Paul's Reflections

"At the core of it all, there's something more.
Something luminous, something shimmering."

- Paul Cotter

Long-time readers of my blog will have seen book reviews appear every now and then, but I haven't posted as many as one might expect (given my general penchant for books). By my count, I have about 20 (depending on the minimal length and depth that defines a "review" and excluding a post in which I summarize the book my mom and I wrote about my dad's life and art); just click on "Book Reviews" in the Themes and Places section in the left sidebar to see the full list. That's 20 reviews out of a total of 1660 total posts since 2004, or less than 1 per year! The main reason is that I only post reviews of books that have made a strong - a strong positive - impression on me. I can further distill this already select group to a set of exactly four books that made me blurt out "Wow!" and which 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), and (4) Wynn Bullock's Color Light Abstractions (in 2010). To this short list I must now add a fifth - Paul Cotter's Paul's Reflections: Photography and thoughts about life and living - mostly because of how brilliantly it combines "verbal and visual" aesthetic - even spiritual - spaces, an observation made also by Barbara Bullock-Wilson in the foreword she wrote for Paul's book.

Full disclosure: (1) Despite never having met in person (though we both look forward to the day this is no longer true), Paul and I have "known" each other for about 10 years, and connected over an essay Paul had published on Wynn Bullock in 2016 (which I found by following a link I'd seen on Barbara Bullock Wilson's Facebook page). And, as dedicated readers of my own blog know, Barbara serendipitously become a treasured friend of mine soon after we first corresponded in 2012 via email about my "discovery" of her father's color abstractions; (2) I purchased Paul's book online as soon as I learned of its existence. Does my knowing Paul make the "review" you are about to read biased? Objectively, perhaps. But you'll have to take my word (on faith, of course) that I never recommend a book (about photography or any other subject) unless I believe it is special. Which brings us to my review.

The softcover book (this is the only version available) consists of 53 of Paul's favorite essays and accompanying photographs that have appeared on his blog between March 2023 and early 2026 (you can read more about the book and place your order here). Apart from the foreword and introduction, it follows an elegantly simple two-page format: a title introduces a short essay and a quote/callout (that highlights salient text) on the right, and an accompanying photograph appears on the left (a few sample pages are here and here). 

While the photographs reveal Paul's gift for simplicity and reflect an inner calm honed from years of studying Buddhism (Paul has been featured in National Geographic magazine, gallery exhibitions, and international photography annuals), the essays - each a perfect companion to the image it is paired with (as explained below) - are a world unto-themselves. Each essay is anchored on a single idea or observation (or, as you'll find on page 29, "thoughts about thoughts"). What sets these essays apart from those by most other photographer-authors is the Zen-like spark of illumination they ignite in the reader; Paul is as gifted an author as he is a photographer! Indeed, as I've emailed him privately several times after reading his blog posts, I am in awe at how few words - often no more than a few spare, poetic-like paragraphs - Paul needs to convey ideas that will take root and linger in your memory long after you've closed his book. I tend to think of them as sacred clippings drawn from the life of a wise and gentle sage. Though they are all short and can be finished in a minute or two, I recommend that you savor these essays by reading them slowly, thoughtfully, letting your mind wander and muse on whatever related themes and ideas you will no doubt find percolating inside you. 

You will find - and grow to appreciate after spending quality time with Paul's book - that each image-essay pair is subtly interlocked and self-reinforcing. When you turn to a page, your eye will first be drawn to the photograph on the left (since we are fundamentally visual creatures). After you've absorbed the first layer of meaning (there are other, typically many other layers you'll discover as you revisit the image), you'll shift your gaze to the accompanying essay on the right. This will also quickly draw you in, and you will momentarily "ignore" the image because you will have become consumed with the story that's taken you along for a ride. At some point, as you are reading the essay, your eyes will suddenly dance back to the image to pick out a detail you somehow missed before but which some words you've just read reminded you (or your mind's eye) was there to be discovered all along. You smile ("Of course, I should have seen that!") and turn your attention back to the essay. You smile again ("Paul's describing a world the photograph is showing me just a small part of!"). The essay seems somehow even richer than before; and you see textures and rhythms only hinted at by the words themselves. You glance back at the image and suddenly see that it doesn't just mirror some explicit part of the essay (what probably originally caught your eye), but includes deeper latent layers of meaning; the image is somehow transformed into something more ("I want to just keep looking at it, I don't want to leave."). Then back to the essay ("I wish it would go on. I'm not ready to leave this world. I never saw the world this way!). Back and forth you'll go, until distinctions between image and essay start blurring, and eventually disappear altogether. You'll "see" a world that the Zen-master's boat (i.e., which I'll colloquially refer to as "Paul's image-essay pair") has gently guided you across the stream to see. You smile again, relishing the anticipation of revisiting this stream before turning the page to step into another boat. 

While Paul's book is not meant to make you a better photographer or writer (though there are lessons galore for those who aspire to refine their skills at either), it will undoubtedly enhance your appreciation of - and ability to see, to really see - the "everyday miracles that are all around us." As for me, I look forward to dipping into its pages for inspiration for years to come. Highly recommended!

Enfolded Energy Fields

 "In all ages even among scientific men,
there can be discerned the urge to
apprehend the living form as such,
to grasp the connections of
their external visible parts; to
take them as intimations of inner
activity, and so to master, to some
degree, the whole in an intuition."

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)

Postscript. This image is of the garden peony that adorns the ground beneath our mail-box; more precisely, and paraphrasing Minor White, I should say that the image is what else the garden peony is. What you are "really" looking at is a digital-negative (i.e., wherein the white-to-black tonalities are reversed) of a zoomed-in portion of what started out being 1:1 macro shot of the folds-within-folds of petals inside a single peony flower. The distance from left to right is no more than about two inches. In my physicist's mind's eye, I see an undulating play of interpenetrating enfolded forms of some mysterious energy field; the same impression I get when gazing at Bruce Barnbaum's mesmerizing slit canyon abstracts. Images such as this also remind us that magical otherworldly realms are always near us, just waiting for our eye to discover.

Photography, Elemental Forms, Narrative, and Music

"If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.... I get most joy in life out of music" - Albert Einstein

In my "Long belated return to blogging..." blog entry a few weeks ago, I alluded to finding a new reverie in the "music" of Kauai's tonal forms and rhythms - something I'm becoming more and more drawn to in general (far transcending what my "eye" saw during my family's trip to Kauai in July, and something I am becoming more and more sensitive to in my photography); but I did not, in that ealier entry, elaborate on what I meant by "music."

Historically, the connection between photography and music goes back at least as far as the oft-told story of how, in his youth, the great Ansel Adams needed a few years to choose between pursuing one or the other. Having obviously chosen photography, Ansel's passion for - and ability to make - music never waned throughout the remaining years of his life. Indeed, it both informed and inspired his art. Some of his best known aphorisms are couched in music-speak; e.g., "Photographers are in a sense composers," he once said, "and the negatives are their scores." The list of accomplished photographers who are also gifted in music (and vice versa) is long (Graham Nash, Ralph Gibson, Milt Hinton, Bryan Adams, and Kenny Rogers, to name just a few); perhaps as long as the one that includes mathematicians and scientists as well (e.g., Bruce Barnbaum, Larry Blackwood, Norman Koren, Charles Johnson, and - of course - one of the co-inventors of photography, William Henry Fox Talbot).

"Even though fixed in time, a photograph evokes as much feeling as that which comes from music or dance. Whatever the mode – from the snapshot to the decisive moment to multi-media montage – the intent and purpose of photography is to render in visual terms feelings and experiences that often elude the ability of words to describe. In any case, the eyes have it, and the imagination will always soar farther than was expected." - Ralph Gibson

But the sense in which I find myself applying "music" to photography nowadays has little to do with this simplest of associations; for I mean it quite literally: images perceived as music! Perhaps spurred by subconscious machinations about my multi-year experiments with "Synesthetic Landscapes,"  I am tending to hear the tonal and elemental forms and structures of images, as though my visual and aural circuits have crossed (which, not coincidentally, is the essence of synesthesia). But whereas my "Synesthetic Landscape" series is admittedly an artificial construct, deliberately crafted to evoke a sense of synesthesia in the viewer (and whose physical appearance actually owes nothing to synesthesia, per se, since it is an almost wholly "cognitive" experiment), inexplicably, my aesthetic "eye" is being drawn more and more to compositions that - synesthestically - evoke real music within me. I hear the images that my camera's viewfinder shows me, and the ones that I seem to keep and decide to print are those whose melodies I enjoy the most. My current favorite "reason" (that I give to those who ask) why a specific image, say, continues to adorn my office wall, when others - even those I have liked in the past - come and go with regularity, is that the keepers simply sing.  But what do I mean by this?

After some deliberation (and with the understanding that these thoughts are still closer to stream-of-conscious ruminations than coherent worldviews), I'd like to offer a hypothesis of why certain images just seem to "sing" - and others do not - and what this may have to say about the general aesthetic appreciation of images on a fundamental level (at least one that I have not previously encountered in academic discussions). I propose that the images with which we most strongly resonate - those that give the most aesthetic "pleasure" - are those whose innate harmonies are entwined on two levels: (1) spatial, in which an otherwise complex morass of visual details and textures may be distilled into a much simpler set of elemental forms and structures; and (2) temporal, in which the relationships among the elemental spatial forms are, in our mind's eyes and ears, experienced as a narrative that unfolds in time. It is when an image harbors an especially acute harmony in both its spatial and temporal dimensions that our gaze tends to linger just a bit longer; and to which we can only say, if asked, "Why do you keep looking at it?" that it simply sings.

"Music creates order out of chaos." - Yehudi Menuhin

The "image" at the top of this entry depicts a 10-frame "narrative" that includes the elemental forms I've deconstructed out of one of my favorite "Kauai music" images (that also appeared in my earlier post). Here is the spatial deconstruction itself:

Each frame of the "narrative" contains just the elemental forms that - at a given slice in time - draw most attention (for me; your narrative will, of course, be different). I first look at the dominant root at near center, as it swoops to the upper right of the composition (frame 1). My eye next goes over to the top left to take in the gentle rhythm of the leaves (frame 2), then moving downward to gaze at the smaller root and the decaying bamboo sheath to its right (frame 3); and so on. The narrative encodes my experience in time of the elemental forms that make up the otherwise static image. The spatial forms are not only pleasant to look at (at least, for me) because they evoke a "harmony of fixed structures" (i.e., the "parts" that make up the distillation at the far right in the triptych above), but also strongly evoke a music-like "harmony of dynamic structures" that are best appreciated as an aesthetic narrative that unfolds in an inner, experiential time. It is as though the innate harmony of inherent forms is so strong that it lifts the otherwise two dimensional image into a higher dimension; one that is best "seen" by having its innate melody heard, and as its elemental notes gently play out, and linger, in our mind's ears. Photographic aesthetics as an experiential union of space and time.

Reconnecting With "Older" Wisdom in a World of eBooks

For years, dating back to the early 90s, a good friend of mine (a co-worker on my "day job," fellow physicist, and part-time artist) and I have enjoyed a weekly lunch followed by a short sojourn to a neighborhood Borders book store (now defunct of course) or one of a few local Barnes and Nobles. Now, unfortunately (at least for us "oldies" who were weaned on the feel and smell of a good book), the writing seems on the wall for Barnes and Nobles to follow Borders' lead: recent reports indicate that the lone remaining brick & mortar national bookstore chain is about to embark on a plan that will close 100s of its stores. 

Though hardly a surprise, with Kindles and Nooks nearly as ubiquitous as smart phones these days, I must admit a profound sadness at the prospect of living in a physical-bookstore-less world. (I can only imagine the tragic depths of melancholy Borges would have been forced to endure in this "new" bookless world, had he lived this long - though, with an inevitable touch of irony, since the great conjurer of the infinite multiverse of libraries  himself possessed only a humble little bookshelf of books). 

Oh, I know all the familiar counterarguments, from, "Mom and Pop bookstores will never die"  to "second-hand bookstores will only grow" as the market for such "relics" inevitably expands (at least for a generation, like mine, that will always need a tactile reminder or two of a bygone era). There is also the happy reality that books - as literal purveyors of information - will truly never cease to be, but be merely transformed into something magical (as is already happening with a proliferation of "Borgesian" interactive hybrids of words, images, and videos). eBooks are a kind of living, self-transforming, digital palimpsests of their older tactile, static, cousins. Still, my innate desire to finger through some old dusty, moldy copy of some first edition will never wane.

Which brings me to how these general laments and musings bear on the subject of photography, and the real subject of this blog entry. To wit: I fear that our new eBook era makes it all too easy for young photographers to at best be ignorant of, and at worst, simply ignore, the "dated and / or irrelevant" photographic wisdom of past masters. Brooks Jensen, editor of Lenswork, recently posted a sad story (sad to me) about how a recent MFA photography graduate had no idea who Edward Weston was! 

Debates aside about whether this loss of awareness is real or illusory, or about how really "important" it is for one to be aware of the history of one's craft, whatever that craft, my perception is that the photography eBooks being published nowadays are rarely reprints of "older classics" (by and /or about past masters). For example, there are no eBook versions - that I am aware of - of any of Ansel Adams' classic texts (The Camera, The Negative, The Print); or of Weston's Daybooks; or even of, say, a relatively modern biography of an old master, such as, say, Alfred Steiglitz (written by Stieglitz's grand-neice, Sue Davidson Lowe).

Still, there is hope, and some notable exceptions. One is a magnificent recent book by Andrea Stillman that provides the behind-the-scenes stories of 20 of Adams' most significant images (Stillman was Ansel Adams' assistant in the 1970s): Looking at Ansel Adams: The Photographs and the Man. Although published in hardcover (with great reproductions, including comparisons of how Adams' printing "eye" and aesthetics evolved over the years), Stillman's book is arguably even better in eBook form - available as an iBook for iPads and iPhones. The eBook provides audio, video, and links to additional material that only enhances the readers enjoyment of what is already a fine book. Kudos to Little, Brown and Company (the publishers) for bringing such a wonderful volume on Adams' work into the eBook age.

Another kudos goes to Allworth Press, which published in 2006 a wonderful collection of essays by and about "classic" photographers (already an anachronism for modern-day MFA students;-) called The Education of a Photographer; and who, more recently, released an eBook version of the book for the Kindle. I recommend it highly for students of photography (as well as to established modern photographers who want to discover or reacquaint themselves with the wisdom of past masters).

A third great book (albeit by more of a latter-day-master than a Weston or Adams era master) that now appears in both physical and iBook form is The Art of Photography: An Approach to Personal Expression by Bruce Barnbaum (one of our generation's most gifted photographers and printers). I still have a dogeared version of the book from back when its first or second version  appeared in the 80s. It is a stapled mess (I say that affectionately), contains no pictures, but is filled to the brim with timeless wisdom about the art and craft of photography. Barnbaum's deep insights into photography have now been brought more-or-less up-to-date (including a chapter or two on Photoshop, though these have the feel of "let's tag  this on for analog / darkroom veterans who want to whet their feet just a bit") and are a veritable steal at $12!

As I refocus my attention on my blog over the coming weeks and months (I have been "away" since Dec of last year completing the Russian edition of my dad's biography - multiple copies of which are on their way to the Taganrog museum in Taganrog, Russia as I type, to which my mom and I bequeathed 35 of my dad's works -  and completing my Synesthetic Landscapes portfolio, which I am happy to report will be published in the extended DVD edition of Lenswork #105 in the next month or so), I plan on devoting some time to reviewing / discussing several photography-related books that are a bit "off the beaten" path; i.e., books that are not necessarily something one would find on shelves at the the soon-to-be-closed Barnes and Noble store but which would be of interest to the dedicated photographer. Stay tuned.

Wynn Bullock: Color Light Abstractions

"Light to me is perhaps the most profound truth in the universe. My thinking has been deeply affected by the belief that 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 rarely before been seen in public! 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 add 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 luminescent protoforms of life and consciousness ;-)

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 is mounted on a camera that 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 (Nandoor 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.

John Sexton's Magnificent New Book: Recollections

The on-line Oxford Dictionary defines the word magnificent simply as "impressively beautiful"; where beauty is said to be "a combination of qualities that delights the aesthetic senses." While both words come to mind in describing John Sexton's new book, Recollections: Three Decades of Photographs, if we are to go by Oxford's rather banal definitions, neither word even comes close to conveying the depths of visual and spiritual pleasures that await anyone who focuses their eye on the masterful B&W images assembled here.

Though I own hundreds of photography books, and regularly peruse most of them for years, I have had a relatively few "Wow!" reactions over the years - indeed, the last such experiences are at least two decades old (!): to Bruce Barnbaum's late 1970s' Visual Symphony and, in the middle 1980s, to Fay Godwin's Land - but Sexton's new Opus not only evoked an immediate heartfelt "Wow!" from me, it also raises the bar on what will trigger a similar exclamation from me in the future. I sat transfixed for hours after receiving it in the mail yesterday, and already consider it a sacrosanct member of the deepest core of my photography library. It is truly an extraordinary work of art; one that I will be savoring - and learning from - for years to come.

It is also clearly the work of a master photographer and printer, at the height of his creative powers; and a "master" not just of the "moment" compared to his living peers, but a "master" as judged in the context of the history of the medium.

Of course, it is impossible to describe the "contents" of this book, except to say that it contains 52 plates (and a few short essays) of such things as rocks, trees, and water. But, as with all great photographic art, by the time you get to even the second image, such conventional, blandly and trivially representational categories are understood as absurd and meaningless. The best of Sexton's images - and there are none in this book that are not! - capture spirit itself.

In short, a masterpiece!

Ten "Epiphanous" Photographs: #7

The seventh of ten "epiphanous photographs" - a hand-picked series of photographs as defined in an earlier Blog entry - is... Epiphanous Photograph #7: Bruce Barnbaum's Circular Chimney, Antelope Canyon Bruce Barnbaum, as he reveals on his website, entered photography as a hobbyist in the 1960s; he is still at it today, though his "hobby" has turned into a life's work. His photographs typically contain ambiguities of scale and perspective, inviting the viewer to actively participate in the recursive creative process. Earning Bachelor's and Master's degrees in mathematics from UCLA in 1965 and 1967, and spending a few years working as a mathematical analyst and computer programmer, Barnbaum quit the field and turned to photography full-time in 1970 (though his "eye" retained much of his mathematical training; the importance of which I can attest to as well, speaking as both photographer and physicist). Bruce Barnbaum is widely regarded as one of the world's finest living photographic craftsmen and darkroom printers. I confess that my seventh "epiphanous" image, Barnbaum's Circular Chimney, proved to be a particularly hard choice to make, because it is, in truth, but one example of an entire gallery of exquisite Slit canyon photographs, any one of which most photographers would be proud to call their own masterpiece!. It is also but one of the many spectacular photographs my eyes first fell on in 1987 as I was slowly (in rapturous awe really!) thumbing through my then newly purchased copy of Barnbaum's first book, Visual Symphony. The book is organized into four movements - The Landscape; The Cathedrals of England; Urban Geometrics; and The Slit Canyons - and contains images that are so beautfully composed and exquisitely toned and rendered, that (certainly up until that point in time) I had never seen anything approaching that standard. This book remains as one of the most remarkable collections of photographs ever to grace the covers of a book. While Barnbaum is not the first photographer to photograph within the often claustrophobic confines of Arizona's slit canyons (nor the first to cast an artistic "eye" on the sanctified spaces of Cathedrals), he was the first to elevate their light and form into fine art. What is even more remarkable, is that in this one book (now, sadly, long out of print and unavailable) - Barnbaum does the same for each of his chosen subjects. Matching (maybe surpassing) Weston's compositions for clarity and purity of expression, and with tonal ranges that sometimes exceed Adams' finest efforts, Barnbaum's photos reveal an almost supernaturally transcendent beauty no one had imagined lurked beneath the surface of canyon walls, cathedral pillars, architectural forms and landscapes. To be sure, photography generally works best, as an art form, whenever it reveals the hidden beauty of nature; and there are many gifted artists who manage to do this time and again. But what Barnbaum's photography revealed to me back in 1987 (a lesson I have carried with me ever since), is that there are even greater depths of aesthetic, even spiritual, beauty to be plumbed in what otherwise, and to others, may appear to be "old themes" and "tired" cliches. When I first saw Barnbaum's Circular Chimney, I could not help but feel that I was somehow looking directly at the face of God; it was that powerful, as a photograph, and as a visual, and spiritual exprience. I learned that photography, if practiced in a dedicated, empassioned soulful manner, can indeed elevate the utterly mundane (rocks and light) to the highest planes of spiritual understanding, and communication (as art). The possibility of this magical transformation from the ordinary to ethereal is what drives much of my own photography, and is another reason why I love fine art photography.