Upcoming "Worlds Within Worlds" Exhibit

I am delighted to announce that I will be part of a three-artist exhibit entitled "Worlds Within Worlds," to be held Oct 21, 2009 - April 16, 2010 at the American Center for Physics (One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD, 20740). The reception for the exhibit - curated by Sarah Tanguy - will be held November 16, 2009 (which falls on a Monday) between 5:30 - 7:30, with a gallery talk and presentation scheduled for 6:00pm.

If any interested readers of this blog are in the northern-DC/Maryland area around that time, and would like to see works by a wonderful sculptor (Julian Voss-Andreae), a gifted traditional artist (Cynthia Padgett), and a physicist/photographer (yours truly... I'll have 18 of my images on display, grouped into 6 categories; see below), please swing by! I plan on being at the reception on Nov 16.

A two-page fold-out brochure for the event can be downloaded here (in Adobe pdf format). It contains one of my favorite quotes by Einstein:

"Where the world ceases to be the stage for personal hopes and desires, where we, as free beings, behold it in wonder, to question and to contemplate, there we enter the realm of art and science. If we trace out what we behold and experience through the language of logic, we are doing science; if we show it in forms whose interrelationships are not accessible to our conscious thought but are intuitively recognized as meaningful, we are doing art. Common to both is the devotion to something beyond the personal, removed from the arbitrary." — Albert Einstein

As the venue is clearly related to science - physics in particular - it should come as no surprise that all three artists were selected with an eye toward either the artist or his/her work having some connection to physics.

Julian Voss-Andreae, for example, is both a physicist and artist/sculptor by training. His magnificent geometric sculptures are best described as physically manifest visual forms of quantum realities. Starting from original designs of mathematical surfaces (or dynamic processes) on a computer, Julian uses his art to guide and shape these forms into a finished sculpture. Sometimes a work is created by using a particular physics-inspired process; sometimes it is created to reflect a specific physics-related property or principle. But however he creates his individual works, they are all undeniably mesmerizing and leave the viewer with a deeper appreciation of the connection between science and art. Julian's website includes a link to an informative ~8 minute YouTube video that describes his creative process (first shown on Oregon Public Broadcasting TV in December 2008).

Cynthia Padgett, while not a scientist by training, will be displaying works inspired by the exposure she has to astronomy and astronomic images through her son's study of physics. Working with a variety of media (oil, pastel, charcoal, etc), and using real astronomical photographs as conceptual spring-boards, Cynthia magically transforms empty canvases into cosmic breeding grounds for stars, entire galaxies, and the infinite mysteries of time and space. She will also be exhibiting works from her floral series, whose more "earth-centered" origin belies the drama of their own abstract cosmic rhythms.

As for me, though the subject of my photography is not confined to "metaphors of physics" (or some such thing) and actually spans quite a wide spectrum of ostensibly non-physics subject matter (from landscapes, to still lifes, to abstracts, to macros, ...), I cannot escape the fact that since I am a physicist by training - and still use my physics to solve problems in my "day job" (here is a link to one of my technical books) - I cannot help but see the world as a physicist (whatever that means;-). And that is, I suppose, the main reason I have been included in the show with these two accomplished artists. (Sarah Tanguy, the curator of the show, "confessed" that the way she found my work was by going to the Washington Project for the Arts site, of which I am a member/artist, and conducting a search for "photographer AND physicist"... hey, sometimes it pays to self-advertise!)

A while ago I posted a blog entry that was derived, in part, from a lecture I gave at the Smithsonian about complexity and photography. I crafted some of the images I used during the presentation (and reproduced in this blog entry) with a deliberate eye towards illustrating how one's inner world (one's feelings, thoughts, predispositions, academic training, worldview, ...) guides and shapes what one's I/eye/camera eventually reveals to the external world. As the "Worlds Within Worlds" exhibit opens, I'm making a mental note to myself to expand a bit on these ideas in future blog entries. The fundamental question being: "To what extent does the aesthetic dimension of my photography (what I choose to photograph, what my eye sees, what I work to reveal in a print, ...) owe itself - and in what way - to the fact that I am trained as a theoretical physicist?" How is what I do, as a photographer, different from what other photographers, not trained in physics, do? If there is a difference, is there an objective way of assessing what that difference is?

As for the "Worlds Within Worlds" exhibit...I will have a total of 18 images exhibited, grouped into six categories: (1) micro worlds, (2) mystic flames, (3) abstract triptychs, (4) entropic melodies, (5) rhythmic patterns, and (6) ripples & ice.

Having looked at - and marveled - at Julian's and Cynthia's works on-line (I do not know, and have not yet met either of these two gifted artists; though I am very much looking forward to meeting them at the opening in November), I am truly honored to be asked to display my humble works alongside theirs.

And I hope to see some of the readers of my blog at the reception!

On the Art of Observing Gallery Viewers Observing Art

The NY Times recently published a fascinating article on the subject "how people engage art" in art galleries. As one might expect, there are a variety of "approaches" people take to viewing art. Some walk around slowly, savoring each artistic morsel on a wall. Some walk through the gallery quickly, hardly glancing at much of anything save for the watch on their wrist (in hopes of escaping, perhaps). Some bring their sketchbooks, look around a bit, then find a spot to rest for a while and try to "take away" a bit of what they've seen (or are looking at). Some come in groups, that congeal and disperse in rhythms, punctuated by periodic outbursts of comments and discussion, as they weave their way through the displays.

The article reminded me of my own experiences of watching "people passing through a gallery" while I was still a member of the Lorton Arts Workhouse Photographic Society (WPS). Part of my Co-op duties included gallery-sitting, for which I had to come in to open the gallery, greet guests, photography admirers and/or potential customers, answer questions, conduct sales, and so on. In truth, apart from the motivation to "do more photography" while I was part of the Co-op, my most enjoyable experience was in greeting and schmoozing with passerbys and interested observers. As I write this blog entry, two months or so removed from my last such sitting, I must admit to missing the opportunity to experience this on a regular basis.

For context, the WPS gallery (Gallery W-6 at Lorton Arts), contains about 120-130 prints at any one time, (new hangings occur at roughly 8 to 9 week intervals) and the main gallery is about 100 feet by 20 feet in size (there is a smaller space for pictures at the front entrance, that contains an additional 15 or so prints). Here are some of my miscellaneous observations about how "people wander through the gallery," culled from nine months worth of informal record keeping:

(1) People are generally quiet - very quiet, as though they are in a library - as they walk through the gallery. In many cases, even if I attempt to initiate a conversation in a regular tone of voice, the response is muted, hardly above a whisper.

(2) The average "walk through" time (of people who choose not to interact with me after my greeting them; this class makes up only about a quarter of the people who enter the gallery) is about 3 minutes, plus/minus a minute or so. It's pretty fast. A short look is all that most prints get, even as the people are moving on to the next picture. Another interesting statistic: about half the people entering the gallery choose to look at only about half of the pictures; they leave before completing a full circuit around the gallery! (Personally - speaking as both photographer and gallery viewer - I also tend to move quickly through a gallery, giving most pictures about 10 secs worth of attention. However, I have rarely been to any gallery, of any kind, in which at least a few images/paintings did not grab my attention and hold it for long stretches. Indeed, it is the anticipation and possibility of encountering such "grab your eye/I/mind/soul" art that brings me to galleries in the first place.) Note: thoughtful readers who may be musing about the role that "thin-slicing" (= rapid cognition) may play in art viewing will find interesting reading in Malcom Gladwell's Blink.

(3) About half the people who enter the gallery are happy to reciprocate in an exchange of pleasantries and otherwise ask questions about the art and engage my presence in the gallery. Indeed, for this class of gallery observer, the interaction with me only seems to spur their own interest in the art, for they spend, on average, at least two to three times the length of time simply "viewing the art" than does class one (as defined above). (Of course, this may simply be a correlation between the type of person who is both more interesting in photography and, simultaneously, more predisposed to engaging others in some verbal exchange.)

(4) A small minority (about 5-10%) appear interested only in the fact that there is a human being in the gallery with whom they can speak about photography, rather than the photographs themselves. This class of observer enters the gallery, looks around not for the prints on the wall, but for the gallery-sitter, makes a bee-line toward that person, and is the one to initiate contact. Also, about half the time, the ensuing conversation is more about their art, rather than the prints they have yet to see in the gallery they've just entered.

(5) 10-15% of the people passing through are also photographers. Sometimes they are identified by the cameras strapped to their neck; sometimes it is revealed through conversation. However, in almost all such cases, the affect is one of humility on their part. And often, from my point of view, in a quite unjustified manner, for many turn out to be accomplished photographers. Strangely, this fact is more often than not revealed only after some gentle coaxing (by the gallery sitter/gallery-photographer); most (even those that are obviously carrying a camera!) are reluctant to reveal their talents. My impression is that by virtue of being inside of a gallery alone, and by being in the presence of a "photographer" whose works are on the wall, somehow their own abilities, skills and accomplishments are lessened or outright unimportant. It is truly a strange phenomenon, but perhaps not all that surprising, psychologically. Objectively speaking, there is no deeper meaning to, say, having my pictures hanging on the wall in the room they are in than the objective fact that my pictures happen to be there. It is not, in any way, a statement about or reference to the photographic skill possessed by the humble gallery observer. As I write this entry, I am no longer a member of the WPS, and therefore have no pictures on their gallery walls. I'd certainly like to believe that my photographic skills, such as they are, have not diminished. (Though I secretly wonder, too, whether I'd be a wee-bit more reluctant to "reveal" my photography side were I to enter some new gallery?)

(6) 10-15% of the people wandering through the gallery take their time, seemingly with every picture. I cannot over-state how this makes the gallery-sitter's heart soar, because - speaking as one - I could palpably feel in their manner a genuine interest in what was displayed on the walls. This class of observer takes a sincere delight in each and every artist, taking the time to read our bios, the titles of the works, and slowly - sometimes with hands clasped behind their backs - relishing the images near and far, craning their necks for a closeup, and stepping back to admire a print from a different perspective. Somewhat surprisingly, only about half of the people in this group overlap with the class that loves to chat.

(7) I just mentioned that the WPS has short "Bios" up on the wall next to each artist's exhibit. However, we did this only many months after opening, and initially had nothing but titles by the individual works, without so much as a marker informing the viewer that "this wall" has photographer X's works, and "that wall" has works by photographer Y. The week after we put up the bios, interest in particular photographers' works (depending on the predilections of the viewer of course) and likelihood of engaging the gallery-sitter sky-rocketed. Intuitively, it makes sense that if a viewer can learn something of interest about a given artist - - and even more so if he or she learns something of interest about an artist who happens to be the gallery-sitter that day - that the viewer is that much more inclined to react to that artist's body of work and also enagage the photographer/gallery-sitter in conversation. (Before the bios went up, I was amused by how often I'd be asked, incredulously, "Are all of these works yours?")

(8) Most people are not attracted to, and do not resonate (on any discernible level) with abstract photography. Please keep in mind that is a strictly personal observation, and in reference to how I observed people "react to my own work" (which is frequently deep into the abtstract dimension). It is not a statement about aesthetics, or what is "good" or "bad" in photography. I state it purely as a matter of "fact" that I've consistently observed over the run of my nine-month membership in the WPS. (FYI: Brooks Jensen, co-editor of Lenswork magazine, has an interesting podcast on this subject.) On many more occasions than I am willing to admit (though, implicitly, I'm doing so here;-), particularly when - by chance - my own pictures were hanging near where the gallery-sitting desk and chair are stationed, I would see a prospective buyer approach one of my abstracts, muttering (though loud enough for me to hear): "Whoa, what in the world...?" (followed by what I could have mistaken for either a look of horror or disgust or both, as he or she or they quickly made their way to someone else's picture of something more recognizably "real looking"). Note: readers interested in abstract photography are urged to look out for a wonderful new book on the history of abstract photography called The Edge of Vision (by Lyle Rexer).

(9) A very small minority (maybe a handful of people over the entire nine-month period I'm summarizing) were - ahem - less than gracious and humble. With an obvious chip on their shoulder, they would march toward the gallery-sitter desk, announce their arrival (at least by their manner, the loud clop-clop of their shoes banging the floor, and their wide-open staring eyes, seemingly daring anyone in their path to a fight), and proceed to "explain" to the gallery-sitter (i.e., me) that while some of the photographs here are interesting (though they barely even glanced at any of them), it is really their art that belongs here instead of the photographers' who were juried into the WPS. On a positive note, once I politely explained that they too can easily become members of the WPS, provided they assemble a portfolio, and submits prints, a vitae and an artists statement - and are selected by the admissions jury - they all turned on their heels and stormed out the gallery.

(10) There is one final class of gallery viewer whose membership totals exactly one person (at least during my time as gallery sitter): the person who is herself an artist and who deliberately seeks out a particular photographer in hopes of engaging in an aesthetic dialectic. I was introduced to this class during WPS' 08/09-holiday open house and small works show. I saw a woman, about my age, enter the gallery, take a quick look around, and then immediately head for the wall that had my pictures hanging. Naturally curious (as this seldom happens to my pictures), I quietly approached her and introduced myself. She was shy, but smiled, and started asking a few questions about my photos. I started giving my (by now practiced) general overview, but soon realized there was increasing depth to her questions; none were of the basic "So, what is this supposed to be?" variety. She mentioned how some of the images were very Tao-like, and my approach reminded her of some Chinese landscapes (and mentioned a few artists' names I have forgotten). As we talked, it became increasingly irrelevant as to who was "viewing" and who was "the photographer." She eventually confessed that she too was an artist (and teacher) at Lorton, specializing in Chinese art. She explained that she had seen some of my smaller works, that were at that time hanging in the main gallery (Gallery W-16 at Lorton Arts), and heard about our open house; she came specifically to meet the photographer behind the pictures she liked so much. Shoot forward a few weeks, after I had a chance to visit my new friend at her own studio (and admire her art), and we were both rewarded with new art for our walls: she, with an image of mine she so admired at the photography show; I with an exquisite little Zen Frog that adorns my "day job" office and who has himself become an inseparable part of me. A beautiful example of art meeting art, and art sharing of itself to inspire more art.

Postscript #1: My dad, a lifelong artist who lived art 25 hours out of every 24 (incredible, but somehow true!), carved out a niche all his own as a gallery-viewer. His approach was simple, direct, and pure: gallery day was gallery day, meaning that the entire day would be spent viewing art, in a preternaturally transcendent state that rendered him utterly oblivious to everything around him. My mom and I both saw first hand how my dad would arrive at a gallery - any gallery - reposition his glasses slightly as he entered (his traditional "I'm now in a gallery" maneuver), clasp both hands behind his back (where they would unmovingly remain throughout the tortuously long day), walk up to the nearest exhibit, and look, and look, and look...and there he would remain - at that first exhibit! - for hours at a time! Eventually he would move, but only a few feet either to the left or right of whatever he was just viewing, and only to plant himself in front at an adjacent painting. (It was not unheard of for him to suddenly remember something he had forgot to "look for" at the last painting, and - frantically, as though this oversight would somehow deprive him of a morsel of divine truth - side-step his way back to the previous exhibit.) At times, my dad would stand motionless in front of an artwork for so long, that gallery visitors could easily be forgiven for mistaking him for a newly scultpured artwork on display! By the end of a typical day, in a gallery with ten rooms adorned with, say, 300 pieces of artwork, my dad would still be looking (meditating, absorbing, reflecting, musing, comparing, composing, digesting, pondering, philosophizing, ...) at maybe the 7th or 8th picture in the first room. And at the end of a typical gallery day, as the guards began begging us to leave, my dad would invariably turn to my mom with his own soulful plea: "Katie, please, please, can we come back tomorrow?" (Never did I see anyone remotely resembling this unique class of "gallery viewer" in all my days of gallery sitting at the WPS.)

Postscript #2: All of the images of "gallery viewers viewing art" are from one of my dad's last exhibits before he died, held at Adelphi University (Garden City, Long Island, NY) in June 2000. The viewers are looking at some of his amazing abstracts. The image directly above Postscript #1 is of my dad at his Adelphi exhibit.

Postscript #3: The artist with whom I exchanged some artwork (and whose "Zen Frog" is my faithful office companion) is Hsi-Mei Yates, and she specializes in Chinese watercolor brush painting. Her work is exquisite.

Swirls, Whorls, and Tendrils

Although I am a physicist by day—or, perhaps, because I am a physicist (and thus want the left part of my brain to rest when I'm with my camera)—I have rarely come upon a subject that seamlessly combines my love of physics and passion for photography. Until now that is. Maybe it is my penchant for abstraction that led to this subject, and the connection to physics is more of an afterthought. Or maybe my physics “eye” unconsciously led me to take on this aesthetically surreal but very “real” physical subject, in hopes of stirring my conscious attention (and relentless equation scribbling). Whatever the case, my recent focus on “ink drop in water abstracts” has consumed both sides of my brain, and is—even as I write this blog entry—unlikely to release either side any time soon. A small—exploratory—gallery of images is here.

Ink diffusion, in turns out, is anything but simple; either photographically or mathematically (for an example of the latter, see, for example, this paper on ink diffusion in Chinese ink paintings). On the photographic side, many photographers—amateur, pro, unknown, famous, living and long forgotten—have doubtless focused their lens’ on “ink & water” countless times, perhaps stretching all the way back to Fox Talbot. I have no illusions of having discovered a new “frontier” (as Bruce Barnbaum did with his magnificent shots of Slit Canyon). But even a familiar subject can sometimes offer unexpected surprises. My own humble addition to photography's collective oeuvre of subject matter is more akin to Hilla and Bernd Becher's typology of watertowers and other industrial structures. Only in my case, it is a typology of the dispersive structures of a single ink drop in water.

The technique is straightforward, but requires a bit of practice and patience. A small 3”-by-3” glass vase is filled with about ¾” of water (less than that, or more, yields a set of slightly “different” patterns from those appearing here) and placed on a light table (which provides the only source of light). A macro lens (in this case, a 100mm lens capable of 1:1 magnification) is mounted on a camera (Canon's 30D DSLR), and is positioned so that the lens is pointing vertically downward on the surface of the water. A small eyedropper is filled with India ink, is carefully centered between three and six inches above the water (as with water depth, a greater or lesser height yields a slightly different set of patterns), and a single drop—this is the "hard" part that requires a bit of patience—is slowly released.

As the ink strikes the water, about a third of its volume quickly spreads radially on the surface. The remaining blob sinks to the bottom. Some of it bounces back up, and a slow process of diffusion, dispersion, and rotation begins. The resulting 3D patterns are captured (and compressed into two dimensions via the lens) as they unfold, and are processed and displayed as digital negatives. A single drop’s effective "unfolding lifetime" varies between 1-1/2 and 2-1/2 minutes. It is not a real lifetime, of course, since the ink continues to diffuse until it is thoroughly mixed with the water, but denotes a period after which most of the "interesting" patterns—the swirls, whorls, and tendrils—have all but dissipated, and no new internal structures appear. The images in this portfolio show the structure of the radial spread of a single drop of ink in water as it appears at a single time (to within ~ 1/60th sec) near the tail end of its unfolding lifetime.

Each ephemeral form is unique, surreal, and exquisitely beautiful. Since these are lifesize macros, many of the fine details are literally invisible to the naked eye. The macro lens reveals what looks like "organic" life-forms, that develop as though some hidden “rule” (or genetic code) is guiding their evolution. In truth, the myriad shapes and forms are a complicated confluence of multiple simultaneous forces at work: diffusion, dispersion, interplay of relative viscosities of the water and ink, a transfer of momentum as the ink drop bounces upward after hitting the bottom of the vase, gravity, random drifts and impurities in the water, and thermal convection rolls due to the heat generated by the bulbs in the light table.

Tellingly, even as each delicate form is “perfect” onto itself, what starts the whole process going, and what is most responsible for the diversity of patterns, is imperfection. It is because the ink drops are not perfect spheres, because they assume a variety of randomly distorted oblong shapes as they fall, and because they have unpredictable and shifting densities of ink inside of them, that each sequence is a unique creation that unfolds just once, then vanishes forever.

"All is process.
That is to say, there is ‘no thing’ in the universe.

Things, objects, entities, are abstractions
of what is relatively constant from a process of
movement and transformation.
They are like the shapes that
children like to see in clouds."
— DAVID BOHM, Physicist (1917-1992)

Postscript/FYI. Apart from the fact that it nicely describes the subject of my new series, the title for this portfolio - "Swirls, Whorls, and Tendrils" - derives, in part, from the first (and, so far as I can remember, the only time) I have ever seen the word "whorl" used seriously in print anywhere. I remember seeing this term in a paper co-authored by one of my mathematical physics professors in graduate school (N.L. Balazs), back in the late 70s; though on a topic that doesn't have anything to do (at least explicitly;-) with ink drops in water: Quantum Maps.

A Fine-Art Photographer's Must-Have New Book on B&W Printing!

George Dewolfe - photographer, teacher, workshop instructor and author - has just published one of the best books I have run across in a long, long time on the art and craft of fine-art B&W printing; called, naturally enough, B&W Printing.

Generally speaking, there are three basic types of digital-photography-related books on the market: (1) the beginner's guides, that walk the aspiring photographer / "camera user" through the steps necessary to take a picture, how to operate her camera, and how to download images to the computer and print them out on a small ink-jet printer; (2) the intermediate guides, that assume readers are already familiar with their camera but want to learn more about how to process their images for the web or prints; and are tailored to readers who are serious about their photography (certainly more so than casual "point and shooters," but do not invest more than a few hours on a weekend, say, or as "designated photographers" at family get-togethers and vacations; and (3) the advanced guides for affirmed afficionados of photography (who want to learn all of what Adobe's Photoshop has to offer, for example) and professional photographers (who may want to learn additional techniques or, if they are film-photographers, want to boot-strap themselves into digital photography). Each type of book is well represented on the market, of course, and there are many excellent books - classics even (the "advanced guides" by Martin Evening, Katrin Easemann, and Scott Kelby all come to mind).

But, thus far at least, the digital photography world has lacked a particular kind of voice that film photography has enjoyed for decades, simply because film photography has been around for so long. Namely, the voice of a seasoned fine-art photographer / printer writing about and dispensing with his years of experience as a photographer applied to the new, emerging digital imaging technologies. How many times have I picked up a book with a titles like, "Advanced Fine-Art Digital Imaging" by so and so, intrigued by the title and number of pages/examples, only to be disappointed to find either that the images in the book are at best serviceable as "fine art photographs" or, at worst, dismal examples of what "fine art" ought to be, or that the images are wonderful - perhaps even gallery-like in their presence - but that what I had hoped to learn by way of "digital craft" is nowhere to be seen, since the author is a fine photographer but less-than-gifted writer or Photoshop technician. The rarest kind of book of all is a book on fine-art photography - particularly black and white fine-art photography - that combines great pictures, great technical skill, and great writing. I have seen no finer example of this rare breed of book than B&W Printing, by George Dewolfe, published this month by Lark Books as part of their Digital Masters series.

As one can glean from his website, Mr. Dewolfe has been a photographer since 1964 and holds an MFA in Photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology. He studied photography with both Ansel Adams and Minor White in the 1970s. He also studied perception with Dr. Richard Zakia (a fact I mention because Dr. Zakia's book, Perception and Imaging, is among my all-time favorite books on the subject). Mr. Dewolfe has taught photography at several universities (and continues to teach photography and master print classes), and conducts workshops throughout the country. His works have appeared in numerous one-man shows and galleries. He was part of the development team behind Adobe's Lightroom software. He also authored one of the first (and best) "advanced" books on the craft of digital printing I purchased for my personal library (and still frequently refer to): George DeWolfe's Digital Fine Print Workshop.

And so we get to Mr. Dewolfe's new book, B&W Printing. What immediately sets it apart from 95% of related books on the market is immediately apparent after even a quick perusal of its 200+ pages: its subtle, almost understated, elegance. It oozes with quality, and attention to detail.

The images - all examples of one technique or another (except for a small portfolio toward the end that exhibits some wonderful "final" prints) - are each carefully arranged to highlight a specific approach, and are all expertly crafted and presented. Indeed, I suspect many a reader will look at the first such example that a chapter starts with - an out-of-camera image that Mr. Dewolfe displays to show the "before" part of a specific workflow, and wonder, "What can one possibly do to improve such a beautiful image?" ("Beautiful" both as a technically brilliant print, and as a fine-art photograph). The answer to which, of course, after reading Mr. Dewolfe's elegant prose - full of finely honed and expertly distilled advice on why something needs to be done, when and how to do it, and how to tell when its "done" - is "quite a bit." As the "final" image is revealed at the end of most chapters, the reader marvels both at its innate, shear beauty - Mr. Dewolfe's images all have a preternatural "glow" to them; they are carefully crafted in such a way that their ostensibly two-dimensional forms leak into a third "magical" dimension - and the relatively "simple" steps by which the original image was converted into it. Of course, it is precisely Mr. Dewolfe's gifted ability to describe what goes into these "relatively simple" steps - done in such a way that even a novice Photoshop user (albeit one who is well versed with the basic of aesthetics and photographic "seeing") can easily follow them and apply them to her own workflow - that sets this apart from most others and elevates it to the level of an instant classic.

The book consists of three main sections, and a portfolio at the end. A glossary and index are also provided. The first section discusses fine-art black and white photography in broad - but philosophically deep - terms. Great attention is given to the nature of "seeing" (by both camera and photographer), and the most important qualities that make up a photograph (tone, luminosity, luminance, sharpness, and so on). Though this may sound like so many other dry incantations of "obvious" material, perhaps done to death in other volumes, even here, in only the introductory parts of the book, Mr. Dewolfe provides something special. Using the way in which humans process visual information, Mr. Dewolfe astutely distinguishes between "luminance" (a combination of reflection and illumination, and which is essentially what both camera and retina "see" in any image) and "luminosity" (which is what we, as observers, "see" - or the way in which we interpret - luminance. It is the apparent luminosity of an image that gives the images its strength, its character, and ultimately, if the image is to express the artist's vision, its meaning. The best photographers are those that are able to expertly manipulate the raw luminance of their images into something that communicates how they "see" (and feel about) the world. This is a deep discussion of fundamental truths of the art of photography; but is not overbearing in any way; the typical reader will probably not even recognize that she has been treated to a master discussion of the very core of what defines fine-art photography. Needless to say, few if any books provide half the wisdom waiting to be plumbed in the first 60 pages of this magnificent book.

The heart of the book lies in the second section, and spans about 130 pages. Here you will read about designing a workflow, how to choose and setup your software, how to input your images (the author uses Adobe's Lightroom), how to make global and local adjustments to an image, how to fine-tune an image, and, finally, how to make the best use of your printing tools and methods. Each example is meticulously and lovingly presented, with each step described in both words and illustrated with screenshots (of workflow) and the effects interim steps have on a particular image. As a bonus, each chapter also includes sample workflows by featured artists (some of whose work I knew about before, but others were new to me and compel me to look up their work).

The third section contains some musings on the nature of photography, how to hone your skills as a photographer, and the art of mindfulness in art in general. The small, self-contained section on mindfulness perfectly illustrates Mr. Dwewolfe's best gifts as a teacher. In what amounts to no more than a page, Mr. Dewolfe provides - in sparse but artful, Haiku-like prose - a natural gateway toward applying meditation techniques to creating meaningful photographs; punctuated, in the end, by yet another beautiful, luminous image.

Mr. DeWolfe begins his book with the question, "What is a masterpiece?" By the end of the book, the reader will have seen a fair share of masterpieces created and crafted by Mr. Dewolfe's refined eye and skill. And the reader will leave the book behind (though no-doubt leaving it within easy reach to refer back to when necessary) knowing that she is now prepared to craft masterpieces of her own. Mr. Dewolfe has written a truly sensational book on the art of B&W printing, and one that is destined to become a classic in its class.

The only mild criticism I can make with regard to the book - though not of the material that appears in it per se - is that Mr. Dewolfe does not provide a discount code for readers of his book to use to purchase his PercepTool plug-in for Photoshop (which is an integral part of the workflow described in the book, and encapsulates much of what Mr. Dewolfe has learned during a lifetime of "seeing" as a photographer and as a student of human perception). I have seen other authors provide discounts for software in their books, but for software nowhere near as rich and far-reaching as PercepTool. I would encourage Mr. Dewolfe to do the same. But I make this criticism only in hopes of getting Mr. Dewolfe to reach an even larger audience with his teachings. Perhaps in the second edition?

Photography as Transcendence

A philosophically minded friend of mine dropped by the Lorton Photography Workhouse while I was performing my "gallery sitting" chores this Saturday. After exchanging some pleasantries, and mutual musings - as is our custom - on the nature of life, art, and meaning, his attention soon focused on a series of masterful nude portraits by a fellow member of the coop I belong to (E. E. McCollum).

My friend was particularly impressed by how "utterly and completely absorbing" Eric's portraits are; but he was not - as he immediately explained - referrring only to the model's obvious beauty. My astute friend - who also happens to be a gifted artist - was using one of Eric's portraits to make a deeper point about what distinguishes the "best" photography from that which is merely "good." My friend opined that the best photograph - or, more generally, the best artwork of any kind - is the one that induces in the viewer the broadest possible inner experience. That is, that what the viewer experiences, transcends in some way - and in the very best art, transcends in multiple ways - the dimensions that the artist is physically constrained to using in order to express his artwork.

Superficially, of course, this is always true, even of "not terribly good" photographs. All (conventional) photographs are by their nature two dimensional, yet evoke - with varying degrees of success - a "three dimensional" experience (mostly because we "expect" to see the "world as revealed by a photograph" as we see the world with our eyes). But what my friend was thinking about was a deeper level of experiential transcendence. When he looked at one of Eric's nude portraits - which is, as are all of Eric's photographs, beautifully lit, elegantly composed, and expertly printed with a wonderful palette of tones (see Eric's on-line gallery for samples of his work) - my friend's immediate reality was temporarily replaced by one in which only my friend and Eric's model existed, and in which the model was very real. From my friend's point of view, while he was looking at the portrait, the model was as palpably real to him as any physically real person can be.

His experience of her far transcended the ink and paper on which her two dimensional form is physically expressed, and assumed multiple dimensions including touch, taste, smell, even (hints of imagined) emotion. To be sure, all of these "transcendent" dimensions are supplied by the viewer, and will be different from viewer to viewer. It is more correct to say that they are all induced in the viewer by the photograph. But that is the whole point. The photograph - as a physical cipher designed to convey a certain experience of reality - is so well executed, that the viewer experiences the full range of emotion while interacting with it. The shades of grey ink that depict a part of the model's neck, for example, are transformed in the viewer's mind into real skin, with its own unique aroma, its distinct tactile feel and texture, and so on. As tempting as it might be to think that this is true of all photographs, the truth is that it is not so. Indeed, had Eric's portrait been taken instead by a less seasoned photographer with no eye for light, let us say, but of the same model in exactly the same pose in exactly the same surroundings and background, the perceptive viewer would in all likelihood still "experience" a beautiful model in a beautiful pose, but nothing more. No extra, or transcendent, dimensions would reveal themselves; and certainly not as readily, and not all for indiscriminate viewers. Eric's fine-art "touch" reveals profoundly more. In a sense, Eric's portrait provides the raw "aesthetic" material that the interested viewer transforms into a transcendent, personally meaningful experiential reality.

So the idea on the table, as proposed by my artist friend after viewing Eric's portrait is this: that art is at its finest when the artist somehow manages to induce in the viewer dimensions of inner experience that transcend those that define the artwork itself. Just as "fine-art" music (say, by Beethoven) may be distinguished from "musak" by the fact that listening to it makes you feel alive (whereas "musak" merely makes you think that you want your elevator ride to end soon). The finest photography makes you forget you are looking at a photograph. Itand makes you experience it as if it were real; as if you were a part of it.

Put another way, and assuming our traditional store of five senses (though we may have as many as eleven, and possibly more if we include "extra"-sensory ones), the finest art is a process whereby a single sensory dimension - and at most a few - is used to evoke in the viewer the experiential equivalent of all five. The very best art makes the viewer forget she is even looking at any art at all, the artwork having evoked an experience of transcendence itself (in which the viewer "sees" herself in the art, and cosmos in self). But that's another blog entry... ;-)

Traversing an N-Dimensional Aesthetic Space

I've been musing lately about a problem that has stubbornly resisted my attempts at solving it for quite some time; indeed, I sometimes wonder if I've made any headway at all in all the years I've spent reflecting on it. Perhaps I should pay heed to the title of my own blog - namely tao - and plumb a bit of tao's timeless wisdom. To wit, maybe I ought to treat my problem not as a "thing" that needs solving, but as a transient stepping-stone on a timeless path toward gradual self-enlightenment.

"What is beauty?" I [S Nachmanovitch] asked him that night. He [Gregory Bateson] said, "Seeing the pattern which connects." (quoted from Old Men Ought to be Explorers, by S. Nachmanovitch)

My "problem" is to find the "optimal feature space" in which to describe the aesthetic sensibilities of particular artists; that is, essentially, to find an objective language (or, least as objective a language as possible) to describe the subjective propensities of, and differences between, individual painters, musicians, or photographers. We all "know" the difference between, say, Mozart's music and that of Beethoven; or the difference between a painting by Matisse and another by Picasso. Sometimes the differences, as in these "obvious" cases, are striking. In other cases, the differences may not be so clear cut: if one was, a priori, unfamilar with the works of Minor White and Brett Weston, for example, some of their respective abstracts may appear - superficially at least - as aesthetically indistinguishable.

Somehow, perhaps in the way that Malcolm Gladwell calls "thin slicing" in his book Blink, we all make quick, largely unconscious, assessments about makes one work different from, or similar to, another. We can sometimes analyze - after the fact - why we made the decision of similarity or difference that we made. But (as Gladwell also points out in his book), we are not always able to articulate the precise feature-space decomposition we used to make our rapid-fire decision (because our subconscious thought-process does not always percolate up to the conscious level); nor can we really be sure that whatever feature-space decomposition we are able to articulate is an accurate reflection of what our unconscious information processing. Of course, often our thin-slicing attempts are also simply wrong.

The larger question, even if only as a thought experiment, remains. Let's start small, and not yet all-encompassing - a bit later I will generalize the question from photography to all forms of creative expression - and confine our analysis to photography alone, as an exemplar of a broader class of "art" and its associated larger class of aesthetic possibilities. We ask: what is the optimal set of "features" (to be defined shortly) of "photographs" such that - in the N-dimensional abstract aesthetic space defined by these features as (roughly) orthogonal axes - two conditions are simultaneously satisfied: (1) the differences among photographs is maximized (with respect to sets of photographs produced by individual photographers), and (2) the differences between photographs produced by the same photographer (i.e., between any two images within a given photographer's own oeuvre) are minimized? In a sense, I want to perform a "simple" exercise of mathematical pattern recognition, but without any (or little) initial sense of what space I'm performing it in, or even what I'm setting out to "recognize."

What do I mean by features? Well, any reasonably well-defined "parameter" that can be used to describe a photograph (which may, implicitly, involve both its physical attributes, as a print, and nonphysical attributes, such as subject matter or other contextual primitives). Of course, many different features exist (indeed, the set of possibilities is enormous); but not all features are as important in describing a work as others. More precisely, different sets of features will be better, or worse, at simultaneously identifying the works that are produced by a given photographer and distinguishing among bodies of works produced by different photographers.

Thought Experiment #1. Schematically, we can imagine a 3-dimensional space (in general, the dimension D can be very large) consisting of the features f1, f2 and f3. As a thought experiment, imagine we have the collected works of three of photographers (A, B, and C; that we "code" using the colors red, blue, and green). We classify each photograph, of each photographer, according to where in the feature space in lives. It does not matter whether the "points" in this space are cleanly defined or not; the only thing that matters for this thought experiment is the fact that every work by each of the three photographers is classified according to the values of the three features we have used to define this particular "aesthetic space" F = {f1, f2, f3}. As a concrete example, the three features might be: f1=average hue, f2=degree of local constrast, and f3=number of triangular shapes. And, indeed, as we might expect of such a loose (random almost) set of parameters, we would not be surprised to learn (if we actually went to the trouble of performing this experiment) that these features do little to distinguish among our three photographers. Our plot of their respective oeuvres might look something like this...

But now, suppose we are a bit more clever than this. Suppose, after carefully studying the works of these three photographers, we discover a new set of features - {f1', f2', and f3'} - such that, in this new aesthetic space, F', the same body of work now appears considerably more tightly clustered:


Here we see - by direct visual inspection - an "obvious" distinction among the photographers A, B, and C. Moreover, we see that work produced by a given artist is itself clustered around a relatively small volume of the full aesthetic space. "A" is obviously confined to one region, separate from (in this case) the volume of space occupied by "B," and both are distinct from the volume occupied by "C."

My point here is not that a feature space within which such a decomposition is possible exists - it may, or may not, for a given set of artists; but only that it suggests an interesting and deep question about what such a set of features - that simulataneously minimizes the differences among a given photographer's works and maximizes the distinction among the works of different photographers - might actually look like! I suspect it may not be like anything we would intuitively expect; if our intuition is anything like what we learn in the standard art and graphics design books. I doubt very much whether the "core features" would include such standard-issue measures as "contrast" and "tone" (though they may very well these). I wonder, too, at just how far separated the artist's "oeuvre clusters" can be made to be, while the spread of each artist's own cluster of works is simultaneously minimized.

One can play other thought games too, of course, For example, having defined some aesthetic space, and having plotted a given artist's current oeuvre - say, what the artist has produced during the last five years of work - we can trace how the artist evolves, using the first plot as a reference. Does the work remain more or less in the same "cloud" of points, so that the artist does not stray too far from his (possible innate?) aesthetic? Or does the cloud slowly dissipate, and reform in another region of the same aesthetic space? Or does the cloud diffuse outward to fill most, or all, of the "old" aesthetic space, thus suggesting that a new feature space - some F'' - exists, and in which the same artist's evolving oeuvre again assumes a cloud-like form?

Thought Experiment #2. Here is an even deeper question; and, truth be told, the real object of my rambling quest. Suppose we have managed to find a special "core aesthetic" space that does precisely what our thought experiment imagines. That is, imagine we have an aesthetic space defined by a special set features (whose relevance, for the moment, is confined solely to photography) that both maximizes the difference between different photographers, and - simultaneously - minimizes the differences between individual photographs of a given photographer. Suppose, further, that we carve out of that space a special set of photographs (and, by association, a special set of photographers) which maximize - for lack of an objectively better-defined word - photographic beauty. Now, imagine we do exactly the same thing (i.e., play the thought experiment as described above) for all of the different kinds of creative endeavors that exist: music, sculpture, literature, mathematics, physics, ... The analog of (generic) "beauty" in art or photography might be - in the case of mathematics, for example - "truth" (as in the truth of theorems); in physics, "beauty" may be aligned with "physical laws" (the "truths" of nature), and so on. What is the underlying meta-pattern that connects the patterns?


Here is my question (and I'll stop at this point): might there be a "universal aesthetic meta-map" that transforms the set of features of one aesthetic space (that describes art, say) to another set of features that describe a different aesthetic space (mathematics, say) but which leaves the measure of "beauty" that is appropriate for each kind of space invariant?

"We do not want merely to see beauty...we want something else which can hardly be put into words; to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it." - C. S. Lewis

"Beautiful" art or music, "physical laws" in physics, and "theorems" in math may be - in a truly fundamental sense - indistinguishable, but only if the analog of "beauty" is correctly defined , and interpreted, in each respective space. Indeed, I suspect that if only we were clever enough creatures to be able to simultaneously apprehend and reflect upon vast multidimensional features spaces, it would only be a matter of "shifting our perceptual / aesthetic axes" (so to speak) for us to be able to transform our endeavors from one creative space into another. Imagine being able to "prove a mathematical theorem" by working on the problem as though it were an art project (and the object of which - in the art space - is to produce a "beautiful work of art"). But whatever space we happen to find ourselves in at a given moment, the object of our quest (and the ultimate arbiter of our creative progress) remains indefagitably the same: truth.

Postscript #1. The way I presented my thought experiment, a (God like) external agent is needed to view the universe of artists and their work to construct (and plot the creative progress in) a D-dimensional aesthetic space. In fact, one can argue that each artist (indeed, each living being) is doing precisely that, ceaselessly, tirelessly, throughout its existence. We are all seeking to be as distinct as possible from all other living beings, even as - at the same time - we desire to be be as integrated into our local cultural / creative fabric as well. It is this insoluble yin-yang tension that drives all self-motivated dynamics; and perhaps all creativity. This fundamental idea of the universe consisting of simultaneous and seemingly antithetical tendencies of integration and distinction (or assertiveness), at all levels of a multidimensional hierarchy, was introduced by author / philosopher Arthur Koestler in a book called Janus. He called all such creatures that strive to do this holons.

Postscript #2. The idea that there is a core universality that underlies all forms of art - all life - is certainly not born in this humble blog entry. In fact, much of my thinking on the subject derives from, and has been shaped by, a magnificent four volume work called Nature of Order by architect / visionary Christopher Alexander (about whom I've written before on my blog).

Postscript #3. A similar idea to the one presented above as thought experiment #1 (but in the context of cosmology) - and developed more completely on a semi-rigorous mathematical level - was proposed a few years ago by physicists Julian Barbour and Lee Smolin. They called it extremal variety. Barbour has published another article on this subject in the Harvard Review of Philosophy.

Unconscious Influence and the Creative Process

I am about half-way through a superbly illuminating biography of Ludwig van Beethoven by Edmund Morris. Though short for a biography, Morris' writing style is so wonderfully succinct and poetic that reading this work is the linguistic equivalent of fine (though perhaps not quite Beethoven-esque) music. Highly recommended.

But the point of this blog entry is not Morris' Beethoven bio per se, but rather a brief muse on an interesting observation he makes on pages 72-73. By this time in the book, we are in March of 1798 (Beethoven's life spanned the years between 1770 and 1827), and Beethoven is already a young up-and-coming composer / musician. Importantly, his life intersected with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (albeit extremely briefly, in 1787, and but for one reported meeting) and Joseph Haydn (1732 - 1809). After hearing the 17 year old Beethoven play, Mozart was reported by a latter 19th century biographer (Otto Jahn) to have said, "Keep your eyes on him; some day he will give the world something to talk about" (though the veracity of this account is questioned by Morris). Beethoven, for his part, was said to have later commented on Mozart's own piano playing style as "choppy." But all of this is still an aside, as we move on to the grand'ole "papa of music" at the time, Haydn and one of Haydn's own performances in 1798 (which may, or may not, have been attended by Beethoven).

After a short self-imposed "retirement," Haydn reappeared on the public stage with a performance of a new composition (one destined to be his last work, and truly an inspired masterpiece by all acclaim) called The Creation. Morris notes that in this remarkable work, Haydn apparently presages several tonal and musical structures that the modern world would one day associate with Beethoven. Morris hypothesizes (and quickly dismisses) the idea that Haydn had consciously imitated some passages in a cantata Beethoven had shown him about eight years earlier, but speculates that perhaps the unconscious seeds of inspiration were nonetheless planted by Haydn's association with Beethoven. Since there are only twelve basic tones in the Western musical scale, it is inevitable that coincidental and otherwise similar use of harmonies and repetition will exist. But outright plagiarism is rare, on a conscious level (except in cases where it is blatantly obvious, and is a sad event when it happens of course).

So that started me thinking about the appearance of similar "unconscious seeds of inspiration" in photography. While the "tonal range" (here I am thinking more of subject matter and general expression rather than traditional black and white tones) in photography is obviously much larger than the dozen tones in music - after all, the number of things that photographers can take pictures of are essentially endless - nonetheless, the number of aesthetically meaningful core subjects (or more precisely, core subject classes) is much smaller.

How many "things" (or classes of things) can we really take pictures of? There is the general landscape, portrait, still-life, and photojournalism (among others). Each class, of course, contains many sub-classes. There are landscapes of deserts, of seascapes, of forests, and so on. Portraits may be of individuals, couples, artists, children, weddings, etc. At some point, however, either a true "novelty" is found - and remains just that, a novelty, either because it was done so well (or badly) that others are loathe to repeat it, or the subject matter was perhaps not as interesting, and/or of as lasting a value as first believed) - or a sufficiently unique perspective on an old subject is taken and the novel work thus serves to refine aesthetic meaning and boundaries. But similarity of approach and subject matter, if not downright repetition, is - in the long term - unavoidable. Just how many pictures of a mountain (or rocks, or lakes, or butterflies, or broken glass, ...) can one take? And at what point will one picture of a canyon look any other picture of a canyon?

Brooks Jensen, editor of Lenswork, published excerpts of a roundtable discussion with photographers on this subject about a year ago (in issue #76, May / June 2008), entitled "Fellow Travelers." The discussion was inspired by Jensen receiving a portfolio of grain elevators (which was subsequently published in issue #76) just as issue #75 was going to press with a portfolio of grain elevators by another photographer. Since the "new" portfolio had just as much aesthetic merit as the portfolio being published, the basic practical question was: "What is a publisher to do?" The deeper philosophical question, taken up by the photographers in the roundtable discussion, was / is: "Is there such a thing as parallel creative vision?" And, when does inspiration cross the line to become plagiarism?

A well known example of a "parallel creative vision" involves no less a figure than Ansel Adams. In 1942, Adams took his celebrated shot of Canyon de Chelly (in Arizona). Only later did he learn that it was essentially the same photograph - both in terms of composition and lighting - that 19th century photographer Timothy O'Sullivan took in 1873. We know that Adams knew - at some level - of O'Sulivan's image, because, in 1937, he lent an O'Sullivan album to Beaumont Newhall for the landmark exhibition on the centenary of photography. Adams' "reproduction" of O'Sullivan's photograph of Canyon de Chelly was entirely unconscious, and resulted from being in the same environment and executing the photographic process according to a similar aesthetic.

There are many examples of this ilk, of course; and "parallel creative vision" is certainly not confined to music or photography. In my own case, I recently discovered a similarity of vision with - and, in hindsight, not unexpectedly, a major artistic influence on me - British photographer Fay Godwin. It was Godwin's book Land, published in 1985, that was instrumental in my becoming as avid a photographer as I've become.

While in the process of selecting a set of images to exhibit at a local photography coop for our current hanging, I ran across one of my personal favorites from last year, which I call "Luminous Boundary" and you can see in small size at the top of this blog entry. Well, after the hanging, and while I was reareanging my shelves of books and journals in my study, I ran across Lenswork issue #48 (Aug / Sep 2003). Lo and behold, there is a photograph by Fay Godwin that is a virtual doppelganger of mine (or is my photograph a doppelganger of hers?) You can see Godwin's image on page two of the preview. While I can honestly say that I was not consciously aware of Godwin's image (which I had known about previously, and was reminded of that fact when I saw it again in Lenswork only after taking, processing, printing, and hanging my own shot), I cannot help feeling that I was also unconsciously motivated to "see" this particular shot when the opportunity presented itself.

The question I am asking myself is, "Would I have taken this shot, in this way, had I never known about Fay Godwin?" (Then again, in that case, the question itself may be moot since it is entirely possible I would never have decided to pursue photography!)

Postscript: While I was trying to find a direct link to Fay Godwin's image I was discussing above (I could not find it, but it is available on page 2 of the pdf preview of Lenswork #48), I ran across another "parallel vision" image, but this time it seems I have anticipated Godwin's discovery. The image is of Devastion Trail on the Big Island, Hawaii. Here is my image, taken (in color!) in 1983: I used slide film back then and this is a digitized image I made about ten years ago). And here is an image that Godwin took in 1988. Of course, in this case, I am certain that Fay Godwin had not one inkling that some unknown photographer named Andy Ilachinski was taking pictures in the same spot in Hawaii ;-)

Featured Comment (by Cedric Canard): "Good post and interesting question. Interesting in the possibilities it brings up. As you know Andy, I wrote a post which turned out to be very similar to one of yours and while I've only become a regular reader of your blog since, I have a vague recollection of coming across your blog some time in the past even though I do not recall reading the post that I covered prior to my writing it. Anyway upon reading this latest post of yours, some thoughts or memories came up and I'd like to explore these, with your permission.

I was reminded about the so called 100th Monkey experiment I read about many years ago. Where monkeys on one island learnt to do something and then monkeys on another island seemed to be able to do the same thing without the time lapse that it took the other monkeys to learn the same thing. As you know I too question the nature of thoughts. While thoughts appear to be mine I do have reservations. I can only speak for myself but many (if not most) of the thoughts that come into my head are uninvited and I do not know where they come from but I do know I cannot, in all fairness, call them mine. And though I will accept responsibility for any actions that stem from such thoughts including what I am writing now, I have to say that I have problems with claiming ownership to these writings or, for example, of the images I create. Perhaps what we call "my mind" is in actuality just a mind which is shared by all of us. So where a thought occurs to one it could just as easily occur to another especially when faced with the same circumstances. The fact that it happens in different times is most propably irrelevant when it comes to mind stuff.

In all likelyhood, you have probably taken more than one photo which has strong similarities to another photographers work but you may simply never know it. But I guess your question is asking whether a photograph (or mucical score) that we create has to be "seen/heard" first in order to be similar to another's creation. In other words if we create something unoriginal without the conscious intent of copying, is it a pre-requisite for us to have at some point, viewed/heard the original?

Advertising kind of counts on this premise. Adverts on billboards, television, magazines etc do not really brainwash us into wanting something we didn't even know we wanted or needed. Adverts simply aim to be captured by our subconscious so that when the time comes to make a choice between products the advertised product will come to the forefront of our memories and we will "choose" that product. Relating this back to photography, we may well "store" images we see in our subconscious which emerge when the opportunity presents itself and we are fooled into believing that we have done something original.

We'll never know if your "Luminous Boundary" would have existed without Fay Godwin's influence and I suspect it makes little difference. For me though, your story and your image have poked another hole in my belief that we are separate, in my belief of "me". And I sense that's a good thing because with that hole, seeing seems a little clearer."

Santorini (Greece) = Geometry + Color + Shadow

Regular readers of my blog, and those that have seen my work in Lenswork , Focus, and Black & White magazine, know that I am primarily (indeed, almost exclusively!) a black and white photographer. While I have dabbled with color in the past, and print in color on occasion (the last time involving images taken in Hawaii, with an "explanation" provided by this 2006 blog entry), almost everything I do "seriously" (and seriously try to sell) is in black and white. O'Reilly publishing also published a "color portfolio" (of sorts) of some flowers, but these were considerably older than the "2005" byline date would suggest, and - moreover - were never meant to be part of a larger body of work. Generally speaking, and without apology, color is simply "not my thing."

So, it came as somewhat of a shock to my system to learn that Santorini, Greece - a veritable paradise of color, geometry and shadow that my wife and I were fortunate enough to visit for a few days earlier this month - effectively makes a mockery of everything I held sacred about black and white ;-) Trying to render Santorini in black and white, even if duo- or tri-toned, would be like trying to convey to someone who had never heard of George Carlin what his "seven words you can't say on television" are without uttering what those words are, and doing so in a PG manner. Simply not possible.

While I tend to "see" the world in tones, not colors (a habit I think I first picked up when my eyesight started going bad when I was five; since - without glasses - the world is made up mostly of featureless, colorless splotches in my visual field), I recognize that when color is the primary - or otherwise important - focus of my aesthetic attention and therefore needs to be expressed, it behooves me to render the scene in color. But color is by no means my primary focus. And to the extent that my (mostly B&W tonal) aesthetics dictates how I perceive a photographic environment, and what grabs my attention in the photographic environment, it is simply a fact that I have seldomly produced a body of work consisting of color images. However, Santorini renders all such musings and intellectualizations absurdly moot. Aside from its intricate labyrinth of criss-crossed and interlocked walkways (that passerbys must occasionally share with mules), Santorini is nothing but color; glorious, breathing, living, and sometimes blindingly bright color!

I am convinced that color is somehow born and nurtured here, before being unleashed in muted tones elsewhere in this world. A result partly of the eternally bright midday summer sun and partly of the bright local hues and saturation, Santorini is ablaze with color. This is somewhat of a paradox, as most of the buildings are painted a bright white, and are devoid of any color; of course, this accentuates the omnipresent colors that much more and renders them, if anything, more intense.

Since we were there for only a few days, I regret not having the time to "attune" myself to the fantastic - and phantasmagoric - Escher-like architectonic forms. I was more in "point and shoot" mode, trying to capture as much of the colorful geometry as I could in the time we had, than in my more usual slow, deliberate, and contemplative frame of mind (which, had I followed, would have resulted in far fewer shots; perhaps none at all (!). As it turned out, I did manage to find several wonderful scenes that show some of Santorini's unique charm (though I'll let kind readers judge for themselves).

On a physical side, what I will always remember about Santorini is the steps; endless steps, ups and downs, and more endless steps ;-) My wife and I needed about 80 steps or so to get down to our hotel room from the main desk (which is itself about 75 steps removed from the "top" of Fira, the town we stayed in), then another 50 to arrive at the hotel's restaurant for dinner. It is the first place either of us has stayed in with the amusing (and slightly surrealistic) property that, if - after locking your hotel room and before arriving at the hotel's restaurant - you suddenly remember that you have forgotten something absolutely vital for the rest of the day, you will pause, in mid-step, for considerably more than a few minutes (partly to catch your breath and partly to just think), reflecting on the pros and cons of going back to the room for the item; and, 9 times of of ten simply decide to forget it. This place is just hard on the legs and lungs! Though we were both immediately winded less than half-way up the first series of steps the first day there, we soon acclimated to the mini-climbs and were hardly out of breath by the last day. Just in time to prepare for our hike down Samaria Gorge on Crete, our next stop; but that's another story. (We also both found our thighs had expanded two or three inches in girth with pure muscle after we got back home.)

I have posted a mini "point and shoot" portfolio of Santorini's Geometry, Color, and Shadow - (no B&W to be found anywhere ;-) - here.

The Eightfold Path Toward Self-Discovery Through Photography

A while back, I posted an entry called The Eightfold Way of the Artist, in which I describe the basic "steps" by which most artists - and most photographers (not that there is any meaningful difference between the two;-) - typically develop an aesthetic language over a lifetime's worth of "seeing" and "expressing" their own unique vision. That earlier discussion, however, was fairly abstract; and emphasized how the evolution of one's personal art may be used to reveal, over time, the artist "behind" the emergent work. I'd like to revisit this idea, but from a slightly more practical (but no less philosophically deep) point of view: namely, how the nature of the expressed art form itself changes over time, and what we - as artists - can learn from the forms of change.

In keeping with this entry's more prosaic tone (though, as I glance ahead to what I wrote below, I'm not sure how much "philosophy" I've actually stripped from my earlier post; I'll leave that up to the patient reader to decide;-), I should note that it was prompted by a disarmingly simple and straightforward question my mom asked me a few weeks ago (well, it was straightforward, but only before I realized that answering it - in a meaningful way - would prove anything but). Having just seen my Micro Worlds portfolio, my mom asked: "Andy, these are lovely, but why do you take so many pictures of the same thing? You used to show me such a variety of subjects; why the change?"

My immediate reply was accurate but shallow. I said that I no longer find individual images adequate to fully express what I want to communicate about what I'm seeing and feeling. My mom - who is not used to shallow answers about art, having lived with a rather deep artist (namely, my dad) for as long as I can remember - called me on my flippant reply, and probed for something deeper. I tried again: "I don't think in terms of individual images anymore; and when I see a subject that interests me, I want to explore it more, with multiple exposures and viewpoints." In some ways, of course, that was worse than my first answer...my mom countered with: "Andy, you've restated my question quite nicely. Now, how about explaining why you don't think in terms of individual images anymore?"What follows is a summary of the deeper answer I gave my mom after I took a few hours to ponder her probing question. I concluded that my mom very perceptively discerned a genuine meta-pattern shift in the gestalt of my photography; and that the essence of that meta-pattern shift provides an important clue as to what stage I'm in, in my natural (and still very much ongoing) evolution as an artist. I also thought that it might be a worthwhile exercise to think through, and describe, the various stages that I suspect most (if not all) photographers gradually move through as they mature as artists. While my notes contain the germs of ideas for "stages of artistic evolution" whose numbers range from a only a few to more than a dozen, I eventually settled on eight stages (perhaps an unconscious homage to Buddha's Eightfold Path).

Let me begin by stating up front that my description of the "8-fold path toward self-discovery" in no way implies that I have any special insight into the deepest strata of art or photography; it is offered simply, and humbly, "as is" and is to be read - and understood - purely as an expression of but one point of view (which the reader is entirely free to disagree with; indeed, I hope does disagree, with at least parts of it, so as to foster a dialectic by which we can all collectively probe the meaning of art and photographer even deeper).

"A man's work is nothing but
this slow trek to discover,
through the detours of art, these two or three
great and simple images in whose
presence his heart first opened."
- ALBERT CAMUS

Stage 1: Joyful snapshots of anything and everything. What is the first thing anyone who gets a new" toy" (or serious tool) wants to do? Play with it, of course; see what it can do, learn how to use it - mechanically, at least - and just have some fun with it. The beginning photographer - such as I remember myself being when I was barely 10 and my parents had given me a Polaroid instamatic camera for Christmas - doesn't really care much about anything other than taking pictures of whatever strikes their fancy. And that's precisely what they get: pictures of their dog or cat, their room, mom and dad, their own reflection, snapshots of their friends, a tree, a shoe, a baseball game, an apple, whatever. Everyone begins somewhere; and that "somewhere" for photographers is a joyful - but otherwise essentially indiscriminant - expression of a new found tool that takes pictures. And pictures they will take; all kinds of pictures, with hardly any rhyme or reason. In a basic sense, anyone who is alive and is the least bit curious about the world - and is given a camera, or any other artistic tool - instantly becomes a stage-1 artist.

Stage 2: A passive stirring of aesthetic value. As the photographer evolves from stage one to stage two, she still takes images of anything and everything that strikes her fancy but now finds that certain objects draw a deeper attention than others. Her gaze still falls on most everything that surrounds her, but her embryonic photographer's "eye" begins to discern that aesthetic value is not homogeneously distributed; certain scenes, and certain things, draw her eye more than others. For the first time, though perhaps weakly, some aspect of the environment draws the artist's attention. But the second stage artist is mostly passive, reacting to aesthetic stimuli as they appear and are recognized, but still largely undiscerning as to their relative merit and eager to "take in as much as possible." The stage-2 artist creates pictures in which others recognize that certain things are given more or less visual weight than others; but - because the stage-2 artist is still only a "beginner" - the pictures themselves are not necessarily as aesthetically pleasing as they could be.

Stage 3: Willful engagement of the aesthetic environment. The transition from stage two to stage three is both difficult to see "from the outside" (for observers of the artist's inner journey) and dramatic (as experienced directly by the artist). The transition occurs when the artist finds herself discontent with the merely passive capture of objects, and instead actively seeks objects she deems "interesting." She has started to categorize the world according to her own unique measure(s) of lesser and greater aesthetic value. Objects (or places, or people, or situations, ...) that the stage-three artist holds in high regard become beacons in the environment that both immediately draw the artist's attention, and are "attractors" toward which the artist actively makes her way. If the artist finds trees of particular interest, for example, she is no longer content with leaving a park with a "few stray shots of trees," but now deliberately goes to different parks (and other places that has lots of trees) to "see" as many different tree as possible. The stage-three artist begins to learn what she values most, and then goes out to find it. She also learns to better express what she "sees" and is better able to create aesthetically pleasing images. "Objects" of attention in the stage-3 artist's picture repertoire are no longer appreciated by others merely as objects that clearly "stand out" from the background, but as bona-fide "aesthetic elements" assembled by the artist's growing creative powers of expression.

Stage 4: Recognition of the power of expression. The transition between stage three and stage four is marked by a gradual recognition of the power of using photography - traditionally, a print - to express not the object itself, but what draws the artist's attention to the object. In practical terms, this means that the stage four artist is concerned less with depicting trees merely as objects of interest (in keeping with our "tree" example) - being quite happy to display a set of "shots of pretty trees" that are otherwise unremarkable in any way - and more with finding the one shot (and the one resulting print) that best expresses to others why the artist loves to photograph trees. This subtle (and not so easy) transition represents a very significant worldview shift; as well as a shift in artistic sensibility. Indeed, many artists (myself included) find themselves "stuck" at the boundary between stages 3 and 4 for years, as they patiently develop and explore ways to express meaning, and not just being. Making matters even more difficult is that the stage 3->4 transition involves a gradual recognition of - and increased attention to - two different worlds of reality and expression: (1) attention to using a print to isolate the tree as it "appears" to us, as an otherwise embedded feature of the external environment, and (2) attention to using post-capture tools (either in a traditional or digital "darkroom") to properly express the most "important" features of the tree as captured in a photograph. Again, this distinction is both subtle and deep. It is meaningful only insofar as the stage-4 photographer realizes there is an important aesthetic difference between using tools to render differences between trees and their environment (in order to "make them stand out" better from the surrounding clutter), and using tools to selectively render the inner parts of a given photograph (the first inkling to dodge, burn, and make other tonal "changes" to an image), so that the viewer can better "see" what the photographer is trying to express. The slow and careful learning, nurturing, and refining of these skills can (and often does) take years, if not decades, to develop fully.

Stage 5: One picture is not enough. Sooner or later, but only after comfortably settling into stage 4, every artist yearns to go beyond the "image" - to go beyond just showing a single picture, or at most a few individual prints, of a subject the artist holds dear. More effort and more care are put into every single capture (and its attendant post-capture processing); and more and more finished prints are deemed "worthy to show others" by the artist. But the stage-5 artist also grows increasingly dissatisfied over what she is beginning to perceive as "too shallow" an expression of an inner vision that is slowly trying to make its own voice heard. "I like this tree," she finds herself thinking to herself more and more often, "but it doesn't - can't ! - by itself express why I've been taking pictures of trees for as long as I have." She continues, "Each of my trees is lovely, and I'm proud to show them to others, but I'm somehow missing the bigger picture here. It is as though each of my pictures is a chapter in a book yet to be assembled." The artist may not yet quite know what this nascent "book" is, what form it will eventually take, or what it will "say," but her aesthetic eye has measurably raised its line-of-sight to higher levels. The stage-5 artist no longer thinks (or "sees") in terms of individual pictures. Rather, the world is seen as a patchwork; a tapestry of overlapping images. Or, simply, in terms of groups - or portfolios - of pictures.

Stage 6: Telling a story. Inevitably, the artist becomes interested in not just putting together a set of assorted - but only marginally related - prints (as in collections of "best of" shots), but in carefully crafting and sequencing the images in a portfolio of prints to tell a specific story. If the original interest was (and remains) trees, for example, the artist now wishes to move beyond her ever growing collection of "individual trees," to a new form of expression designed to reveal both how "sets of trees" are related, and a bit of the process by which the artist's perception and expression of her general "love of trees" has itself evolved over time. The stage-6 artist thus naturally steps away from a focus on prints as prints (even if they are otherwise a part of a larger collection) and moves toward an increased focus on portfolios of interrelated images. It is no longer enough to just find that one "good" or "best" image - even if it is one for the ages (though any artist is always happy to find it! ;-) - the artist now first thinks in terms of mutually related groups of images. Ideally, each image both stands on its own and compliments and/or enhances all of the others. In more practical terms, the artist now wishes to express not so much her love of "trees" per se, as represented in the "best possible way" by a single image, but a deeper aesthetic experience of trees in general; as exemplified perhaps by a selection of personally meaningful images captured in a favorite park, or accrued over several weeks or months (or years) even as the artist explores other subjects and themes. The stage-6 artist's attention has moved from "pictures" to projects that culminate in portfolios of interrelated images; all motivated by a growing desire to use sets of images to tell a story about what the artist's eye (and heart) is drawn to, and why..

Stage 7: Portfolios of Portfolios. The penultimate stage typically appears only when an artist has attained a certain level of "aesthetic maturity"; by which time a meaningful body of work - consisting mostly of portfolios (though "individually meaningful" images still pop up from time to time) - has naturally emerged. Each and every portfolio has both a story to tell, and is an element of an as-yet unrevealed and unrealized deeper story; a story about which the stage-7 artist hears the first faint murmurs of. A story concerning the truths of the world "out there" as revealed to the photographer through her lifetime's worth of aesthetic judgements as to what to shoot, what to keep, how to express, what to show, and what to sequence into portfolios. The artist realizes that her art has not only captured an aesthetic impression of the world - an aesthetic that is uniquely hers, though the details may overlap with that of other artists - but is a manifest imprint of a deeper aesthetic order of the external world. The artist begins to understand and appreciate certain universal objective truths by examining the subjective aesthetic order that she herself has "imposed" on the world. By studying her own portfolio of portfolios - as though her life's work was itself a "world" open to capture with an aesthetic eye and camera - the artist discovers universal truths about the world itself. In my own case (though I suspect I am far from moving into stage-5, much less stage-7), I can glimpse some of the feelings associated with a stage-7 worldview by looking inward to my motivation for creating my recent "portoflio of portfolios" called Sudden Stillness. Sudden Stillness consists of four fundamentally interwoven portfolios called Chaos, Order, Complexity, and Entropy. The subtitle of the book conveys the deeper meaning behind (and reason for the particular sequencing of images in) the book: visual echoes of timeless rhythms. Collectively, the four portfolios weave a "story" about the fundamental rhythmic patterns that regulate our world (from this one photographer's point of view, of course). In short, the stage-7 artist uses her own work - consisting now mostly of portfolios of portfolios - to transcend art and begin addressing deeper and universal themes and issues regarding the order of the world around her. Art is no longer concerned solely with the here and now - for its own sake, and regarding limited sets of objects, themes, and contexts - but assumes an added dimension of seeking a transcendent truth about the nature of the world itself. And part of that truth is revealed - to the artist - by the artists own body of work.

Stage 8: Self-discovery. Stage-8 is not all that different from stage-7, at least outwardly, and if measured objectively in terms of the artist's physical output (in terms of images and prints). The stage-8 artist still typically produces portfolios of portfolios, still diligently practices her artform, relentlessly striving toward perfection, and delights with each every "beautiful print" as though it was her first, just as she has always done and will always do; but the artist shows no outward sign of doing anything different from the stage-7 artist. Indeed, paradoxically, the stage-8 artist may even appear to others as being stuck on a plateau (albeit an aesthetically very high one), and no longer willing, or able, to "evolve" artistically. But something fundamental has changed - and in a dramatic way, but one invisible to anyone but the artist at first - in the way the artist understands and interprets her own work. Of course, all of the technical components of image capture and mechanical procedures of post-capture processing have long ago been turned into virtually reflex action on the artist's part. Without this being true - something that requires years and years of dedicated and full immersion in art - no artist can progress to stage-8 (this - namely, the need for total immersion - also appears to be universally true of any creative field, if the practitioner wishes to attain the highest levels of "creative accomplishment"). And what is the fundamental change that occurs? In the same way as we indicated that the stage-7 artist uses her art to uncover truths about the world, the stage-8 artist discovers truths about her own soul. The world, and the artist's own work, have both come full circle: the world revealed through an artist's vision; and the artist's expression of the world uncovering the depths of the artist herself. Seer and seen become one; and the seen brings the seer back to self.

“A man sets out to draw the world.
As the years go by, he peoples a space
with images of provinces,
kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships,
islands, fishes, rooms, instruments,
stars, horses, and individuals.
A short time before he dies,
he discovers that the patient labyrinth
of lines traces the lineaments
of his own face.”
- JORGE LUIS BORGES