Awareness

"Most of us spend our time preoccupied. We are constantly carrying on an internal dialogue. While we are involved in talking to ourselves, we miss the moment-to-moment awareness of our life. We look, but we don’t see. We listen, but we don’t hear. We eat, but we don’t taste. We love, but we don’t feel. The senses are receiving all the information, but because of our preoccupations, cognition is not taking place. Zazen brings us back to each moment. The moment is where our life takes place. If we miss the moment, we miss our life."

- John Daido Loori (1931 - 2009)
Finding the Still Point

Serene Illumination

"Serene illumination, or just sitting, is not a technique, or a means to some resulting higher state of consciousness, or any particular state of being. Just sitting, one simply meets the immediate present. Desiring some flashy experience, or anything more or other than 'this' is mere worldly vanity and craving... Just sitting does not involve reaching some understanding. It is the subtle activity of allowing all things to be completely at rest just as they are, not poking one's head into the workings of the world."

- John Daido Loori (1931 - 2009)
 The Art of Just Sitting

The Subtle Gāthās of Rock and Water

"Zen master Jingcen of Changsha [Zhaoxian] was once asked by a monastic, 'How do you turn the mountains, rivers, and great earth and return to the self?' Changsha said, 'How do you turn the self and return to the mountains, rivers, and great earth?'

Commentary. Responding to the myriad things from the perspective of the self is delusion. Manifesting the self from the perspective of the myriad things is enlightenment. From ancient times to the present, people have regarded the myriad things as separate from themselves, not realizing that the universe is the body of the Buddha—this very body and mind itself. What do you see when you behold the mountain? Can you see the real form of truth? What do you hear when you listen to the river sounds? Can you hear the subtle gāthās of rock and water? Or are you trapped in the superficiality of sound and form? Mountains, rivers, and the great earth are ceaselessly manifesting the teachings, yet they are not heard with the ear or seen with the eye. They can only be perceived with the whole body and mind. Be that as it may, how do you turn the self and return to the mountains, rivers, and the great earth? What is it that you are calling mountains, rivers, and the great earth? Indeed, where do you find your self?"

- John Daido Loori (1931 - 2009)
The True Dharma Eye 

Nonlinear, Experiential, and Receptive

"The creative process,
like a spiritual journey,
is intuitive, non-linear,
and experiential.
It points us toward
our essential nature,
which is a reflection of
the boundless creativity
of the universe.
...
To be still means to
empty yourself from the
incessant flow of thoughts
and create a state of
consciousness that is
open and receptive."

- John Daido Loori (1931 - 2009)

Postscript. My postscript to a blog entry I published a few days ago ("...Another Order") included an "apology" from me for the poor quality of the image I posted, which I made with an iPhone on a morning walk. I also said that I was looking forward to going out with my "real camera" on the weekend to hunt for "ice abstracts" (cold weather permitting). Well, today was the day. Our local forecast had overnight lows in the low 20s (F). So our younger son (Josh, the photographer), my wife and I all eagerly woke up early, warmed ourselves with a bit of coffee and breakfast, and drove to a nearby lake park. As Josh and I both bolted out the van with our cameras and ran to the water, our smiles immediately vanished. No ice! Or at least none of the symphony of abstract swirls and curlicues we both anticipated spending the morning reveling and composing in. Naturally, we were crestfallen, and had a depressed notion to traipse back home and crawl back into our beds. Luckily, my wife, who joined us more for the adventure and some exercise, is also our Zen master. "Just enjoy what's here," she said, "Have a bit of fun!" So we did; and, my oh my, what fun we all had 😊 I am embarrassed to admit that, though I've experienced this exact scenario countless times (here is one from almost 15 years ago), the basic lesson has apparently never stuck: there are always unexpected opportunities and joys waiting for us, if only (as John Daido Loori reminds us) we are open and receptive to the boundless creativity of the universe. There may have been no real ice, but after slowing down and emptying ourselves of our "incessant flow of thoughts," Josh and I discovered a veritable paradise of tiny "icelet universes," some free-standing, others entwined with small leaves, rocks, and twigs. Though these icelets were few in number, and some were so small that only Josh (who presciently attached a macro lens to his camera before leaving the house) was able to find workable compositions, we all felt like privileged visitors to a magnificent living museum of fleeting wonders. And so, bowing to my Zen master's sage wisdom, an early morning "disappointment" was quietly transformed into a stunningly joyous experience filled with the simplest pleasures of life: family, nature, and a total "loss of self" in the creative process. 

Josh and me "merrily composing whatever morsels of icelets we could find" (captured by my wife).

Just Sitting

"Thoughts well up in our
mind moment by moment.
But we refrain from doing
anything with our thoughts.
We just let everything come
up freely and go away freely.
We don’t grasp anything.
We don’t try to control anything.
We just sit."

- John Daido Loori (1931 - 2009)
 The Art of Just Sitting

Hearing with the Eye

"Once a monastic asked the Tang Dynasty Chinese National Teacher, Nanyang, 'Do the insentient understand the expressing of the Way?' The National Teacher said, 'They express the Way continually, energetically, ceaselessly.' The monastic said, 'Why can't I hear it?' The National Teacher replied, 'The fact that you don't hear it has nothing to do with others hearing it.' The monastic said, 'I don't understand. What kind of person can hear it?' The National Teacher said, 'All the holy ones can hear it.' The monastic asked, 'Do you hear it?' The National Teacher said, 'I do not hear it.' The monastic said, 'If you do not hear it, how do you know that the insentient can express the Way?' The National Teacher said, 'Fortunately I do not hear it. If I did, I would be one of the holy ones and you would not be able to hear me expressing the Way.' The monastic said, 'In that case, sentient beings can't hear it.' The National Teacher said, 'I express the Way for the sake of sentient beings, not for the sake of the holy ones.' The monastic said, 'Then what happens when sentient beings do hear you?' The National Teacher said, 'At that moment they are not sentient beings.'" 

- John Daido Loori (1931 - 2009)

Hearing with the Eye

Announcement: New Shanti-Arts Sponsored Online Photography Workshop Scheduled for Sep/Oct 2018

"Seeing is perception 
with the original, 
unconditioned eye. 
It is a state of consciousness 
in which separation of 
photographer/subject, 
audience/image dissolves; 
in which a reality beyond words 
and concepts opens up, 
whose "point" or "meaning" is 
the direct experience itself."

- JOHN DAIDO LOORI
Zen Buddhist Rōshi (1931 - 2009)

For those of you who follow my blog, you may recall that I led an online photography workshop last year, sponsored by Shanti Arts. Unfortunately, due to last year's enrollment limit (which was set at 8), not everyone who wanted to participate in last year's workshop could do so. Well, for those of you who may have wanted to join last year's creative dialectic but were unable to do so, and/or for those newly intrigued and interested, I'm happy to announce that the editor of Shanti Arts, Christine Cote, has asked me to lead another "Cultivating the Art of Simplicity in Photography" online workshop this coming fall, scheduled for Sep 10 through Oct 22. You can sign up here. (Note that participation in this year's workshop is again limited to 8 - though there is the possibility of increasing the total to 10 - so, please make sure to sign up sooner than later.)

I thoroughly enjoyed the inaugural workshop (held roughly during the same time frame last year), and am looking forward to engaging with another fun group, as we share our work and experiences,  develop skills - and ways of seeing - that help infuse simplicity into our photography, and simply muse on art and the creative process. If you are interested in participating and want to find out more about what the workshop consists of and what to expect, please feel free to email me directly (my contact info is on my main website).

As an overview, there will be six sessions in all (one per week), where by "session" I mean a main topic-of-discussion that will be further elaborated upon, mused-about, and generally used as a basis for follow-up interactive engagement with other workshop participants on the ("secret") Facebook I've set up. Here's the complete list of sessions:

Session 1 (Sep 10 - 16): Introduction and Preliminary Musings. An overview of what “cultivating simplicity in photography” really means, a discussion of various aspects of photography on which “simplicity” depends, and a few easy exercises to get us started. Introduces key themes of this workshop, before taking a deeper dive in later sessions.

Session 2 (Sep 17 - 23): The “Eye” – Seeking Simplicity in the Environment. This session will explore the idea that cultivating simplicity is synonymous with achieving an expanded awareness of place and time. We will explore how our state of mind determines what is visible to us and profoundly influences what we most strongly resonate with in our surroundings, and provide examples and exercises to heighten our powers of observation and perception. 

Session 3 (Sep 24 - Sep 30): The “I” – Seeking Simplicity Within Oneself. Session 3 expands on a theme introduced during the last session, namely that all of our outwardly directed efforts to find simplicity and beauty “out there” in the world will come to naught if we cannot find the calm center in our own deepest selves, and from which all creative works naturally spring forth. 

Session 4 (Oct 1 - 7): The Medium, Part I – Toward a Visual Grammar. Sessions 4 and 5 focus on the practical side of image making by introducing some of the key tools that a photographer can use to direct and sculpt a viewer’s interpretation of an image; i.e., the essential elements of a visual grammar. We will discuss the basic elements of composition (e.g., the frame, light, contrast, tone, form, texture, etc.) and how they can be combined for a specific purpose, inclusing “seeing” the world in color vs. black-and-white.

Session 5 (Oct 8 - 14): The Medium, Part II – Abstraction as simplification. Session 5 will expand will expand on the practical lessons introduced in Session 4, and focus on the art of abstraction as, somewhat paradoxically, a concrete method of "simplifying" photographs. 

Session 6 (Oct 15 - 21): Photography as a Path Toward Self-discovery. The workshop concludes by exploring how (in the purest spiritual sense) the “cultivation of simplicity” while doing our photography - indeed, how art and the creative process, in general - may all be be viewed as paths toward self-discovery.

While the workshop is ostensibly a photography workshop (after all, photography is the core theme, and both the stand-alone essays and embedded exercises all stress image "seeing" and image "creating"), my hope is that the interactive part includes an equal part philosophical dialectic about the meaning of photography. If there is anything my 45+ years of "seeing" the world with a camera has taught me it is that the most meaningful images appear only when the "I" behind the "eye" ceases making distinctions between what is felt and what is seen; when inner and outer landscapes become one. It is a theme I eagerly look forward to exploring - through images and discussion - with workshop participants. I hope to see you all online soon :-)

Process

"There is no gap

between us and

the process."

- John Daido Loori (1931 - 2009)

Mutual Interdependece

"The realm of yin and yang is the life where we oppose one thing against the other: good against bad, up against down, heaven against earth, this against that, self against other, form against emptiness, speech against silence. This is not a matter that exists in the realm of yin and yang points to the place where there’s a merging of opposites. In the Identity of Relative and Absolute we chant: 'Within light there is darkness but do not try to understand that darkness. Within darkness there is light, but do not look for that light.' Light and darkness are opposites, yet each one of them contains the other. They’re mutually arising and interdependent. There’s no separation between them. We tend to see them as separate, but they’re not... form is emptiness, emptiness is form, form is exactly emptiness, emptiness exactly form. Can it be any more specific and clear than that?"

- John Daido Loori (1931 - 2009)

Bringing It to Life

Amidst the Mystery

"To know objects only through dissecting and
cataloguing them is to miss their full reality.

It is to fall asleep amidst the mystery
and to become numb to the wonder
of this great Earth"

- John Daido Loori

(1931 - 2009)

Direct Experience

"Seeing is perception 

with the original, 

unconditioned eye. 

It is a state of consciousness 

in which separation of 

photographer/subject, 

audience/image dissolves; 

in which a reality beyond words 

and concepts opens up, 

whose "point" or "meaning" is 

the direct experience itself."

- John Daido Loori

(1931 - 2009)

Description of Reality

"Words and ideas

are a description of reality,

silence is a negation of reality.

What is the reality itself?"

- John Daido Loori

(1931 - 2009)

Brambles, Entanglements, and Music

"If you know the music

the moment the violin string

begins to vibrate,

then you know how

to navigate through the forest

of brambles and entanglements

with freedom and ease.

If, on the other hand,

you think that with practice

the forest of brambles and entanglements

will altogether disappear,

then right from the beginning

you are hopelessly entangled

and won't find your way."

- John Daido Loori

(1931 - 2009)

Masterful Meditation on Art, Photography, and Life

"It is easy to take a photograph,

but it is harder to make a masterpiece

in photography than in any other art medium."

- Ansel Adams

To Ansel's sage words I can add my own corollary that it is easy to write a book about photography, but it is harder - much harder - to create a masterpiece in this genre than in any other "here are my musings about..." creativity-centric medium. That Guy Tal has not only done so - that is, created a masterpiece of a "book about photography" - but has also seamlessly and additionally woven in a commensurate degree of timeless wisdom on art, creativity, and life, is nothing short of breathtaking.  To paraphrase Martin Gardner's often quoted (essentially one-line) 1979 review of Godel, Escher, Bach ("Every few decades, an unknown author brings out a book of such depth, clarity, range, wit, beauty and originality that it is recognized at once as a major literary event"): every decade or so, a book of such stunningly original beauty and elegance appears that it self-evidently redefines how the essence of a creative life may be communicated with 'mere' words. Tal's book is, arguably, this decade's book, and is one to which I happily give my highest and unqualified recommendation.

With the publication of More Than a Rock, Tal joins a small pantheon of preternaturally gifted guides to the core truths that underlie all aesthetic yearning and creative expression. My personal list includes: Doug Beasley, Nicloas Hlobeczy, Brooks Jensen, George DeWolfe, Freeman Patterson, John Daido Loori, Deborah Dewit Marchant, and (of course) Minor White. Yet, even among even these elites, Tal is unique in his ability to use the simplest intuitive language to express ineffable truths; his graceful style gently leads the reader, never pushes. Even those who have rarely if ever pondered "deep" questions while putting their eye behind a camera's viewfinder will inevitably find themselves eagerly and effortlessly tagging along on an amazing journey of ever-widening discoveries; including ways of finding art (in everything around us), of making art (alongside discovering ways of communicating what we have found and wish to share), and of discovering oneself by losing the ego to the creative process. This is not just hard to do; I had thought it impossible to do, before "eagerly tagging along" Tal's unpretentious, sage-like insights.

A dry recitation of the book's layout and content hardly does justice to what it really contains, but for those interested: it is broken into 4 sections (on art, craft, experiences, and meditations), and each section consists of short essays (most between 2 to 5 pages long) on specific topics, accompanied by a selection of photographs. What you will not find, unlike what typically makes up the vast majority of photography books (including those that purport to "reveal hidden truths") is any discussion about f-stops, lenses, or why Canon is so much better or worse than Nikon. These concerns, for Tal, are (and ought to be) as unimportant to serious photographers as discussions of the proverbial pots and pans are for chefs (and for those who aspire to become chefs). Each essay begins with a short quote - sometimes attributed to a well known artist or photographer, but just as often to a poet or philosopher - which sets the stage for brilliantly concise meditations that simultaneously leave the reader both in wonderment about how much has been said in so short a space, and a compulsion to just keep reading, looking, absorbing. 

My advice is to take Tal's book in slowly, contemplatively; take time to digest and assimilate what it has to offer. Though your mind will initially digest its contents, the book's real message speaks directly to your soul. Of course, the book can also be perused simply for Tal's imagery, which is masterful.

It is no coincidence that Lenswork magazine (perhaps the preeminent fine-art photography publication available today) has commissioned Tal to contribute an essay for each of its bi-monthly issues. He is a unique talent, and this book - and his essay/column in Lenswork - are precous gifts for this, and future, generations of photographers. It is available via Amazon and Barnes & Noble (in both print and eBook forms; though my review is based on the print version); and from Tal's own website, which rewards the customer who takes this last option by shipping a copy of the book that includes the author's signature.

Full disclosure: I have never met Guy Tal in person, though I have (on the heels of purchasing his book from a local Barnes & Noble) "friended" him on facebook. As readers of my blog know, I am also a fellow alumnus of Lenswork, but my mention of Lenswork has to do only with the fact that - as ought to be clear from my review - I am simply delighted as a reader of the magazine that I can look forward to Tal's column each issue.

Dissolution of Consciousness

"Seeing is perception 

with the original, 

unconditioned eye. 

It is a state of consciousness 

in which separation of 

photographer/subject, 

audience/image dissolves; 

in which a reality beyond words 

and concepts opens up, 

whose "point" or "meaning" is 

the direct experience itself."

- John Daido Loori

"We look at the world and 

see what we have learned to 

believe is there. 

We have been 

conditioned to expect... 

but, as photographers, 

we must learn to relax our beliefs...

if you look very intensely and slowly, 

things will happen that you 

never dreamed of before.” 

― Aaron Siskind

Inner Depth

"The inner - what is it?

if not intensified sky ..."

- Rainer Maria Rilke

(1875 - 1926)

"Deep in the mountain

is an old pond.

Deep or shallow,

its bottom has never been seen."

- John Daido Loori

(1931 - 2009)

The Wonder of Wandering Monks and the Lessons They Teach Aspiring Photographers

The recent passing of Zen master / photographer John D. Loori has, predictably, put me into a melancholy, contemplative state-of-mind. It also rekindled a life-long fascination with Zen Koans (go here for another list and accompanying mp3 files) that Loori so effectively used in his teachings on art and creativity. Apart from Loori's own books on Koans (see Sitting with Koans, Riding the Ox Home, and Two Arrows Meeting in Mid-Air), a favorite of mine is the classic Zen Flesh, Zen Bones by Paul Reps.

And one of my favorite stories from Reps' book is called Trading Dialog for Lodging (found on pages 46-47 of the book I've linked to above). Now, not being a Zen master myself, I humbly offer an "interpretation" of this little gem and remind the kind reader that it is just that, no more, no less; namely Andy Ilachinski's interpretation of a story found in a book of Zen and pre-Zen writings by an author named Paul reps, as revealed to Andy's consciousness on a beautiful autumn Sunday morning in October 2009. But therein lies both the rub and the truth; or, more precisely, the lesson. For "truth" is - at best - just a fleeting ephemeral approximation of ... ?

The story begins by reminding the reader of a Buddhist tradition in which a traveling monk can remain in a Zen temple provided he makes and wins an argument about Buddhism with anyone who lives there. We are then told of a temple in the northern part of Japan were there are two brother monks: one, the elder; the other, stupid and possessing but one eye. A traveling monk finds his way to this temple and - rightfully - challenges the monks to a debate. The elder brother, too tired from a long day of studying to engage in the challenge, asks his younger brother to "go and request the dialogue in silence" in his stead. The young one-eyed monk and the wandering stranger go to the shrine and sit down.

A short time later, the traveling monk goes to the elder brother to inform him that his brother has defeated him. Before leaving, the elder asks the monk to relate what had happened. The monk recounts the challenge: "At first, I held up one finger, denoting Buddha, the enlightened one. So your brother held up two fingers, signifying Buddha and his teachings. I held up three fingers, representing Buddha, his teachings, and his followers, living a harmonious life. Your brother then shook a clenched fist at me, showing me that all three come from the same - single - realization. To this insight I had no answer. I thus lost the challenge."

As the traveling monk made his way back down the road away from the temple, the elder monk's brother appeared, breathless, before his brother. "Where is that monk?" he started, "I'm going to beat him up!" Asked to explain his anger, the younger brother recounts what happened: "Why, the minute he saw me he insulted me by holding up one finger to laugh at my one eye. Since he was a stranger, and in need of a place to stay, I decided to be kind and held up two fingers, congratulating him on having two eyes. Infuriatingly, he then held up three fingers, stubbornly reminding me that - between the two of us - we still had only three eyes. I couldn't contain my anger any longer, and showed him my fist!"

One reality, or two? Or three? Or an uncountable number of "potential" realities, and interpretations? What I love about this simple story is how artfully it blends meaning, distortion, subjectivity, context, tradition, interpretation, and - with a subtle nod to an "unspoken" arbiter / truth-seer (not the elder brother, but an implied "outside observer" who is reflecting upon even the reader's interpretation of this story) - the recursive, self-referential nature of "true" objectivity; and, ultimately, the nature of "reality" itself. As space-time (so far as we know) is finite yet unbounded, so - too - this story suggests, reality is finite but unlimited in its interpretations.

This story also suggests that, despite there obviously being a reality - there are two monks engaged in a Buddhist challenge! - no one in the story experiences it fully. Certainly not the two monks, with their dramatically different recollections of what happened; and not even the elder brother, who ostensibly hears "both sides" of the "reality," but is not himself present when the "reality" occurs, and who does not reveal any of his own predilections and subjective interpretations of what he hears from two different people (one of whom is very close to him, the other a complete stranger); just what does he make of these two stories? And what does the elder believe really happened? We might, just as well, wonder about a "more complete" reality, that encompasses not just the two arguing monks but the two monks + elder. What is to be made of the single "interpretation" we have of this system (which is not, I remind you, that of the elder - who merely listens in the story - but the interpretation of the whole story that you, kind reader, have yourself to offer!)? The telescoping levels are, of course, endless and whose "end" remains perpetually out of reach; the next one starts at "two monks + elder + Andy's interpretation of the story". What of my role in this, as I've recounted a story favorite of mine from memory; and did so fairly and honestly, but certainly not verbatim, word-by-word. What intentional and/or unintentional subjectivities did I introduce into the story that altered its "true" meaning? And so it goes.

What does all of this have to do with photography (you may be forgiven for wondering)? Everything (or nothing, depending on what "part" of the story one is paying attention to;-) The experience of the wandering monk reminds us that just as all of us ("privileged observers") sit at the center of a unique - and therefore uniquely limited - reality, the "true nature" of reality remains hidden, unknown in whole, and eludes even the mindful gaze of the wisest of wise "outside observers" (for, in truth ;-), there is no such being). Our understanding of reality is fluid, imprecise, and - forever - incomplete; and owes more - much, much more - to subjective context-dependent interpretation than most of us (particularly us physicists!) feel comfortable in accepting. A "photograph" may reveal two monks arguing, and show that one monk holds up one finger or two at the other, and/or that one monk is clenching a fist. But that is all a photograph can ever show. And, once it is created - and the "reality" to which it points has ceased to be - the "truth" of a photograph is forever limited to a sort of vestigial (and ever-changing) collective memory of possible interpretations that live on in the minds of those who "look at the photograph" and the photographer who "experienced" it while it was being taken.

And the lesson for the photographer? It is simply this: forget about trying to capture "truth" with your camera. Focus instead on communicating to the rest of the world what you experienced ruthas truth (while immersed in the "reality" your camera recorded but an infinitesimally small slice of).

"When the photograph is a mirror of the man, and the man is a mirror of the world, then Spirit might take over." - Minor White

Another "Light of an Enlightened Eye" Extinguished :-(

Although I have never met Loori, a few years ago I stumbled across an extraordinary book of his called The Zen of Creativity, and have been admiring - and following - his work ever since. This book (which I've had to purchase a second copy of because my first copy is riddled with creased page corners bookmarking its veritable storehouse of distilled wisdom) turned out to be but one of many, many spiritually rich books he has authored - on Zen, photography, and the creative life in general - and illustrated with his own deeply soulful images. It should come as no surprise that Loori's spiritual / photographic journey started sometime in the early 70s when he attended a workshop conducted by Minor White, who was himself - arguably - the finest "spiritual leader" of photography of his era. Loori not only continued on with his own masterful photography, but eventually became one of the West's leading Zen masters. He was also the founder and spiritual leader of the Mountains and Rivers Order and abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery in New York's Catskill mountains.

Another book of Loori's that I own and treasure, and which perfectly illustrates his basic philosophy of nonseperability between art and spiritual practice, is Hearing with the Eye. This book - ostensibly a collection of images that Loori captured around Point Lobos, California (fused with a quiet but illuminating prose) - is a gentle, graceful meditation on the illusory boundaries between inner and outer realities. Much the same, and more, can be found in another, and even more recent, of Loori's books, called Making Love with Light.

A detailed account of his life and philosophy (including links to YouTube videos and a portfolio of his photography) can be found on the Mountains and Rivers Order site by following this link.

There are a total 24 books in all listed on Amazon's Loori page. The aspiring Zen student wondering about what creativity has to say about life, and/or the aspiring (or seasoned) photographer wondering about what Zen practice has to say about taking pictures - and even the stray physicist or two who may secretly wonder about whether there is more to the universe than what equations alone reveal - can have no better companion to start exploring these "wonderings" with than Loori, via his writings and photographs.

Though I may never have been graced by Loori's physical presence as a "teacher," I - and therefore my own work and vision - have nonetheless been deeply touched by the lessons and wisdom of this graceful soul. And, although there obviously remain plenty of souls left on this planet who can communicate to the rest of us beautiful and delicate eternal truths with their cameras (and "gifted seers" are - luckily for the world - born every day), this one preternaturally enlightened "eye" is - mournfully - no more (but only so far as corporeal existence goes).

"To know objects only through dissecting and cataloguing them is to miss their full reality. It is to fall asleep amidst the mystery and to become numb to the wonder of this great Earth." - John Daido Loori

Concerning the Spiritual in Photography

"The great epoch of the Spiritual which is already beginning, or, in embryonic form ... provides and will provide the soil in which a kind of monumental work of art must come to fashion," so prophesied the great Russian painter, Wassily Kandinsky, in his masterful Concerning the Spiritual in Art, published in 1914. Since then, of course, and to varying degrees, art has been replete with many aspects of the spiritual; indeed, the traditionally religious-centric interpretation of the term has on occasion been considerably expanded by art to include mysticism, ritual and myth, symbolism, the occult, and pure abstraction. A wonderful book - The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985 - that chronicles much of the history of spiritual art, and contains many wonderful reproductions of important works, was published in 1985 to highlight an exhibit held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. A recent Dover reprint of another classic survey - The Spiritual in Twentieth-Century Art - is also available; though it has only a relatively few black and white examples, the scholarship is first-rate.

The impact of the "spiritual" on photography is less clear, and has - sadly - less of a clear history. To be sure, the spiritual has never been far from photography's best practitioners; though not necessarily in overt form. Alfred Steiglitz's "Equivalents" are nothing if not quiet, soulful expressions of an inner reality, and are obviously infused with spirit in the deepest sense. Ansel Adam's portfolio of ostensibly "grand sweeping vistas" filled with Wagnerian-scale drama, are both creative affirmations of everything that is beautiful "out there," beyond the artist behind the lens, and of the poetic soul yearning desperately for a way to better communicate the transcendent beauty it sees on the inside. Adams' quest was a quintessentially spiritual one, much more so than merely aesthetic; a quest that is, regrettably (and profoundly erroneously, in my view), all-too-quickly dismissed by some latter day photographers as a product of "vision-less" Zone-system technobable and attention to irrelevant minutiae of craft. Many of Minor White's best works can be compared to those of Kandinsky, in the sense that both artists (used their respective media to) point a way toward a radically new grammar for spiritual expression. And Carl Chiarenza's visionary explorations of the "inner landscape" have been available for all to "see" for decades.

Still more recently, I've encountered the works of spiritually inclined artists such as Doug Beasley, Nicholas Hlobeczy, John Daido Loori, Deborah Dewit Marchant, and Jerry Wolfe, who each in their own way, pay homage to the spirit of Steiglitz's equivalents, and use their photography to reveal otherwise invisible realms of the soul. (Not surprisingly, Hlobeczy, Loori, and Wolfe all worked with Minor White.)

But, though there are plenty of other contemporary photographer / artists whose work is very spiritual in nature, there is little evidence to suggest that "spiritual photography" (at least in the sense I mean here) is emerging - or has ever emerged, for that matter! - as a bona-fide movement in photography. Indeed, if books such as reGeneration: 50 Photographers of Tomorrow (published, ironically, by Aperture, a magazine founded by Minor White and Ansel Adams!) are true indicators of the direction in which photography is currently "moving," that direction is visibly leading away from, rather than anywhere near, spirit. Deliberately staged images that shock and pound the senses into a surrealistic (and often numbingly ugly) unreality seem to be the norm; pictures that invite a quiet meditation or that simply, but sincerely, ask, "Is this not beautiful?" are rarely seen today - and when they do appear, are routinely scorned by critics as unimportant "pretty pictures" that convey no lasting meaning. (Christopher Alexander has been lamenting a similar spiritual decline in architecture and urban planning for a quarter century.) I hope I am wrong, for to move away from spiritual expression is, in my opinion, to move away from the most meaningful connection we have to the spiritual world - which is our essential wellspring of existence - as physical beings. Severing this connection, even if only implicitly by focusing our collective artistic / photographic energies onto more "sterile" - and spiritually inert - aspects of the world, means we must face the specter of losing ourselves in (or devolving backwards to) the merely physical.

For me, photography, or any other creative art form for that matter, is first and foremost a language of the transcendent; it represents a way for gifted "seers" - otherwise known as "artists" - to remind the rest of us that none of us are merely creatures of the flesh.