that house to ask for permission to take pictures," only to wind up empty-handed for whatever reason (laziness, shyness, forgetfulness, ...), my brain eventually defined the house and its property as a private residence, simply because (a) I had never thought of it in any other way, and (b) I never bothered to find out what it really was. The house was on private property, and that was that. And so, years and years would pass, with endless trips up and down the road that house still sits on; periodically, in passing, I would tell my mom, my kids, my wife (anyone in the car with me), "You know, one day..."

On this particular trip, I once again firmly resolved to... going so far as to deliberately pack an extra photography business card to present to the owners. Finally - finally! - I set aside some time to actually walk up to the door and ring the bell. And after 41 years of "knowing," I finally learned that I could have explored this property any time I wanted. Embarassing? Oh yes! And I truly have no explanation why this time proved different. Why did I go now, but not last year, or the year before that? Why not indeed?! Apart from some wonderful pictures (that I ought to have started taking 35 years ago), this experience has also taught me a lesson worth applying to all of my other "learned" truths as well. What am I blind to because I "know" I see it so well?

Three eBook Offerings from Blurb Books

2011-10-19T16:27:00.009-05:00

Blurb, with whom I have self-published a number of portfolio books over the last few years, has recently introduced an intriguing eBook option for prospective authors. Though currently confined to be read only by Apple iOS devices (i.e., the iBooks app on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod-touch devices), Blurb's new eBooks are faithful full-resolution versions of their print counterparts. I am impressed with the ease of conversion (on the author-end) - as it essentially amounts to nothing more than selecting the "ebook download for Apple iBooks" option on the page for editing a previously published book, and waiting a few moments - how beautifully it is rendered on my iPad, and by the price, which (as expected) is vastly lower than for any of the print editions.

Indeed, I think this offers a viable alternative for people who do not want to invest $50 or more on a physical book unseen; and who typically decide to purchase a photo book based only on a low-resolution preview of however many pages the author has allowed to be displayed (and/or their own knowledge of the photographer's reputation).

Thus, as a test of sorts (and originally planned only for my sole amusement, adding perhaps that of members of my extended family), I offer the following eBook-versions for three of my more popular physical print books (at a nominal cost): (1) Seeing the Invisible, which is a portfolio of some of my personal favorite black and white images, and includes photos that appeared in juried exhibits, Lenswork magazine, B&W magazine, B&W Spider Awards, and private collections; (2) As Above, so Below: A Harmony of Contrasts, which consists of over 60 black & white images of Luray Caverns in Shenandoah Valley, Virginia (and a selection from which has recently appeared in Lenswork magazine); and (3) Sudden Stillness, which is a 250+ image portfolio expressed in four movements (each introduced by a short essay): chaos, order, complexity, and entropy. The first is available for $2.99; the other two for $4.99.

In each case, after clicking on the associated link, you will find the option to purchase an iPad/iPhone Version (which may be read using the iBooks app) at the top right of the screen.

If there is expressed interest in converting any other of my prior books (I currently have 14 in all), I will certainly make them available here and on my Blurb page.

Postscript: the same three three books are also available in the iBooks bookstore: link #1, link #2, and link #3.

Aftermath of Inactivity as a Probe Into the Creative Process

2011-10-17T17:09:00.018-05:00

A few days ago I posted my first blog entry in over 3 months. It consisted of little more than explaining the long delay (attributed to "day job" related constraints), highlighting some recent publications, and briefly amplifying on an observation I made in a recent interview. But I left out a deeper thought; one that I think goes to the heart of the creative process. Namely, the degree to which what - not how - we choose to photograph defines who we really are; particularly after a long absence from doing photography. This is a point both obvious and subtle.

It is often said that the best (perhaps only?) way to discover who we really are is to see what we do in moments of crisis. I use the word "crisis" here not to label some profound existential angst or trauma, but simply to denote a "moment of truth"; i.e., some instant in time during which a decision must be made now. Perhaps we've delayed a decision, perhaps the problem or issue facing us is too ill-defined, or maybe a looming deadline is just too far in the future for us to care. But then the deadline comes near, or circumstances change, and a decision must be made right now. Malcolm Gladwell (in his book Blink) calls this thin-slicing, though his use of the term refers specifically to those situations where the person making a decision has very little time to make it. However, for the point I'm trying to make, I'd like to relax this last condition; i.e., I am interested in the "I need to make a decision now" process that allows the decision-maker time to reflect on her decision. Yes, a decision needs to be made (today, and not tomorrow, or next week), but you don't need to "thin slice" your response; rather, give the issue some thought - or take a "reflective slice" - and temper it with intuition. Now, what do you decide to do?

My (hardly original) hypothesis is that what we decide to do under these circumstances tells us a lot about who we really are (stripped of all the usual encrusted layers of decisions past and pending). In the context of photography, the problem is: "OK, Andy, you haven't been out with a camera for a while, and now you have an hour or so to prowl around, where do you go and what do you photograph?" My claim is that what I naturally - intuitively - train my camera's lens on says everything about me as a photographer (and about my creative process) that needs - and/or is ultimately worth - saying.

Paradoxically, the deepest insights come from moments of decision that follow long periods of inactivity. For it is only after we have not done photography for a while that the photography most important to us is best revealed. Immersed (as I usually am) in multiple simultaneous ongoing projects, the day-to-day (and shot-to-shot) decisions collectively sculpt only a fleeting image of a particular period of my creative process, as defined by the needs of specific projects; but they do not easily reveal fundamental truths about me as a photographer. While I may discover details about "what I am doing" by paying attention to what I am doing when "I am doing photography" (at times when I am immersed in doing it), I can only discover the truth that underlies all of my photography (perhaps my entire creative process) by paying attention to what I turn my attention to first after not having done photography for a while. It is only after not doing photography that our attention is naturally and strongly drawn first to what matters most deeply; not subject to the vagaries of whatever projects we have just finished or are next on our agenda.

Look at the first photographs you take after dusting off your camera. What do they say? Wherein lies their true meaning? Most likely it is to be found in what the photograph - as a whole - is about. The details matter little; indeed, because of the inevitable build-up of aesthetic rust, the details are just as likely to obscure the intended meaning as illuminate it. In Zen-like fashion, the time during which a photographer - who may normally be obsessed with rendering the tiniest of details in an image just so - is unable to focus on detail, is actually the best time for achieving the deepest clarity of vision.

And so I discovered (or relearned) a truth I've known for as long as I've been a photographer; perhaps longer, since photography is but another word for "seeing with a camera," and I've been "seeing" the world at least a few years longer ;-) To whit, after months of relative creative inactivity, my attention is first drawn to quiet, simple scenes in familiar locations in local parks; and my eye to humble uncluttered rhythms of basic shapes and tones. Though I will undoubtedly soon resume my journey towards ever-deeper abstractions in subject matter and imagery, I know that my creative heart yearns for nothing so deeply as glimpses of a simple sudden stillness.

A Blurred Path Toward Clarity

2011-10-15T19:56:00.014-05:00

"To be an artist is not a matter

of making paintings or objects at all.

What we are really dealing with

is our state of consciousness

and the shape of our perception."

— Robert Irwin, Artist/Theorist (1929 - )

It has been quite a while since my last blog post; the long hiatus due (as almost always) to the demands and constraints of "day job" responsibilities. As I slowly reacclimate my activities to nurture both parts of my brain, I offer a short and humble blog entry to highlight some recent photography projects and expand upon an observation about "how I do photography" that a friend of mine found interesting in a recent interview I gave (and that others might find amusing to muse on).

First, I am delighted to announce that I have had two portfolios published in the last few months: (1) my Luray Caverns portfolio, which appears in both the print and expanded DVD-editions of Lenswork (issue #95, Jul/Aug 2011), and (2) my Abstract Glyphs portfolio, spotlighted on pages 72-75 in the December 2011 issue of B&W magazine (images also appear on their gallery page).

While listening to my interview with Brooks Jensen (editor, Lenswork) for the DVD edition of issue #95, a friend of mine was intrigued to learn of a particular habit I picked up early in my photography (when I was just learning the art in my late teens, a few centuries ago ;-) I'd be interested in learning if others have had (or have) the same experience.

In recounting to Brooks how I started off my day-long sojourn to Luray caverns, I noted that for the first 30 minutes or so I just walked around without a camera (as I always do) and without my eyeglasses on (also, as I always do). Because I am very nearsighted, seeing the world without my glasses yields an almost abstract - certainly much simpler, distilled - representation of it. Since my eyes sans glasses provide only rudimentary information about shapes and tones, I find it a useful exercise to first "see" my compositional landscape (as it were) in these aesthetically simple terms, before fully investing - and immersing - myself in finding real photographs in it. This has been a vital part of my creative process for well over 35 years. But it started quite by accident.

When I was just starting out in photography, I found the physical act of using the viewfinder on a camera hard on my eyes. The constant shifting between squinting through the camera followed by focusing on something in the distance quickly tired my eyes. So, after even a few shots, I would usually take off my eyeglasses and rub my eyes a bit before resuming my camera work. One day, with my glasses off, I turned to glance in a direction where some commotion was going on. I could make out only some blurry lights and shapes, but whatever was going on it looked "interesting." Without thinking (and still without my glasses, which had also fallen to the ground) I lifted my camera to my eye and - without thinking and unable to really see anything - took a shot. I have long forgotten what that shot was a shot of, but I remember being mesmerized by the thought - later after I developed the film - that it had turned out better than OK; it was a really well-composed, lovely shot! But not one I would necessarily have taken of this subject (namely, a scene with people in it!) had I had my glasses on. The lesson taught me to always first "see" a scene sans glasses.

The middle panel of the triptych shown above depicts, roughly, what I "saw" when I first descended the stairs into Luray's interior. The left panel shows what the scene may look like to a robotic version of Andy that sees the world through an 'edge detect" filter. The right panel shows how a non-robotic version of Andy renders the same scene after he's had a chance to see it with his glasses on ;-)

FYI: a 40-min long mp3 file of my interview with Brooks Jensen is available for download from Lenswork for 99 cents.

Morrison House Photography Talk

2011-07-19T10:14:00.006-05:00

I am delighted to announce an upcoming slide presentation in Alexandria, VA, 6:00 to 8:00 pm on August 2 (Tuesday). The talk will be given at Alexandria's historic Morrison House (116 South Alfred Street, Alexandria, VA 22314) and is sponsored by the Torpedo Factory's Art Center.

From the press release:

Photography, Physics, and Complexity: Strange Bedfellows or a New Aesthetic?

Morrison House Presents: Andy Ilachinski, Photographer and Physicist

Physics and photography have always been inextricably linked: by chemistry, light, diffraction, refraction, reflection, polarization, etc. But these are only the most obvious and superficial of connections. This talk uses complexity theory – which describes the fundamental relationships between parts and wholes – to point to a vastly deeper, resonant level on which physics and photography – any creative art – are linked, and offer a possible glimpse of a new fundamental aesthetic grammar. In the end, it is argued, the outwardly-directed journey toward objective realities, and the inner passage toward subjective truths are revealed as but two interrelated aspects of a single creative thread of self-discovery.

Born in 1960 on Long Island, NY, and the only son of an architect and artist, Andy's life has always straddled left– (analytical, logical) and right– (creative, artistic) brained worlds.

On the left-brained side, he earned a Ph.D. in theoretical physics (specializing in complex systems) in 1988 and has over 20 years experience as a research analyst and project director at the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) – a federally funded research and development center headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia – where Andy has pioneered the application of complex adaptive systems theory to military operations research problems. He has authored two graduate-level mathematical physics texts on nonlinear dynamics and agent-based modeling, co-authored a book on artificial-life models and contributed to Springer-Verlag's 10-volume Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science, and is on the editorial board of two physics journals.

On the right-brained side, and both by temperament and inner muse, Andy is a fine-art black-and-white photographer, and has been one for far longer than his Ph.D. gives him any right to claim an ownership by physics. He has delighted in taking pictures ever since his parents surprised him on his 10th birthday with a Polaroid camera. Andy has won numerous awards (in both print and on-line juried contests), has exhibited in many juried solo and group shows, appeared in Lenswork (a preeminent fine-art journal of black and white photography), Focus magazine, both U.S. and U.K. Black & White magazines, and won a photo-magazine sponsored book contest. He has received multiple awards at the prestigious Black and White Spider Awards, and was one of the founding juried members of Lorton Art's Photography Workshop (in Lorton, VA). In 2010, Andy's work was featured (alongside two other artists) in a four month exhibit at the American Center for Physics (in College Park, MD).

More About the Series

This series of monthly talks is sponsored by the Torpedo Factory Artists’ Association, the Alexandria Archaeological Commission, and the Morrison House Hotel. The talks take place on the first Tuesday of each month. Cocktails will be available for purchase through The Grille at Morrison House Hotel, and dinner reservations can be made for guests who would like to continue their experience following the event.

About Morrison House

The Morrison House, a Kimpton Hotel, is an elegant boutique hotel located in the heart of Old Town, Alexandria. Named an outstanding hotel on Condé Nast Traveler’s 2008 Gold List, the hotel exhibits the romance of Europe and the charm of Early America through its decorative federalist-style reproductions. The architecture blends into the historic surrounding of Alexandria, while its warmly lit rooms, soft music, and outstanding cuisine define an experience that is graceful and effortless. The AAA Four Diamond property also features The Grille, an intimate restaurant that serves a menu of relaxed American fine dining. The hotel is located at 116 South Alfred Street, Alexandria, VA 22314, (703) 838-8000.

Solitary Patterns

2011-07-16T17:32:00.002-05:00

"The interpretation of our reality

through patterns not our own,

serves only to make us ever more unknown,

ever less free, ever more solitary."

— Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Author (1927 - )

Evidence of Mutability

2011-07-15T21:35:00.004-05:00

"Through falling from its previous function, and thus outliving the use originally conferred upon it, the ruin transgresses and subverts our everyday encounter with space and place. In the space of order and regulation, boundaries are delimited and linear. Being in place means knowing the limits of that place. So long as those limits are respected, then indeterminacy is evaded and the impression of space as productive can be maintained. At the same time, urban space undergoes domestication until it gathers a sense of how it ought to be. Rendering its structural properties apparently a priori, the space for malleability automatically assumes a deviant quality. If delimited space is productive, then space which broaches those boundaries will be termed wasted or otherwise expendable. In the ruin, the elements of waste and marginalization are crystallized...what was once built to testify to a singular and eternal present becomes the symbol and proof of its mutability."

- Dylan Trigg

The Aesthetics of Decay

"Straining to win the sky..."

2011-07-10T11:54:00.005-05:00

"The tree is more

than first a seed,

then a stem,

then a living trunk,

and then dead timber.

The tree is a slow,

enduring force straining

to win the sky."

- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

(1900 - 1944)

"The tree which moves

some to tears of joy

is in the eyes of others

only a green thing which

stands in their way."

- William Blake

(1757 - 1827)

Emancipation of Mind

2011-07-09T15:01:00.005-05:00

"Abstraction is real,

probably more real than nature.

I prefer to see with closed eyes."

- Joseph Albers (1888 - 1976)

"Abstraction allows man to see

with his mind what he cannot

physically see with his eyes...

Abstract art enables the artist

to perceive beyond the tangible,

to extract the infinite out of the finite.

It is the emancipation of the mind.

It is an explosion into unknown areas."

- Arshile Gorky

(1904 - 1948)

"Photographing the Photographer" Diptychs

2011-06-29T20:10:00.016-05:00

"The universe as we know it

is a joint product of the

observer and the observed.”

- Teilhard de Chardin

Philosopher / Mystic

(1881 - 1955)

While looking over some old photos (going back to trips to Scotland in 2009 and Greece in 2008), I ran across an interesting set of pictures taken by my wife that I turned into what I call PPDs, or "Photographing the Photographer" Diptychs. My wife, an avid videographer and occasional still photographer, took a series of images showing yours truly in the act of "doing" photography.

Some of her photos contain "me" only in the sense that I am somewhere in the picture, but the shot itself is focused on something else; a landscape, our rental car, a hotel, the front of a restaurant, whatever. But many of them are (as my wife confessed) deliberately focused on my (not always elegant) photo machinations: my scurrying to and fro like a frenzied zombie, climbing, prowling, bending, scrunching up like a pretzel, maneuvering my body and tripod for decent angles. A few actually catch me in the "act" of going click.

For many of these I was able to find and match the "shot" I was capturing (or a shot taken at nearly the same place and time) with the shot my wife has of me doing so. I made a few diptychs to show my wife and friends, who all enjoyed them, commenting that the diptychs reveal something not normally seen, or appreciated.

The diptychs show two different - but obviously correlated - experiences by two different people of ostensibly the same "experience" (almost the same). While my wife and I were obviously both at the same place and time, we were looking at the world from our own (not quite identical) local reference frames and slightly different perspectives: she, as an empathic observer of "life (in this case, her husband's) in environment," and I, as landscape photographer immersed in Scotland's innate physical beauty. To my eyes, our respective images of a given time and place, combined in diptych form, achieve an interesting transcendent synergy. While neither image, if considered alone, shows anything more than it does by itself, when reflected upon simultaneously with its partner provides a tangibly more meaningful, deeper glimpse of our shared experience.

I have posted a small portfolio of ten such "Photographing the Photographer" Diptychs (8 from Scotland, 2 from Greece); if nothing else, it gave me an opportunity to revisit some of the many spectacular sights and visual delights my wife and I have been privileged to see. It also gives an opportunity to those of you (you know who you are ;-) who have, from time to time, seen a bespectacled photographer bent over a tripod somewhere, seemingly trained at nothing in particular, and been puzzled about just what this bespectacled photographer is looking at? My wife has kindly provided an answer.

Churchville Photo Club Talk Slides

2011-06-25T10:21:00.027-05:00

This is a short note intended mainly to provide a link to the slides (about 5 MB, Adobe pdf) I used for a talk I gave on June 20 to the Churchville Photo Club in Pennsylvania.

My presentation used selected images and portfolios to illustrate (and give at least some credence to the sincerity of) my ongoing journey toward self-discovery as shaped by physics, tao, and photography.

I'd like to thank the club's president, Felix Gomes, and Vice President, Marty Golin, for their kind invite and hospitality; and all the attendees who endured not just the 2+ hours worth of (what must surely have been less than completely intelligible) "babble-speak" about the philosophical dimensions of fine-art photography, but did so in a non air conditioned room that barely shielded all those enclosed within from the 90+ deg(F) heat and 90% humidity outside. (By the time I finished, I felt - and looked - as though I had just escaped from an unsupervised sauna set to an inhuman "Danger: lethally hot and humid" setting!).

But while the conditions were far from ideal, the venue itself - nestled within a wonderful nature center about an hours' drive from Philadelphia - could not have been more idyllic. My 12 yo son, an avid naturalist, and I arrived about an hour early, and had an opportunity to walk the grounds and just revel in the quiet gentle ambiance of the center. We both promised to return here for some quality time whenever the opportunity for such a trip next arises: he, to just explore and look for insects and frogs; his dad to train his "other eye" on the beauty of the park (I was sans camera gear for this entire trip, and felt, as all photographers do, considerably less than whole).

Later that evening, and after my talk (that I was happily surprised to see my son sit through in its entirety; this was the first time my son had heard me speak on photography - his take: "Not bad, dad." I'll take it ;-), he and I shared a magical moment of shared bonding, punctuated by a few hugs and a hint of a tear or two on our cheeks. And this experience had nothing at all to do with my talk!

After many handshakes, discussions, and chats with people as we all made our way to our cars - I should mention that my talk ended fairly late, way after sunset - the last car except ours finally left, and my son and I turned to our own car parked in a corner. At this point, it was essentially pitch black, with but an insignificant light some distance away. As our eyes adjusted to the dark...

...we both froze in our tracks; jaws dropped. An otherwordly event was unfolding before our eyes. I briefly entertained the scary thought that I must be having a seizure! There, in front of us - to the sides; all around us - were more fire flies than my son and I have likely seen in all our combined years on this planet! Clusters and clusters of hundreds upon hundreds of fireflies; flying, spiraling, blinking, flashing, and - collectively - putting on a dazzling fourth-of-July-like display that would put to shame (as my son later described) any fourth-of-July show that we'd ever seen.

My son and I just sat in revery on the grass, not speaking, not thinking; mindlessly - dare I say Tao or Zen-like? - absorbed in one of nature's wondrous dances. After 20 minutes or so, my son turned to me to give a hug, and said, "Dad, I'll never, ever forgot this day!" (And neither will his dad :-)

Luray Caverns Portfolio

2011-05-22T10:24:00.007-05:00

LURAY CAVERNS

As Above, So Below...

By Andy Ilachinski

Book Preview

This is a short note to announce the availability of my self-published portfolio of 66 black and white images from a photo-shoot at Luray Caverns (in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley). I have written about my adventure there in posts a couple of weeks ago: here are links to part 1, part 2, and part 3. A mini on-line portfolio of 16 select images is also available here.

I will always remember my experience in Luray as (the title of my first blog entry about it suggests was) a joyous meditation in a subterranean cosmos. Luray is truly an otherwordly place, particularly so when (as I was privileged to be, by the generosity of the Luray staff, to whom the book is dedicated) one is an almost lone observer, displaced and cocooned in time and space. Motion and sound are nonexistent, except for the eerie echoes of the "plip-plops" of water droplets slowly, ever so slowly, adding to Luray's vast storehouse of stalactite / stalagmite forms); one's own breathing is the only reminder of "life on the outside." Alone, wandering around Luray's preternaturally beautiful underground vistas of rock and space, it is easy to forget one's normal bearings in space and time. It is, in the end, a timeless void of mystery and wonder.

Thank you, Luray, for your kind hospitality in welcoming this awed photographer (and amateur philosopher of life)!

It's Not About the Images

2011-05-17T18:35:00.005-05:00

While there is perhaps

a province in which the

photograph can tell us

nothing more than what

we see with our own eyes,

there is another in which

it proves to us how

little our eyes

permit us to see.

- Dorothea Lange

(1895 - 1965)

"Writing is not about words.

Painting is not about pigments.

Music is not about tones.

As long as photographers

insist that photography

is about photographs,

the art is limited

and self-containing."

- Brooks Jensen

Lenswork

(Issue 18, Summer 1997)

Quiet Mind

2011-05-14T17:54:00.004-05:00

"Learn to be silent.

Let your quiet mind

listen and absorb."

- Pythagoras

“Only in quiet waters things

mirror themselves undistorted.

Only in a quiet mind is

adequate perception

of the world.”

- Hans Margolius

Aphorisms on ethics (1955)

Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees

2011-05-13T20:42:00.005-05:00

"There is simply no real separation line,

only an intellectual one,

between the object and its time-environment.

They are completely interlocking:

nothing can exist in the world

independent of all the other things in the world."

- Robert Irwin

Artist (1928 - )

Self-Same Distinctions

2011-05-08T12:10:00.006-05:00

"A monk once asked Shao-shan,

'Is there any phrase which

is neither right or wrong?'

Shao-shan answered,

'A piece of white cloud

does not show any ugliness.'"

- Shao-shan's Phrase koan

"Where others dwell,

I do not dwell.

Where others go,

I do not go.

This does not mean to

refuse association with others;

I only want to make

black and white distinct.""

- Pai-yun's Black and White koan

Ref: The Iron Flute: 100 Zen Koan

Nature's Dance

2011-05-01T20:05:00.007-05:00

"O body swayed to music,

O brightening glance,

How can we know the dancer

from the dance?"

- William Butler Yeats

(1865 - 1939)

"The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflection; the water has no mind to receive their image... the general tendency of the Western mind is to feel that we do not really understand what we cannot represent, what we cannot communicate by linear signs - by thinking. We are like the "wallflower" who cannot learn a dance unless someone draws him a diagram of the steps."

- Alan Watts

The Way of Zen

Postscript: fans of Alan Watts will want to check out the new Alan Watts documentary film In The Way, that recently got "kickstarted" on kickstarter.com. Can't wait for the release!

Stillness

2011-04-30T13:25:00.005-05:00

"The practice of true reality

is simply to sit serenely

in silent introspection.

When you have fathomed this,

you cannot be turned around

by external causes

and conditions.

This empty,

wide open mind is subtly

and correctly illuminating."

- Hongzhi Zhengjue

Buddhist monk

(1091–1157)

"Men cannot see their reflection in running water, but only in still water. Only that which is itself still can still the seekers of stillness...if water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind! The mind of the sage, being in repose, becomes the mirror of the universe."

- Chuang Tzu

(4th century BCE)

Eternity

2011-04-28T18:41:00.002-05:00

"Underneath the superficial self, which pays attention to this and that, there is another self more really us than I. And the more you become aware of the unknown self — if you become aware of it — the more you realize that it is inseparably connected with everything else that is. You are a function of this total galaxy, bounded by the Milky Way, and this galaxy is a function of all other galaxies. You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes. You look and look, and one day you are going to wake up and say, "Why, that's me!" And in knowing that, you know that you never die. You are the eternal thing that comes and goes that appears — now as John Jones, now as Mary Smith, now as Betty Brown — and so it goes, forever and ever and ever."

- Alan Watts

(1915 - 1973)

“Our theories of the eternal

are as valuable as are

those which a chick

which has not broken

its way through its shell

might form of

the outside world.”

- Gautama Siddharta

(563-483 B.C.)

Stones and Percepions

2011-04-26T19:53:00.003-05:00

"It may seem ironic or contradictory

that detailed pictures of so-called

reality become vehicles for moving

us beyond ordinary perceptions."

- Duane Pebbles

"Bells and stones have voices,

but unless they are struck,

they will not sound."

- Chuang Tzu

Inner Depth

2011-04-25T21:35:00.006-05:00

"The inner - what is it?

if not intensified sky ..."

- Rainer Maria Rilke

(1875 - 1926)

"Deep in the mountain

is an old pond.

Deep or shallow,

its bottom has never been seen."

- John Daido Loori

(1931 - 2009)

Anicca / Mi rtag pa / Mujō

2011-04-14T21:43:00.004-05:00

"We are like the spider.

We weave our life and

then move along in it.

We are like the dreamer

who dreams and then

lives in the dream.

This is true for

the entire universe."

- Upanishads

"All formations are transient (anicca)"

- Buddha Sakyamuni
(563 - 483 B.C)

Energy

2011-04-13T21:18:00.003-05:00

"In Aboriginal philosophy,

existence consists of energy.

All things are animate,

imbued with spirit

and in constant motion...

[this] leads to a holistic

and cyclical view of the world."

- Marie Battiste

Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision

"The pulse of life

demands an unendng

stream of vital energy

to keep it going."

- Marija Gimbutas

The Language of the Goddess

Snowflakes and Zen

2011-04-10T15:27:00.003-05:00

"No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place."

-Zen proverb

Monk: "What is Zen?"

Tosu (Zen Master): "Zen."

- Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki

Zen and Japanese Culture

Nice Shots, But Where's the Color?

2011-04-07T18:42:00.021-05:00

"The prejudice many photographers have against colour photography comes from not thinking of colour as form. You can say things with colour that can’t be said in black and white… Those who say that colour will eventually replace black and white are talking nonsense. The two do not compete with each other. They are different means to different ends." - Edward Weston

My mom has a habit of asking disarmingly "simple" questions (which usually have "simple" answers, but only after some thought has gone into addressing them). A while back, she asked me why I tend to take series of pictures rather than individual photos (that post led me to ponder the steps that all artists pass through on the way to "self-discovery"). Well, fresh on the heels of my one-day photo-safari at Luray Caverns, and after showing my mom a few early drafts of processed images, my mom came back with: "They're nice, Andy, but where is the color?"

This time, though, since the general question of color vs. black and white has been on my mind as I was preparing slides for a presentation, I was at least ready with a semblance of a real answer; and it goes to the heart of the basic difference between the forms of photography. Interestingly, the seed of the answer I gave my mom (and am now summarizing) was in my mom's own follow-up to the first part of her question. When I told her the "color" of the caverns was effectively a quasi-mono-tonal "orange," she quickly added, "But Andy, you had some beautiful orange abstracts recently, and they were all in color!" She was referring to my recent series of synesthetic landscapes, which are indeed all in color; this one for example:

So why is this in color and the caverns in black and white? The "simple" answer is that it has everything to do with intent. The whole point of the synesthetic landscape series is to communicate a certain aesthetic of color. These abstracts are not about any "thing"; rather, they are all about the tonal distributions of the colors that they depict. While one is always free to convert to black and white... here is an example of one conversion of the above color shot:

...doing so destroys the very essence of what I took the shot to convey; namely color! This is not to suggest that some viewers (including my mom, though in this case, regarding my colorful "synesthetic landscapes," I know she agrees with me) might not find the black and white version preferable - aesthetics, as we all know, is not an objective measure - just that the color version of this particular image (and others in the same series) is the best exemplar of what my intent was in crafting the photo.

Now, what about the black and white picture of Pluto's Chasm shown above (another view appears in my first post about Luray)? First, in truth, it is not a black and white photo, as I add a subtle warm duotone to all of my photos (which you can see for yourself by loading the image in any image viewer and slowly cranking up the saturation). For the record, my mom didn't "buy" my "it's not really a black and white photo" answer ;-) So, let's take a peek at what the same image might look like in color:

Again, apart from comparing individual aesthetics (you may prefer the color to the duotoned version, or you may not like either image), the point I made to my mom is that as far as my cavern portfolio is concerned, my intent is to communicate certain aesthetic qualities regarding tones, shapes, and textures. The rather drab monotone-like, all-pervasive orange that permeates the "color" image does nothing (for me) in this context, apart from likely diluting a viewer's attention from what otherwise would be her sole focus; namely, the tones, shapes, and textures. In short, color is an unwanted visual distraction (and a preattentive one at that, meaning that we cannot choose to not see it, as it is processed automatically by our brain's primary visual cortex). Thus, color - in this case (from my - the photographer's - point of view) adds nothing essential to the intended aesthetic meaning of the photograph.

Of course, in the end, how an image is viewed (and interpreted) is always a matter of personal taste and predilections. I suppose, one could (as an artist) provide a "multiverse" of aesthetic possibilities to viewers (generating not one image but dozens, hundreds, or even millions!... by creating versions in color, black and white, solarizations, alternative processes, photoshopped abstractions, etc.), thereby maximizing the probability that any given viewer will find an attractive image buried somewhere within the pile of images put on display. But that entails moving away from art as conceived, practiced, and crafted by the photographer (and the photographer's own, unique aesthetic vision) to another kind of "meta-art" that depends on the aesthetic choices of the viewer;-)

Luray Cavern Abstracts

2011-04-05T20:00:00.009-05:00

"Into the dark beyond all light

we pray to come,

through not seeing and not knowing,

to see and to know,

that beyond sight and knowledge,

itself; neither seeing nor knowing."

- Dionysius the Areopagite

"Any man working with the medium

sooner or later impinges,

merges into, fuses with

the fringes of mysticism."

- Minor White

Luray Caverns Part III: a Harmony of Contrasts

2011-04-03T12:46:00.016-05:00

"...an aesthetic perspective is quite at home in the realm of contradictions, for its very nature allows it to transform them into a harmony of contrasts...value entails a synthesis of complexity with order, novelty with continuity, nuance with harmony, richness with stability...the cosmos is such an aesthetic reality. Both in its constituent occasions and in its overall reality the universe is a process of synthesizing and unifying its composite aspects into novel moments of present aesthetic "enjoyment." "

- John F. Haught, Theologian

This is the third installment of a series of blog commentaries on my recent day-long sojourn into the subterranean wonders of Luray Caverns, in northern Virginia (the first two parts are here and here, respectively). In part II I discussed how I have resolved to deal with - though have not yet "solved" - the "problem" of extreme contrasts of light and form.

What makes the caverns unusual, from a compositional perspective, is not just that the contrasts that are there are so strong (and that, really, visually define how the caverns appear to visitors), but that they are both strong and fixed. The photographer's ability to craft an image is thus constrained in two important dimensions of the (typically much more forgiving and malleable) aesthetic space.

Of course, the photographer still has to journey through the familiar landscape of possibilities and aesthetic design decisions: what to focus on, which forms to include, exclude and/or emphasize, what depth of field to use, what tonal ranges to manipulate in what way in photoshop, what to sharpen and what to leave alone (or blur), etc. But the object of this exercise - the "real world" studio in which the original image is recorded; i.e., the cave - is itself fixed and unchanging. This paradoxically renders the aesthetic choices both easier and harder to make.

Aesthetic choices are easier to make in caves because you are assured of the fact that what is front of the lens now is exactly what was there a moment, or hour, or day, ... before! Whether you turn away for a moment or walk away and come back hours later (assuming the caverns have not yet closed for the night), the "image" you first trained your camera on is still there, identical in every way to the first time you framed it. You can "lose your way" so to speak, and always backtrack to "correct" any errors in judgement, or refine a composition by just a bit, able to fully trust in the fact that "everything will be as it was" except for whatever small nudge up or down or to the left you choose to make now. You are, in fact, traversing a completely unchanging reality (at least in limited timeframes, as new deposits accumulate at the rate of roughly one cubic inch every ~120 years or so); this only adds to the surreal feel of wandering around in the caves - a feeling that is especially strong when wandering around alone.

Aesthetic choices are harder to make in caves because one of the most frequently used tools for "finding the best image" - namely, the ability to simply wait for the right conditions - does not apply. Indeed, part of my meditative state that the title of this series of blog entries alludes to (Joyful Medidations...) was induced by an incessant, semi-conscious, whispering to myself of the mantra "ciwis, ciwis, ciwis, ..." (meaning, the "cave is what it is";-) Waxing a bit philosophical, one can say that caves fuse time and space; insofar as they are (implicitly) expressed by - and compel the viewer to experience as - the spatial dimensions alone. Time is rendered inert and irrelevant. Since I cannot totally separate the left (physics) and right (photography) parts of my brain - even when out and about taking photographs! - I often found myself musing about the idea of how the caves are wonderful way to train oneself to imagine what a totally timeless physics might look like, in which reality consists of an uncountably large set of interlocked slices of "nows" (see Julian Barbour's The End of Time).

As I write this entry, I've completed a preliminary look at the 20+GB worth of raw files I recorded in Luray caverns. The aesthetic gestalt that is slowly self-organizing in my mind, is that of a "harmony of contrasts." Interestingly, and perhaps fittingly, as well, this expressive phrase happens also to be the title of my dad's first posthumous art exhibit in Taganrog, Russia; he and I, it seems, still manage to find ways to connect in the timeless realm ;-) In the first page of the flyer for my dad's exhibit (shown below), "Гармония контрастов" is Russian for Harmony of Contrasts:

Joyful Meditations in a Subterranean Cosmos: Part II

2011-03-29T17:28:00.031-05:00

“Three Rules of Work:

Out of clutter find simplicity;

From discord find harmony;

In the middle of difficulty

lies opportunity.”

- Albert Einstein

As a follow-on to my previous entry on my recent day-long photo excursion to Luray Caverns in northern Virginia, I'd like to make a few remarks about the aesthetics of capturing the caverns in a photograph, and - ultimately - a fine-art print. The short version is that it is not easy!

There are several reasons for this: (1) light (as in "lack of control over"), (2) contrast (as in "there is too much of it"), and (3) innate dissonance (between everything and everything else that consists of light and form;-). As these are all interrelated, I'll discuss them as a group. Light, arguably the single most important component of any photographer's repertoire of "tools," is in this case unnatural (as it is due solely to the intensely locally bright orange tungsten lights), imposed (since it is installed and fixed in place by the park engineers), and fixed (because it is either on or off, never in any "in between" state or alternate projection angle). Thus, the photographer must deal with the lighting conditions as they are defined in situ; in particular, this means that there is no opportunity to "wait for the right light." One might argue, of course, that this is a general quandary all photographers find themselves in; we always "look for" shots, no matter the environment. But what renders this a particularly difficult compositional problem in a cavern is the second reason I've cited for why this task is difficult, namely contrast.

Luray Caverns' lights are bright; very bright; sometimes blindingly bright! And are often focused on relatively small patches of stalactites (dripstone formations that hang from the ceiling) and/or stalagmites (that build from the floor upwards). Again, while contrast is generally a good thing (certainly for black and white photography) and thus not necessarily a problem ("Well Andy, just find the blindingly brightly lit patches you happen to like!"), it can be a problem - certainly an aesthetic one - if what one is ultimately after is not finding the "best" composition that minimizes the impact of brightly lit patches, but one that best respects the totality of forms - including but not restricted to those both defined and hidden by lights and shadows. While visiting Santorini, Greece in 2008 with my wife, I also had to deal with strong contrasts, but at least there the contrasts were predictably variable. Since their strength and location changed throughout the day, I effectively had a degree of control over them; for example, I could decide when and where to set up my tripod (or just wait for the best conditions to arise). In Luray - and, I suspect, all other "public" caverns - there is simply too much fixed contrast to make this possible.

It was extremely difficult to find pleasing compositions of any forms larger than human-sized chunks simply because of the dizzying array of competing light sources. In those instances where I was able to find a pleasing composition of larger and more widely spaced elements (such as in the example that appears at the top of this blog entry, which is a panorama than spans about 100 ft from left to right), my post-processing in photoshop involved many more layers of local dodging and burning than is my norm. Mind you, this is not a complaint; it is merely an observation of one aspect of what makes photographing caverns difficult; difficult compositionally, and - even more so - tonally.

The last "problem" (both defined and exacerbated by the first two) is the caverns' innate dissonance. Nothing in the cavern is smooth, or smoothly varying. Not the light, not the forms, and not the textures. Indeed, the "forms" - such as they are - are best described as large to massive needles made of rock, arranged in staccato fashion throughout "rooms" that themselves range in size from smaller-than-cramped office cubicles to mini cathedrals. Far from a harmonious whole, the caverns are - at least at first sight - a visually loud cacophony of not-always-obviously correlated patterns. Everything is in contrast to - and in dissonance with - everything else in these caverns! There are certainly none of the smooth gradations of light and contour that one finds in the slot canyons of the southwest ;-) Yet, somehow, the photographer must craft a holistic harmony out of these ostensibly discordant compositional components.

So what to do? I chose (by deliberately going to the caverns) and now continue to choose (by spending even more time post-processing what I "saw" there) this experience as an opportunity to find ways of aesthetically balancing discordant parts. As Alan Watts reminds us, "...what is discord at one level of your being is harmony at another level." Yes, the forms are dissonant; yes, the lights are blindingly bright and often ill-positioned; yes, the tonal gradations all tend to yell and scream rather than sing in melodic verses; but my physics background (if not an even deeper intuition) insists that what appears, on the surface, as a confused tangle of a mess, is - at its heart - a wondrous harmony. Stay tuned...

Joyful Meditations in a Subterranean Cosmos

2011-03-27T13:30:00.024-05:00

"Meditation reveals that

the obvious place to begin

is not in some other place,

it's right here."

- Angel Kyodo Williams

Being Black: Zen and the Art of
Living with Fearlessness and Grace

People often ask me (when I am out photographing), "You must spend a lot of time doing that, eh?" To which the answer is (and this is not a cop out), yes and no. Yes - obviously - because it is a life's passion of mine, and I "think about photography" most of my waking hours, even when pouring over equations and computer code in my day job (as a quick parenthetical aside, even as seemingly a mundane and unartistic an endeavor as putting together powerpoint slides for a technical presentation involves all kinds of compositional and graphical design elements, essentially indistinguishable from the unconscious processing going on behind the scenes of a photographer's craft). No - equally as obviously, but only after a moment's worth of thought - because, in truth, I do precious little active photographing while ostensibly engaged in photography!

Allow me to explain, and set the stage for the picture you see above and what all of this has to do with meditation. As a practical matter, the time I have to devote to real photography (i.e., not quick "point and shoot" grabs, but when I am out and about on a photo safari, mindfully settling into an area, senses tuned to visual possibilities ...) is short and comes in bursts. A few hours here and there on every other weekend perhaps; certainly more when my wife and I are on vacation, or when the family is visiting relatives in different states (hence my archive of portfolios generated in Florida's beauty, which is where my in-laws live). But even then, such as when we visited Greece and Scotland, my "real photo time" was diffused among an endless (but oh so welcome!) parade of 10-15 minute long patches of time during which we parked our car somewhere beside the highway or landmark and "explored for a bit." Then it is back in the car, and the reality of an equally endless parade of pictures that might have been captured - a common lament of all photographers - until the next roadside vista. While there are exceptions to any rule, it is generally rare to have more than a handful of minutes to do photography.

Thus the context for this post, which is intended as a short meditation on the joyful day-long photo safari I was privileged to have on an otherwise nondescript mid-week day last week. Going back a few months, I finally gathered the nerve (after pondering the issue for over a year before; I am a slow ponderer ;-) to leave a comment on the website for Luray Caverns, a popular tourist attraction in northern Virginia. I would have preferred a personal email, but I couldn't find an address on their website, so settled for sending a brief note in a "comment" post. In it, I introduced myself as a "professional fine-art photographer" (after wrestling a bit over whether I can really call myself one, since photography is far - far - from paying any meaningful fraction of my bills; I rationalized that at least the "fine-art" part was correct, since what I do as a photographer is emphatically not defined by anyone's demands but my own), and inquired about the possibility of having a "few hours to myself" inside the caverns with my camera and tripod. I heard back within a week from Luray's publicist, who could not have been nicer or more generous. Provided I choose a day other than a weekend, and one that falls before the April crowd rushes in, Luray would be happy to provide a full-days worth of unencumbered photography! A piece of heaven, I thought; and I was right.

I was greeted early in the morning by a staff member (who herself could not have been nicer or more accommodating; offering just the right mix of "Can I get you anything?" with a sincere "I'll leave you to your work" - it was not work, of course, but I guess carrying around two tripods, a bag with two DSLRs, four lenses, a speedlight, a portable drive for backup, a notebook, and an iPad, looked like it was work;-), led into the caverns, asked to wait a bit until all the lights were turned on (which took but a few moments), and then - music to a photographer's ears - told that "the caverns are all yours!" I essentially had the run of the place all to myself from 9:00am to about 5:40pm or so, armed only with a small bottle of water and a package of trail mix from Starbucks). There was a steady but quickly disappearing stream of visitors every hour or so; but they mostly hung around for a few minutes before moving on and out of eye and earshot. All told, I had over 8-1/2 hours of essentially uninterrupted "quality photography time" in the caverns; easily the longest such stretch I've had in over a decade. In a word, and I'm choosing the word carefully, Wow!

At the end of the day I was utterly exhausted (more so physically than psychically, as the strain of crouching and bending my 50 year old body in odd positions for "just the right" angle eventually took it's toll on every joint and muscle whose toll could be taken), but felt exhilarated; my inner state can best be described as a profoundly deep joyous inner calm. The kind of feeling one gets when one has accomplished exactly what one has set out to do; not to produce something, per se (the quality of which I am as yet unsure, as I have yet to start on the mountain - well, all 800+ images of a mountain - of post-processing work that awaits me in photoshop), but to simply engage in the creative process. And engaged I was. I will not soon forget these joyful day-long meditations on the visual delights I found in the subterranean cosmos known as Luray Caverns!

Gates and Journeys

2011-03-26T17:48:00.005-05:00

"Those who seek the truth by means of intellect and learning only get further and further away from it. Not till your thoughts cease all their branching here and there, not till you abandon all thoughts of seeking for something, not till your mind is motionless as wood or stone, will you be on the right road to the Gate." - Huang Po

"The longest journey

begins with a single step."

- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Beauty and Wonder

2011-03-18T10:23:00.005-05:00

"Both the grand and
the intimate aspects of
nature can be revealed in
the expressive photograph.
Both can stir enduring
affirmations and discoveries,
and can surely help
the spectator in his search
for identification with the
vast world of natural beauty and
the wonder surrounding him."
- Ansel Adams
(1902-1984)

"Beauty is eternity gazing
at itself in a mirror."
- Kahlil Gibran
(1883-1931)

Self-Assembled Interdependence

2011-03-13T21:53:00.009-05:00

“The farther and more deeply

we penetrate into matter,

by means of increasingly

powerful methods,

the more we are confounded by

the interdependence of its parts...

It is impossible to cut into the network,

to isolate a portion without it becoming

frayed and unravelled at all its edges.”

- Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

Philosopher

(1881-1955)

“There is a constant
and intimate contact
among the things that coexist
and coevolve in the universe,

a sharing of bonds
and messages that

makes reality into a
stupendous network of
interaction and communication.”

— Ervin Laszlo

Systems Theorist
(1932 - )

Seeing Order by Forgetting Names

2011-03-06T15:53:00.004-05:00

"When I make a photograph
I want it to be an
altogether new object,
complete and self-contained,
whose basic condition is order;
Unlike the world of events and actions,
whose permanent condition is
change and disorder."
- Aaron Siskind
Photographer
(1903 - 1991)

"To see is to forget
the name of the
thing one sees."
- Paul Valery
Poet / Philosopher
(1871 - 1945)

Meta-Musings on my B&W Photography Workshop

2011-03-03T19:25:00.032-05:00

The graphic illustration you see above is a wonderful visual depiction of some of the key differences between how the left (analytical, logical) and right (creative, artistic) sides of our brain process information (it is part of a Mercedes-Benz advertising campaign). The point of my posting this image is not to engage in a dialectic on what is known, unknown, or merely believed about how the brain functions (though the popular distinctions are largely correct, the functional division is not nearly as "clear cut" as they purport, and much is still shrouded in mystery); rather it is to simply show it (because I think it is a really beautiful visualization) and to use it as a conceptual backdrop to asking myself a "meta" question about my experience of giving the B&W photography lecture this past saturday: "Just what did I actually convey about doing black and white fine-art photography?"

Let me go back a step, and begin again by recalling a chat I had with an artist friend at work (who was unable to attend my talk). When we met on the monday after my lecture, and as we sipped coffee together while viewing the slides I had used, my friend made the kind comment, "Andy, you've done an incredible job at elucidating exactly what's on your mind when you're out taking photos...what you look for, what the best compositions are, how to put feeling into your shots. Just beautifully done!" While his praise means a lot (my friend is a prodigiously gifted artist, and his "eye" is second to none), and I thanked him for his kind words, my immediate reaction - and the origin of this blog entry - was a giggle, followed by outright laughter.

It struck me that, far from elucidating exactly what is on my mind when I take pictures, there is nothing on my slides that speaks about what is really on my mind - on a conscious level (of which there is, in truth, very little) - as I take pictures (which is not to take anything away from the information about photography that the slides provide). Nor, I believe, can anyone expect there to be. This point is both a simple (almost trivial) one, and very subtle (possibly deeply subtle): when I am out with my camera, I am emphatically not thinking about shapes, or tones, or patterns, or textures, or any of the other things I talked about during my talk. Of course, I am mindful of light, of lines, of shadows, of planes of focus, and of a myriad other things that go into the "gestalt" of the process, but am so entirely on an unconscious, preattentive level. I've written about this timeless-state experience before, and of the mystery that surrounds it, psychologically, cognitively, and spiritually. But my talk has made me appreciate another aspect of this experience, and how it may contain certain universal truths about engaging ourselves on any boundary between cognition and artful creation.

In my case, the boundary was cognizing about photography; or, more precisely, attempting to communicate something about what "doing photography" is about by describing what one end result is (namely mine) of having done it. As a speaker, I was allowed (rather, constrained) to use only words, images, and short animations to convey something - i.e., cognize about such concepts as tone, shapes, texture, principles of design, and so on - that describes what "doing photography" is about. Only that's impossible!

The speaker's constraint is rendered inert at best, and self-negating at worst; and - if you think about - assumes this Pythonesque-level absurd form: "You are allowed to use any and all means of expression except those that are equivalent to what you are trying to describe." More succinctly, you can only use left-brain cognitions to convey right-brain creations. Even more simply: "Explain photography by not doing photography." Absurd. DOA.

I cannot "explain" photography using words (or images, or even giving an impromptu "demo" of what it's like for me to go out and take pictures) any more than a chef can "explain" what making a gourmet meal is really like (or what is on her "mind" as she prepares one); or any more than Baryshnikov can explain what is on his mind when he dances, or what "dancing is like" in general. One cannot convey anything meaningful about any process of "doing" via lifeless "symbols of doing," however elegant their form and manner of presentation.

Of course, the Zen masters have known this all along. For that is why they have long "taught" by not teaching. The master can point the student toward the path; he can supply the shoes, the books, the camera and lenses, as it were, even offer hints on where to look, why and how to look, give advise on what do afterwrads when the images are viewed in a darkroom or computer; but no words, no teaching, no "follow these easy steps" tutorials, will ever - ever - convey the essence of what it is like to experience what stirs in your soul as your finger clicks your camera's shutter.

"The purpose of a fishtrap is to catch fish, and when the fish are caught, the trap is forgotten. The purpose of a rabbit snare is to catch rabbits. When the rabbits are caught, the snare is forgotten. The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to." - Chuang Tzu

You will know that you are "doing photography" precisely when you are out and about with your camera (or just with your I's eye), with nary a thought in your head, or memory of someone pestering you with a bunch of slides about tone, light, gestalt, .... pontificating on how photography is done ;-)

Postscript: My wife reminded me of an incredible (and incredibly apropos) presentation by Jill Bolte Taylor at TED. Taylor is a neuroanatomist, and author of Stroke of Insight, which describes her experience of living through a massive stroke (!)

B&W Photograph Workshop II

2011-03-02T19:52:00.014-05:00

This is just a quick note as a follow-up on the B&W talk I gave at Belnavis Art Gallery & Custom Framing in Springfield, VA on Feb 26; and to announce that I will be giving a second (repeat performance) at the same gallery on Saturday, March 26 (same time: 1:30 - 3:30 pm).

Though fewer people showed up than either Michelle (the gallery owner) and I had hoped for, I want to thank those that did. However, the intimacy of the small group made for a great informal class, where lots of ideas were discussed back and forth. Indeed, by group request, the "2 hour" class effortlessly grew to 3 hours, and all involved enjoyed the collective musings.

Speaking for myself, I was yet again reminded of the truth behind the cliche-ridden "time flies..." adage. Without taking so much as a minute's worth of a break during the entire session, I was shocked when I glanced at my watch near the 2 hour mark to discover that the class was ostensibly over! When one is truly in Mihály Csíkszentmihályi's flow, time stops, and the world assumes both a simpler and deeper local structure. It is also the meta-pattern that connects all art and creative acts; whether they consist of being out with one's camera, oblivious to everyone and everything save that which one's "I/eye" is drawn to, or speaking about a subject one is impassioned about (in my case, photography and art) with a group of people who are just as interested. Art is its own wellspring of energy and nourishment.

Here is the outline of topics covered in my talk, along with the approximate number of slides for each subject (most slides have multiple transition elements, so that "one page" in reality ranges from a single page to, in some cases, eight or more):

All of you, dear readers, who are within earshot and/or a stone's throw away, remember... I give a repeat performance at Belnavis Art Gallery & Custom Framing in Springfield, VA on Saturday, March 26,1:30 - 3:30 pm. And, as before, as an added inducement to attend, I am offering the first 10 people who sign-up for the workshop - free of charge - signed copies of a portfolio / booklet I won in the British B&W Magazine's book contest a few years back, along with issue #76 of Lenswork magazine (that contains 16 exhibit-quality duotoned reprints of my Micro Worlds portfolio).

Please email Michelle, the owner of Belnavis Arts, to register as early as possible if you'd like to attend.

I'd love to see you there!

B&W Photography Workshop

2011-02-12T18:33:00.007-05:00

I am delighted to announce an upcoming workshop I'll be conducting on black and white photography. It will be held on Saturday, Feb. 26th, 1:30pm to 3:30 pm at Belnavis Art Gallery & Custom Framing in Springfield, VA.

Geared to beginners and those with an intermediate-level understanding of photography, this will be a 2-1/2 hour class on the "art" of fine-art black and white photography. My hope is to convey the difference between taking "snapshots" and creating images of lasting value; how to "see" the world in black and white (and all the tones in between!); offer tips on how to "find" B&W images (and how to "look" as a photographer in general); how to use basic design principles to "focus" a viewer's attention; and how to take your photography to the next level (beyond "point and shoot").

As (what I hope is ;-) an added inducement to attend, I am offering the first 10 people who sign-up for the workshop - free of charge - signed copies of a portfolio / booklet I won in the British B&W Magazine's book contest a few years back, along with issue #76 of Lenswork magazine (that contains 16 exhibit-quality duotoned reprints of my Micro Worlds portfolio). Please email Michelle, the owner of Belnavis Arts, if you'd like to attend.

Hope to see you there!

Strange Loops

2011-02-11T23:10:00.003-05:00

"To make an 'I' you need meanings, and to make meanings you need perception and categories... The closing of the strange loop of human selfhood is deeply dependent upon the level-changing leap that is perception, which means categorization, and therefore, the richer and more powerful an organism's categorization equipment is, the more realized and rich will be its self. Conversely, the poorer an organism's repertoire of categories, the more impoverished will be the self, until in the limit there simply is no self at all... In the end, we self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages are little miracles of self-reference."

-Douglas Hofstadter
Consciousness Researcher
Author of Godel, Escher, Bach
(1945 - )

The Aleph

2011-02-10T20:04:00.002-05:00

"All language is a set of symbols whose use among its speakers assumes a shared past. How, then, can I translate into words the limitless Aleph, which my floundering mind can scarcely encompass? Mystics, faced with the same problem, fall back on symbols...Really, what I want to do is impossible, for any listing of an endless series is doomed to be infinitesimal. In that single gigantic instant I saw millions of acts both delightful and awful; not one of them occupied the same point in space, without overlapping or transparency...I saw, close up, unending eyes watching themselves in me as in a mirror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me...I saw the circulation of my own dark blood; I saw the coupling of love and the modification of death; I saw the Aleph from every point and angle, and in the Aleph I saw the earth and in the earth the Aleph and in the Aleph the earth; I saw my own face and my own bowels; I saw your face; and I felt dizzy and wept, for my eyes had seen that secret and conjectured object whose name is common to all men but which no man has looked upon -- the unimaginable universe."

- Jorge Luis Borges
Author / Essayist
(1899 - 1986)

Sacred Space

2011-02-09T19:17:00.002-05:00

“Sacred space is a space

that is transparent

to transcendence,
and everything within
such a space furnishes
a base for meditation,
even for the youngest child.

When you enter
through the door,
everything within such
a space is symbolic,
the whole world
is mythologized,
and spiritual life is possible.

This is a place where
you can go and feel safe
and bring forth what you are
and what you might be.

This is the place of
creative incubation.
At first you might find
that nothing happens there.
But if you have a
sacred place and use it,
you will eventually
find yourself
again and again.”

— Joseph Campbell
Mythologist / Author
(1904-1987)

Time as an Illusory River

2011-02-07T19:47:00.004-05:00

"When you touch one thing
with deep awareness,
you touch everything."
— Thich Nhat Hanh
Buddhist Monk / Author
(1926 - )

"Time is the substance
from which I am made.
Time is a river
which carries me along,
but I am the river;
it is a tiger that
devours me,
but I am the tiger;
it is a fire
that consumes me,
but I am the fire. "
- Jorge Luis Borges
Author / Essayist
(1899 - 1986)

"One"

2011-02-05T15:50:00.004-05:00

Having, with my last post, reached 200 blog entries over the seven years that I've been posting - and apropos of nothing in particular - I was curious to see what form a word cloud of my blog would take. There is a site that allows users to link to the URL of any blog (or any other web page that has an Atom or RSS feed) and then automatically generates a wordle. The wordle may be loosely tuned by selecting the font, color, visual layout, and toggling on/off the use of common words.

The resulting wordle for my blog - as of Feb 2011 - appears at the top. It is amusing to learn that - despite (or, perhaps, because of) my predilection for philosophizing, blending art and science, and general musing about all kinds of Borgesian and Kafkian realities, the most common words / phrases that fall out (i.e., are rendered in the largest font size) are, in order:

one
another
image
the whole
spiritual
part
fixed
prison
reality

As to what the cosmic significance of this particular list is, and what deeper truths it reveals - if anything - either about my past intellectual / aesthetic meanderings and/or the likelihood of specific future trajectories, I haven't a clue ;-)

Time, Space, and Mystery

2011-02-04T21:38:00.005-05:00

“A human being is part of the
whole called by us a universe,
a part limited in time and space.

He experiences himself,
his thoughts and his feelings,
as something separate
from the rest,
a kind of optical delusion
of his consciousness.

This delusion is a kind
of prison for us;
it restricts us to our
personal decisions and our
affections to a few
persons nearest to us.

Our task must be to free
ourselves from this prison by
widening our circle of
compassion to embrace
all living creatures and the
whole of nature of its beauty.”
—Albert Einstein
(1879 - 1955)

“We know that behind every image revealed there is another image more faithful to reality, and in the back of that image there is another, and yet another behind the last one, and so on, up to the true image of that absolute, mysterious reality that no one will ever see.”

— Michelangelo Antonioni
Film Director
(1912 - 2007)

Order and Simplicity

2011-02-03T19:27:00.005-05:00

"The obvious is that
which is never seen
until someone
expresses it simply."

- Khalil Gibran
Poet / Mystic
(1883 - 1931)

"Order is not pressure
which is imposed
from without,
but an equilibrium
which is set up
from within."
- Jose Ortega y Gasset
Philosopher
(1883 - 1955)

Harmony and Attunement

2011-02-02T19:27:00.005-05:00

"Broadening our attunement beyond the horizons of the individual self awakens one to the meaning encoded into existence - a kind of cognitive "super-logic" that reveals a different purpose, a larger pattern, than anything we might previously have imagined. That is exactly what a spiritual awakening is - shifting from one perspective to another, until we finally glimpse meaningfulness where our mind could not perceive it before."

- Vilayat Khan
Sufi Teacher
(1916 - 2004)

"In studying ourselves,
we find the harmony
That is our total existence.
We do not make harmony.
We do not achieve it
or gain it.
It is there - all the time.
Here we are - in the midst
of this perfect way,
and our practice is
simply to realize it
and then
To actualize it
in our everyday life..."
- Hakuyū Taizan Maezumi
Japanese Zen Rōshi
(1931 - 1995)

Patterns and Transformations

2011-01-30T14:54:00.004-05:00

"All fixed set patterns

are incapable of
adaptability or pliability.
The truth is outside
of all fixed patterns."
- Bruce Lee
(1940 - 1973)

"Our bodily food
is changed into us,
but our spiritual food
changes us into itself."
- Meister Eckhart
(1260 - 1327)

Reflections and Illusions

2011-01-29T17:35:00.005-05:00

"You have heard much of this world
yet what you seen of this world?
What is its form and substance?...
You are asleep and your vision is a dream;
all you are seeing is a mirage.
When you awake up on the morn of the last day
you will know all this to be fancy and illusion;
When you have ceased to see double,
Heaven and Earth will become transformed;
when the real sun unveils his face to ou,
the moon, the stars,and Venus will disappear;
if a ray shines on the hard rock
like wool of many colors, it drops to pieces."
-Mahmud Shabistari
Sufi Poet
(1288 - 1340)

"Reflect: is not the dreamer, sleeping or waking, one who likens dissimilar things, who puts the copy in the place of the real object?

I should certainly say that such a one was dreaming.

But take the case of the other, who recognizes the existence of absolute beauty and is able to distinguish the idea from the objects which participate in the idea, neither putting the objects in the place of the idea nor the idea in the place of the objects-- is he a dreamer, or is he awake?"

-Plato, The Republic

Boundaries, Mysteries, and Eternity

2011-01-25T21:12:00.005-05:00

"Every man takes

the limits of his
own field of vision
for the limits of the world."
-Arthur Schopenhauer
Philosopher
(1788 - 1860)

"Man is the great
mystery of God,
the microcosm or
the complete abridgement
of the whole universe...
a hieroglyphic of
eternity and time."
- Jacob Boehme
Mystic / Theologian
(1575 - 1624)

Implicate Order, Enfolded Centers

2011-01-24T19:21:00.006-05:00

"As a mountain (a whole structure) moves forward in time, old centers are preserved and new centers are generated; centers will always tend to form in such a way as to preserve and enhance previous structure. Beauty will occur without effort in any world where the wholeness is allowed to unfold smoothly and truthfully, without disturbing previously existing centers. Everything becomes a single system and a single way of understanding."

- Christopher Alexander
Architect
(1936 - )

"Because the whole is enfolded in each part, so are all other parts, in some way and to some degree... The more fundamental truth is the truth of internal relatedness - the implicate order... in this order the whole and hence all the other parts are enfolded in each part."

-David Bohm
Physicist
(1917 - 1992

Pattern of Patterns

2011-01-20T19:54:00.006-05:00

"What pattern connects
the crab to the lobster
and the orchid to the
primrose and all the four
of them to me?
And me to you? ...
The pattern which connects
is a metapattern.
It is a pattern of patterns."
- Gregory Bateson
Anthropologist
(1904 - 1980)

"A pattern of events
cannot be separated
from the space
where it occurs."
- Christopher Alexander
Architect
(1936 - )

Path of Paths

2011-01-19T19:18:00.005-05:00

"You must always keep in mind that a path is only a path. Each path is only one of a million paths. If you feel that you must now follow it, you need not stay with it under any circumstances. Any path is only a path. There is no affront to yourself or others in dropping a path if that is what your heart tells you to do. But your decision to keep on a path or to leave it must be free of fear and ambition. I caution you: look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself and yourself alone this one question. Does this path have a heart? All paths are the same. They lead nowhere. They are paths going through the brush or into the brush or under the brush of the Universe. The only question is: Does this path have a heart? If it does, then it is a good path. If it doesn’t, then it is of no use."

- Carlos Castaneda
Anthropologist / Author
(1925 - 1998)

How Many Unknown / Undiscovered Artists Walk Among Us?

2011-01-17T15:00:00.017-05:00

History is replete with lists of names and memorable biographies of the many gifted and talented artists that have graced our world. Indeed, these lists are so long and voluminous (and only growing ever more so), we may sometimes wonder if there are perhaps too many names already on them! But, of course, though not every artist is a Picasso, and not every photographer a Cartier-Bresson, each of us has our own story to tell. Still, very few of us who have - publically at least - accomplished "little" - will ever get mentioned on learned lists that include such names as Picasso and Cartier-Bresson. But what of the "Picassos" that share in Picasso's pool of talent but who no one knows by name, because the output of their creative life was / is confined but to a handful of family and friends? What of the prodigiously talented but utterly unrecognized Uber-geniuses that walk among us? As history also attests, the only real difference between "known" and "unknown" is luck.

I recently ran across a remarkable story about a nanny - and prodigiously talented but utterly unrecognized (until very recently) street photographer from the 1950s - named Vivian Maier. In 2007, real estate agent John Maloof bought a box of 30,000 of Maier's negatives for $400. Having soon realized what a "find" that box was, he has, by now, acquired over 100,000 of Maier's photographs! (only a thousand or so of which have so far been made public; see here and here for a sampling of her images). An exhibit of her work opened at the Chicago Cultural Center earlier this month. Sadly, Vivian Maier did not live to see her day; she died at age 83 in 2009.

It is hard to do justice to the quiet, soulful, graceful, and poignant (and sometimes spontaneous, funny) images that flowed from Maier's eye (and "I"). Using a Rolleiflex camera, Maier would head out into the Chicago streets on her days off as a nanny for rich North Shore clients. What she captured was nothing short of extraordinary! Her best work - IMHO (after sampling the images from the links I gave above) - approaches that of some of the "best known" street photographers of the 20th century. Her images (and overall approach) remind me of (in no particular order) Lisette Model, Walker Evans, Harry Callahan, Dorothea Lange, Robert Doisneau, Andre Kertesz, and - the more humorous ones, at least - Elliott Erwitt. I should emphasize that its not just that her images remind me of the best works by these great photographers; it's that her best work is just as good as theirs!

One image (of two boys standing side-by-side on a cobble-stone road) could arguably be inserted into a Diane Arbus portfolio with no one being the wiser. Another, of a vagabond curled up on a street, is a surrealistic fusion of human pathos and Weston's famous Pepper #30. Another (one of many!) exudes a Cartier-Bresson-like "decisive moment" feel. Still another echoes Kertesz's geometric meloncholy. One could go on and on, comparing this image to that, and illustrating how certain parts of her portfolio are similar to this photographer or that (Jacques Philippe has posted an interesting analysis of Maier's work); in the end, Maier's work is uniquely hers, and hers alone, and it is astounding in its breadth, depth, and meaning! The photo-history books, I suspect, are already being appended - and amended - with Vivian Maier's story!

I wonder, just how many other gifted artists are quietly walking - and creating extraordinary works of art - among us, unknown to all but a few lucky friends and family members?

Postscript: Click here for info about a feature-length documentary film about Vivian Maier that is in the works (for a 2012 release); the producers - John Maloof, Anthony Rydzon, and award-winning Danish documentary film maker, Lars Mortensen - are asking for pledges on Kickstarter.

The Spiritual World

2011-01-16T18:25:00.006-05:00

“The spiritual world is one single spirit who stands like unto a light behind the bodily world and who, when any single creature comes into being, shine through it like a window. According to the kind or size of the window less or more light enters the world. The light itself however remains unchanged.”

- Aziz Nasafi
Sufi Mystic

"We are born into the
world of nature;
our second birth is into
the world of spirit."
- Bhagavad Gita

Minds, Mirrors, and the Universe

2011-01-15T12:12:00.005-05:00

"The Mind like a mirror

is brightly illuminating
and knows no obstructions,
It penetrates the vast universe
to its minutest crevices;
All its contents,
multitudinous in form,
are reflected in the Mind,
Which, shining like a perfect gem,
has no surface,
nor the inside."
- Yoka Daishi
Zen Master
(665 - 713)

"Your eye has not strength enough
to gaze at the burning sun,
but you can see its burning light
by watching its reflection
mirrored in the water.

So the reflection of Absolute Being
can be viewed in the mirror of Not-Being,
for nonexistence, being opposite Reality,
instantly catches its reflection.

Know the world from end to end is a mirror;
in each atom a hundred suns are concealed.
If you pierce the heart of a single drop of water,
from it will flow a hundred clear oceans."
- Mahmud Shabistari
Sufi Poet / Mystic
(1250 - 1340)

Dreams and Phantasms

2011-01-13T19:33:00.003-05:00

“The objects of sense in the world ever changing — These we adhere to as things of reality; But in the ocean of birth and death, they drown us. How long shall we wander in this path of dreams? This world to us! Indeed seems permanent and fixed, yet after all, what is it but a road of dreams to which life after life we must perforce return?”

- Zeami Motokiyo (1363 - 1443)

Aesthetician / Playright

"All things are to be regarded as forms seen in a vision and a dream, empty of substance, un-born and without self-nature; that all things exist only by reason of a complicated network of causation which owes its rise to discrimination and attachment and which eventuates in the rise of the mind-system and its belongings and evolvements."

- Lankavatara Sutra, VII

The Castle

2011-01-12T20:35:00.003-05:00

"The young man apologized very politely for having awakened K., introduced himself as the son of the Castle steward and said:

'This village is Castle property, anybody residing or spending the night here is effectively residing or spending the night at the Castle. Nobody may do so without permission from the Count. But you have no such permission or at least you haven't shown it yet.'

K., who had half-risen and smoothed his hair, looked at the people from below and said: 'What village have I wandered into? So there is a castle here?'

'Why, of course,' the young man said slowly, while several peasants here and there shook their heads at K., 'the Castle of Count Westwest.'

'And one needs permission to spend the night here?' asked K., as though he wanted to persuade himself that he hadn't perhaps heard the previous statements in a dream.

'Permission is needed' was the reply, and this turned into crude mockery at K.'s expense when the young man, stretching out his arm, asked the landlord and the guests: 'Or perhaps permission is not needed?'

'Then I must go and get myself permission,' said K., yawning and pushing off the blanket, as though he intended to get up.

'Yes, but from whom?' asked the young man.

'From the Count,' said K., 'there doesn't seem to be any alternative.'

'Get permission from the Count, now, at midnight?' cried the young man, stepping back a pace.

'Is that not possible?' K. asked calmly. 'Then why did you wake me up?'"

-Franz Kafka (The Castle)

Stuart Sweeney's Debut Album 16:9

2011-01-08T13:48:00.025-05:00

About a year ago I received an email from Stuart Sweeney, who introduced himself as a U.K. based (and Scottish born) musician. He said that after years of working behind-the-scenes for other musicians, he was in the process of releasing a debut album of his own music and that he was looking for images to feature on the CD and album case. He asked if he could use one of the images in my Spirit & Light portfolio that both he and his wife were both strongly drawn to. After a few exchanges via email (during which an "over the pond" friendship soon emerged), and my listening to samples of (what were at the time, unmastered) tracks from the album, I quickly gave my permission.

After hearing Stuart's music, I can say unreservedly say that I am honored to be featured on this enormously talented musician's debut album, which is now available for purchase (in both physical and digital form: click here for the official order page from Stuart's label Oomff, based in Corby, Northants, UK; an mp3 version is also available directly from Amazon, which contains links to samples).

While it is always difficult to attach meaningful words to music (particularly when relying on "conventional" labels and descriptions) - one must always listen and judge for oneself; click here for sample tracks - Stuart's style is best described as ambient music, with a mix of classical, jazz, and new age (electronic / synthetic). On a more gestalt level, Stuart - as an artist - may be described as an impassioned painter of richly textured sonic landscapes.

To my ear (an untrained musician, though I used to play the piano, even before I ever touched a camera), Stuart's aural excursions touch on territories visited by Brian Eno, some early work by Klaus Schulze, and (if an analogy can be drawn between Stuart's electronic creations and the tones of the human voice) Arvo Part. But all of these are but acoustic cousins, which are useful for context but do not do service to Stuart's own creations; for Stuart has carved out a unique - and uniquely beguiling - blend of ambient textures. Each short, self-contained piece transports the listener to other worlds and ethereal dimensions. The soulful interplay between quietly developing melodic strands and rhythms, generates a moodily meditative and contemplative atmosphere. As each piece gently takes hold of your imagination, you are compelled to co-create fantastic acoustic landscapes in your mind's eye as waves of music unfold - and enfold - around you.

If I seem to speak of Stuart's music in almost reverentially spiritual terms, it is because that is the effect it has on me. For Stuart has created some of the most beautifully ethereal - and intellectually mesmerizing! - music I have heard in a long, long time. For anyone who likes to listen to ambient music, I urge you to download some samples and listen to this extraordinary new artist for yourself. Congratulations to an amazing start of what I am sure will be a stellar public musical career! And thank you Stuart for featuring one of my photos on the inside of the case, and the CD itself!

Cosmic Ripples

2011-01-07T22:44:00.005-05:00

"If a stone is thrown into a pond,
waves are produced that travel
throughout the pond.
Every wave produces effects
in every part of the pond,
resulting in some influence or other.
Similarly, the wave of individual life
through its activity produces
an influence in all fields of the cosmos."
- Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Science of Being and Art of Living

"We cannot live only for ourselves.
A thousand fibers connect us
with our fellow men;
and among those fibers,
as sympathetic threads,
our actions run as causes,
and they come back
to us as effects."

~Herman Melville

(1819 - 1891)

Polarity, Paradox, Perception

2011-01-06T18:37:00.009-05:00

"Everything is dual;
everything has poles;
everything has its pair of opposites;
like and unlike are the same;
opposites are identical in nature,
but different in degree;
extremes meet;
all truths are but half-truths;
all paradoxes may be reconciled."
- Hermes Trismegistus
(The Kybalian: A Study of the
Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece, 1908)

"Every perception is an
awareness of contrast,
of a right/wrong, is/isn’t,
bright/dark, hard/soft situation.
If this is the very nature of
awareness, any and every circumstance,
however fortunate, will have
to be experienced as a
good/bad or plus/minus
in order to be experienced at all."
- Alan Watts
In My Own Way (1972)

Ethereal Light & Color

2011-01-04T22:50:00.007-05:00

"I almost never set out to
photograph a landscape,
nor do I think of my camera
as a means of recording a mountain
or an animal unless I
absolutely need a 'record shot'.
My first thought is
always of light."
- Galen Rowell
(1940 - 2002)

"Color is the place where our
brain and the universe meet."
- Paul Klee
(1879 - 1940)

Trees as Sacred Bearers

2011-01-02T12:50:00.005-05:00

"Trees are the teachers, revealers, containers, companions, and protectors of the sacred, and our relationship to them, whether we meet them gently in a forest or, muscled and equipped, cut them down for the price of lumber, touches on our deepest values, emotions, and sense of meaning."

-Thomas Moore
The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life

"The tree bears its thousand years
as one large majestic moment."
- Rabindranath Tagore
Philosopher / Poet
(1861 - 1941)

Longing for Light

2011-01-01T17:16:00.004-05:00

"...far from light emerging gradually out of the womb of our darkness, it is the Light, existing before all else was made which, patiently, surely, eliminates our darkness. As for us creatures, of ourselves we are but emptiness and obscurity... Radiant Word, blazing Power... reach us simultaneously through all that is most immense and most inward within us and around us."

- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Philosopher (1881-1955)

"The longing for light is the longing for consciousness."
- C. G. Jung (1875 - 1961)

Smallness, Vastness, and the Mystical State

2010-12-26T18:55:00.005-05:00

"We pass into mystical states
from out of ordinary consciousness
as from a less into a more,
as from a smallness into a vastness,
and at the same time
as from an unrest to a rest.
We feel them as reconciling,
unifying states."
- William James
Variety of Religious Experience

"When we are touched by
mystic grace and allow ourselves
to enter its field without fear,
we see that we are all parts of a whole,
elements of an universal harmony,
unique, essential and sacred notes
in a divine music that everyone
and everything is playing together
with us in God and for God."
- Andrew Harvey
The Essential Mystics

"Seeing the Invisible" B&W Portfolio Available

2010-12-25T11:17:00.003-05:00

Seeing the Invisible by Andy Ilachinski Make Your Own Book

Matter, Science, and Spirit

2010-12-25T10:24:00.007-05:00

“Everyone who is seriously involved in
the pursuit of science becomes
convinced that a spirit is manifest
in the laws of the Universe —
a spirit vastly superior to that of man,
and one in the face of which we,
with our modest powers,
must feel humble."

- Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)
(from Max Jammer's Einstein and Religion,
Princeton University Press, 1999)

Parts, Matter, and Networks

2010-12-22T20:41:00.002-05:00

“The farther and more deeply
we penetrate into matter,
by means of increasingly
powerful methods,
the more we are confounded by
the interdependence of its parts...
It is impossible to cut into the network,
to isolate a portion without it becoming
frayed and unravelled at all its edges.”

— Pierre Teihard de Chardin
Philosopher (1881-1955)

Beauty, Mystery, and Truth

2010-12-21T20:16:00.003-05:00

"Now I was suddenly made aware of another world of beauty and mystery such as I had never imagined to exist, except in poetry. It was as though I had begun to see and smell and hear for the first time... I experienced an overwhelming emotion in the presence of nature, especially at evening. It began to wear a kind of sacramental character for me... I felt again the presence of an unfathomable mystery. The song of the birds, the shapes of the trees, the colours of the sunset, were so many signs of this presence, which seemed to be drawing me to itself."

- Bede Griffiths
Benedictine Monk
(1906 - 1993)

"Mystery is truth's dancing partner."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

(1749 - 1832)

Hidden Meanings

2010-12-19T11:02:00.004-05:00

"Everything we see
hides another thing,
we always want to see
what is hidden by what we see."
— Rene Magritte
(1898 - 1967 )

"Everything in the world has
a hidden meaning. . . .
Men, animals, trees, stars,
they are all hieroglyphics.
When you see them you
do not understand them.
You think they are really men,
animals, trees, stars.
It is only years later
that you understand."
- Nikos Kazantzakis
(1883 - 1957)

If the Doors of Perception..."

2010-12-18T14:55:00.007-05:00

Morpheus: I'm trying to free your mind, Neo.
But I can only show you the door.
You're the one that has to walk through it.
- Matrix (1999)

"If the doors of perception
were cleansed every thing
would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up,
till he sees all things thru'
narrow chinks of his cavern."
- William Blake (1757 - 1827)

A Great New Book on "Great Images"

2010-12-15T19:10:00.012-05:00

About 35 years ago, the late great curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in NY, John Szarkowski, published a landmark book called Looking at Photographs. Intended as "... a picture book, and its ...purpose ...to provide the material for simple delectation" (according to Szarkowski, from his own introduction to that book), it was, and is, considerably more, giving life to Szarkowski's always thoughtful ruminations about 100 pictures from MOMA's collection and food-for-thought for all aspiring photographers. Also around the same time (in 1983, shortly before his death), Ansel Adams published his Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs, in which the master provides narratives about 40 of his favorite photographs, engaging readers in the technical and aesthetic dimensions of photography. These two books are almost always found (typically, and notably, in excruciating dog-eared form!) on the bookshelves of virtually every photographer who has bought at least two books on photography!

And now - a mere 30 or so years later - comes another destined-to-be classic in the same mold, George Barr's Why Photographs Work: 52 Great Images Who Made Them, What Makes Them Special and Why.

This is not to say that there have not been similar "picture books" published in the intervening years. In truth, one could argue that there are too many, as the quality seldom approaches Szarkowski's and Adams' volumes. Certainly, very few books in this genre approach the simple, understated elegance of Barr's new book; fewer still share the same attention to detail. And seldom have I seen such a magically diverse and exquisite collection of photographs that just sing.

In what must have been a logistical nightmare of solicitation and coordination (done entirely by email), George has assembled a veritable What's What of great images (52 of them, and taken by a veritable Who's Who of today's photographers, though not all assembled here are well known; though they all will be now that the book is out!)

The idea behind the book is not to discuss "selected images" (as representative "snapshots" used to illustrate a discourse on some photographer's life's oeuvre); rather the single focus is on simply presenting - in Szarkowski's "picture book" book fashion - great images and musings about what makes them so great. And they all are! (great, that is; Kudos to George for his selective eye).

The book contains exactly one image each by 52 photographers; some famous, some becoming so, some obscure (but clearly on the rise, given the artistry of images). As George states a number of times (and makes an eloquent case for), there is something about great images that is immediately clear, without further exposition. Why this is so, a question that is often asked by those deeply interested interested in photography but who have not yet spent half-a-lifetime looking at and creating images, is where this book shines, first with George Barr's inspired commentary, followed by the photographer's own story about how his or her selected image came to be, what their creative approach consisted of, what technical and/or aesthetic difficulties they had to overcome, and so on. A brief bio of each photographer is also provided, along with email addresses and website links for interested readers to continue exploring.

The most important part of the book, apart from the commentary - namely its images - are all nicely presented on the left hand page as you open to a given photographer's "section" and are reproduced in as large a size as the book size permits (maximum of about 9 inches longest side), with about an inch margin along the sides. Indeed, with the typical ~30% Amazon discount over the official list price, it is tempting to purchase two copies, so that the images from one can be taken out and framed to hang on the wall!

Some of the photographers are familiar to me, either because I've seen their work in magazines and journals, or - in some cases - I already own a book or two of their photographs; though, in some cases, I had not seen the particular images displayed in the book. Other photographers I am less familiar with or have not heard of at all; though, in all such cases, and as a testament to George's aesthetic tastes (in selecting images for his book) and skills as a photography critic-commentator, I now intend to look up more of their works! All types of images appear: landscapes, portraits, abstracts, formally arranged, manipulations. Most are in color, but there is a generous sampling of exquisite black and white images as well.

So, are there one or two "universal" truths that emerge after reading this wonderful book? Having read the book twice, and perused it a few more, flipping back and forth, and rereading various sections, two things stand out (though perhaps somewhat implicitly; the gestalt having been assembled by me rather than as an explicit "lessons learned" that appears in the book...if I have one minor complaint, it is that I would have liked to read George's take on the "whole" in a concluding chapter; but his introduction serves the essential purpose): (1) image simplicity (one or at most a few "main" elements and/or colors) coupled with a mastery of the complex technical skills necessary for proper presentation (the camera, lens, darkroom, Photoshop, printer, etc all become "automatic" extensions of the mind/soul of photographer), and (2) mystery (the best images tend to be the ones we want to return to again and again, and those that we feel that way about tend to be the ones for which the most open - and interesting - questions remain lingering in our mind long after we last saw the image). Certainly the book itself qualifies on both counts (albeit on a slightly "meta" level); I know I will return to it again and again, sure to be rewarded with fresh insights, new stepping-stones for my own aesthetic journeys and the simple pleasure of viewing some exquisite photographs.

I can see a series of "Why great photographs work" books appearing in the coming years, as new images - and new talents - emerge. We can only hope that the publishers, should they decide to launch such a series (I would encourage them to do so), would see fit to have none other than George Barr behind the helm. George is uniquely gifted both as a practicing photographer (with over 35 years experience) and as a teacher/author. There are as many great photographers (who have a hard time explaining how to set a proper f-stop to a novice) as there are great authors (who are hard-pressed to capture even a "not so great" photo), but very, very few who are truly great at both. George, with countless images and portfolios published, and now with three expository books behind him, is in a rarefied class indeed!

I believe that George's new book - Why Photographs Work: 52 Great Images Who Made Them, What Makes Them Special and Why - will become a "classic" (along the lines of Szarkowski's and Adams' earlier collections. Anyone interested in why photographs work - and what they can do to improve their own "eye" and completed images - should have a copy (or two!) on their shelf! Nicely done George!

Art, World, Transcendence

2010-12-14T20:30:00.007-05:00

“In kindergarten we drew three daffodils that

had just been picked out of the yard;
and while I was drawing,
my sharpened yellow pencil and the
cup of the yellow daffodils
gave off whiffs just alike.
That the pencil doing the
drawing should give off the
same smell as the flower it
drew seemed part of the art lesson.
Children, like animals, use all their
senses to discover the world.
Then artists come along and
discover it the same way, all over again.”
— Eudora Welty
Author / Photographer
(1909-2001)

“In one way or another,
the Cosmos we inhabit -
human body, house, territory,
world - communicates from
above with another
level which is transcendent.”
— Mircea Eliade
Philosopher
(1907-1986)

Incomplete, Random, and Infinite

2010-12-13T23:04:00.004-05:00

"Nothing in Nature is random. ...
A thing appears random
only through the incompleteness
of our knowledge."
-Benedict Spinoza
(1632-1677)

"Our minds are finite,
and yet even in these
circumstances of finitude
we are surrounded by possibilities
that are infinite,
and the purpose of human life
is to grasp as much as we can
out of the infinitude.''
- Alfred North Whitehead
(1861-1947)

Patterns, Meanings, and Reality

2010-12-12T13:02:00.003-05:00

"We live in our
description of reality."
— Gregory Bateson
Anthropologist / Systems Theorist (1904 - 1980)

"If you cling to appearances while searching for meaning,
you won't find a thing."
— Budhidharma (440 - 533)

Organization, Probability, and Entropy

2010-12-09T19:19:00.004-05:00

“As entropy increases, the universe,
and all closed systems in the universe,
tend naturally to deteriorate and
lose their distinctiveness,
to move from the least to
the most probable state,
from a state of organization and
differentiation in which distinctions
and forms exist, to a state of
chaos and sameness.”

— Norbert Weiner
Mathematician (1894-1964)

Possibility, Creation, and Infinity

2010-12-05T11:30:00.004-05:00

“The actual infinite arises in three contexts: first when it is realized in the most complete form, in a fully independent otherworldly being, in Deo, where I call it the Absolute Infinite or simply Absolute; second when it occurs in the contingent, created world; third when the mind grasps it in abstracto as a mathematical magnitude, number or order type...”

“...The fear of infinity is a form of myopia that destroys the possibility of seeing the actual infinite, even though it in its highest form has created and sustains us, and in its secondary transfinite forms occurs all around us and even inhabits our minds.”

- Georg Cantor (1845 - 1918), Mathematician

“If a thing loves, it is infinite.”

- William Blake (1757 - 1827), Poet / Mystic

The Answer to Life, the Universe, ...

2010-12-04T13:30:00.006-05:00

"On the day of the Great On-Turning two soberly dressed programmers with briefcases arrived. Their names were Lunkwill and Fook. For a few moments they sat in respectful silence, then, after exchanging a quiet glance with Fook, Lunkwill leaned forward and touched a small black panel. The subtlest of hums indicated that the massive computer was now in total active mode. After a pause it spoke to them in a voice rich, resonant and deep. It said: 'What is this great task for which I, Deep Thought, ... have been called into existence? ...'O Deep Thought computer,' Fook said, 'the task we have designed you to perform is this. We want you to tell us ...' he paused, 'the Answer!' 'The Answer?' said Deep Thought. 'The Answer to what?' 'Life!' urged Fook. 'The Universe!' said Lunkwill. 'Everything!' they said in chorus. Deep Thought paused for a moment's reflection. 'Tricky,' he said finally...

"...'And you're ready to give it to us?' urged Loonquawl. 'I am.' 'Now?' 'Now,' said Deep Thought. ... 'Tell us!' 'All right,' said Deep Thought. 'The Answer to the Great Question ...' 'Yes ... !' 'Of Life, the Universe and Everything ...' said Deep Thought. 'Yes ... !' 'Is ... ' said Deep Thought, and paused. 'Yes ... !' 'Is ... ' 'Yes ... !!! ... ?' 'Forty-two,' said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm. ... 'Forty-two!' yelled Loonquawl.

'Is that all you've got to show for seven and a half million years' work?' 'I checked it very thoroughly,' said the computer, 'and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is.'" -Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001), Hitchiker's Guide to The Galaxy

Objects, Information, and Transformation

2010-12-02T20:39:00.004-05:00

“We hypostatize information into objects.

Rearrangement of objects is change in
the content of the information;
the message has changed.

This is the language which we
have lost the ability to read.

We ourselves are a part of this language;
changes in us are changes in the
content of the information.

We ourselves are information rich;
information enters us,
is processed and is then
projected outward once more,
now in an altered form.

We are not aware that
we are doing this,
that in fact this is
all we are doing.”

— Philip K. Dick
Novelist /Philosopher/Mystic (1928-1982)

As Above, So Below

2010-12-01T20:32:00.007-05:00

"True, without falsehood, certain and most true, that which is above is the same as that which is below, and that which is below is the same as that which is above, for the performance of miracles of the One Thing. And as all things are from the One, by the meditation of One, so all things have their birth from this One Thing by adaptation. The Sun is its Father, the Moon its Mother, the Wind carries it in its belly, its nurse is the Earth. This is the Father of all perfection, or consummation of the whole world. Its power is integrating, if it be turned into earth."

- Emerald Tablet
(Hermes Trismegistus)

Time, Webs, and Bifurcations

2010-11-29T19:34:00.008-05:00

"...This web of time—the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore each other through the centuries—embraces every possibility. We do not exist in most of them. In some you exist and not I, while in others I do, and you do not, and yet in others both of us exist. In this one, in which chance has favored me, you have come to my gate. In another, you, crossing the garden, have found me dead. In yet another, I say these very same words but am in error, a phantom...Time is forever dividing itself toward innumerable futures..."

- Jorge Luis Borges (1899 - 1986)
Garden of Forking Paths, Ficciones

Distinctions, Forms, and Science

2010-11-29T00:01:00.004-05:00

“A universe comes into being when
a space is severed or taken apart…
by tracing the way we
[make such distinctions]
we begin to reconstruct …
the basic forms underlying linguistic,
mathematical, physical,
and biological science.”

— G. Spencer Brown
Laws of Form (1979)

On the Art and Craft of Restoration

2010-11-21T14:41:00.032-05:00

Faithful followers of my humble blog have, over the years, read a number of entries that mention my dad in one way or another. My dad (Slava "Sam" Ilachinski) - who passed away in 2002, but is never far from my thoughts, and continues to inspire me - was a lifelong artist, and an art restorer by trade (doing it the "old fashioned" way, sans computers and algorithms ;-) I recall times when essentially pitch-black canvases entered my dad's studio and emerged - weeks, sometimes months, afterward - as though they were just created (which in many cases they nearly were, given how much paint my dad had to add by his own hand in order to "complete" missing fragments of the original). I saw firsthand many a seasoned professional artist's jaw drop after witnessing the product of my dad's amazing talent. While he labored in relative obscurity for much of his professional life (though NY galleries all knew of his work), my dad had an occasional opportunity to work on some well-known pieces. The most famous of these is Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware, which he worked on in the 70s.

It is therefore fitting, in a partly ironic and partly, poetically Uroborian sort of way, that I - certainly not an artist (in my dad's sense) - and he (certainly not a photographer, in my sense) - should meet again so many years after his death on the cusp of a discipline he so loved - restoration - and a digital photo technique I would likely never have taken the time to learn but am doing so now only because I wish to write a book on my dad's life and art!

My mom, who I am lucky enough to still have with me, is both a storehouse of rich memories and (her home is a) warehouse of old - and frequently badly dilapidated - family photos. While scanning this "warehouse" was easy, and "cleaning it up" was almost as simple (in truth, the process can be thought of as only a slightly more involved version of the more usual "touching up" of any print, analog or digital), when it came to serious retouching and full-blown restoration I was soon out of my league.

Two valuable resources I now keep on my PC's shelf are the second edition of Ctein's Digital Restoration from Start to Finish, and the third edition of Katrin Eismann's Adobe Photoshop Restoration & Retouching. Though they overlap in parts, each has its own focus, and both books offer a tremendous number of examples and practical advice on how to recover images. Ctein is a master printer and an exceptionally clear writer on technical matters (click here for his website, and links to his gallery and other works; he also frequently contributes to Mike Johnston's The Online Photographer blog). Eismann is an all-around Photoshop guru and has many other wonderful books to her credit. While I would not have been completely lost without these two fine guides, my task would certainly have been considerably more difficult and daunting.

The image reproduced at the top of this blog is a before and after comparison between an "as is" scan of an old print of my dad when he was 4 years old; in the picture, he is standing in front of his dad (a medical doctor). The original picture was taken in Taganrog, Russia in 1929, where my dad was born (Taganrog is also the birthplace of Anton Chekov). The "after" shot represents what I was able to pull out of it after about an hours' worth of restorative work. It is not perfect, and I'm sure my skills will improve in time, but I am very happy to have injected a bit of life into an old family photo from a bygone era. One down, and - oh, about a 100 or so ! - to go ;-) My resolution for the coming year is to complete the book on my dad's life and art that my mom and I have slowly been working on for the last few years.

Postscript #1: One of the great regrets of my life is not ever having trained my camera on my dad while he worked in his studio! I've rationalized away this grievous - and unforgivable! - omission on my part in countless ways over the years. I was too young; I was "afraid" of what he'd say if I asked; I was always "going" to do it, when I had a better camera; I was waiting for a chunk of time I could devote entirely to this series; ... none of it makes sense, of course, in hindsight, and the opportunity - opportunities! - are now lost in the mists of time. Oh, what I wouldn't now give to have a few precious moments with a camera in hand and my dad huddled over one of his canvases! This is also the reason why I so cherish the following "newly restored" image: it is the only photograph - taken ~1980 - I have of my dad working as an art restorer (with a bonus capture of my mom peering over the top left edge of the painting)!

Postscript #2: Some of my dad's abstract work from the last five years of his life can be sampled here. A catalog of the 35 works that are now the property of the Taganrog Museum (bequeathed by my dad, and lovingly delivered by my mom a few years ago) in Taganrog, Russia, can be seen here. One of my dad's regrets was never having revisited his boyhood city, which he left as a young boy. So it is fitting that, with my mom's help, a generous selection of his creative efforts has found its way back home! My dad's last work (that was still on his easel the day he went to the hospital for the last time, and is now hanging peacefully in my old bedroom in my mom's house on Long Island) is a simple, joyful celebration of color and motion. It perfectly reflects everything my dad's art was - is - about.

Atoms, Assemblies, and Fields

2010-11-20T12:08:00.003-05:00

“Perhaps the most radical change that has occurred in the
history of theoretical thinking is the switch from the
atomistic conception of the world as an assembly of
circumscribed things to that of a world of
forces acting in the dimension of time.

These forces are bound to organize themselves in fields,
interacting, grouping, connecting, fusing, and separating.”

— Rudolf Arnheim
Art Theorist / Perceptual Psychologist (1904 - 2007)

Description, Explanation, Representation

2010-11-17T21:06:00.002-05:00

“Explanation must always grow out of description,
but the description from which it grows will always
necessarily contain arbitrary characteristics.

All description, explanation, or representation is
necessarily in some sense a mapping of derivatives from the
phenomena to be described onto some surface or
matrix or system of coordinates.

Every receiving matrix, even a
language or tautological network of propositions,
will have its formal characteristic which will in
principle be distortive of the phenomena to be mapped onto it.”

— Gregory Bateson
Anthropologist / Systems Theorist (1904-1980)

Path, Fate, Life

2010-11-15T22:26:00.003-05:00

“Every path but your own is the path of fate.
Keep on your own track, then.”

— Henry Thoureau
Author/Transcendentalist (1817–1862)

“What each must seek in his life
never was on land or sea.

It is something out of his own
unique potentiality for experience,
something that never has been and
never could have been experienced by anyone else.”

— Joseph Campbell
Author/Mythologist (1904–1987)

Words, Signs, Stories

2010-11-14T11:13:00.003-05:00

"The universe is made of stories,
not atoms."

— Muriel Rukeyser
Poet (1913 - 1980)

"Every phenomenon of nature was a word;
the sign, symbol and pledge of a new, mysterious,
inexpressible but all the more intimate union,
participation and community of divine energies and ideas."

— Johann G. Hamann
Philosopher (1730 - 1788 )

One Shoot Sunday: An Interview

2010-11-07T15:53:00.030-05:00

I was invited recently by Chris Galford (a manager with the online publication One Stop Poetry) to participate in an "email interview." Our exchange (along with a sampling of my images) was published earlier this morning. While I was honored to be asked to participate - the website has archived an impressively varied selection of interviews with talented photographers that one can spend hours perusing and being inspired by! - I was truly humbled by the wealth of creativity that my humble little "Homage to Friedrich" image (reproduced here) spawned from readers of the interview!

Since the focus of the One Stop Poetry site is to foster a dialog between visual and verbal artforms, the interview concluded with a challenge to readers: namely, to write a poem that is inspired by the accompanying image (called the "Skies of Skye," that appears in my Scotland portfolio).

I was deeply moved by both the number - and sheer beauty - of responses to the challenge! My favorites (though, in truth, I must really list them all, as they are all exceptional!)- and in no particular order - are poems by Pete Marshall, Gigi Ann, Claudia, Louise Gallagher, Adam Dustus, Glynn Young, Tammy, Maureen, Melissa Campbell, Ruth, Ranee Dillon, Hedgewitch, Libithina, and the ones on the Reflections of..., She's Writing, and Another Man's Dream blogs. I'd like to thank everyone for taking the time to read my interview, and even more so for the time and effort they put in to posting such wonderful works of poetic art on their own sites.

Kudos to all!

Postscript #1: I have written of this "poetry challenge" image before on my blog (see here). The image was taken near Teangue, Skye, on the next to last day of our trip to Scotland in 2009 (before we headed off to Edinburgh to catch our flight back to the states). The sun was setting, but we had a bit of time for some last minute exploration. I was busy taking close-up shots of rocks and water, with my back toward the water where my wife was standing (I was in my usual crouched position, glaring starry-eyed at the compositional marvels on the exposed beach, and - also, as usual ;-) - "oblivious" to what I was really searching for ;-) I finally stood up to give my knees a rest, and while stretching my back swung around to look for my wife. What I saw I was magic and thus not something that can easily be translated either into words or images, but I did manage to catch a fleeting glimpse of the ineffable with my camera. What it recorded is reproduced in the photograph above, and is among my top three favorite images from our entire trip.

Postscript #2: While on the subject of interviews, here is a link to an interview I did with Brooks Jensen (editor, Lenswork magazine) for my Micro Worlds portfolio that Lenswork published in issue #76 (May-June, 2008). The mp3 version runs ~40 min, but (unfortunately) is not free; cost is 99 cents (proceeds go entirely to Lenswork).