Beyond Distinctions

Nishida Kitarō "...often sought to return (not reduce) oppositions and distinctions to the non-differentiated condition that underlies them, ultimately to the nothingness that gives rise to (or determines itself as) various distinctions. Although terms translating as 'ground' or 'foundation' are found throughout his works, this emphasis undermines any recourse to a founding principle or entity wholly transcendent to, and thus ultimately different from, the world or reality. 'Absolute nothingness' may be understood as the lack of any positively definable transcendent ground. When for example Nishida writes 'absolute nothingness transcends all that is, but at the same time all that is arises through it,' we may interpret him as pointing to an undifferentiated source beyond the distinctions it gives rise to, a source that is necessarily entailed by their being brought together precisely as distinct from one another."

- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Entry on Nishida Kitarō (1870 - 1945)

The World of Distinctions

"The ten thousand things are in reality neither sentient nor insentient; the self is neither sentient nor insentient. Because of this fact, the teachings of the insentient cannot be perceived by the senses. Our minds are conditioned to divide and compartmentalize reality. We have come to know and define the universe dualistically. As a result, everything we have created with our minds is dualistic. Our philosophy, psychology, medicine, politics, sociology and education are based on a dualistic understanding of the nature of the universe. What kind of world would this be if our appreciation and activity were based on non-duality? Could we function out of such realization? Of course we could. Thousands of people have navigated the world of distinctions from the perspective of the unity of all things, a perspective that presents all things as interdependent entities, mutually arising, and with mutual causality. This kind of vision requires us to see the aspect of existence that is neither being nor non-being, neither self nor other."

- John Daido Loori (1931 - 2009)
Making Love With Light

Intimate Landscapes

"Though it is generally accepted that abstract art refers to those works inspired by the imagination of the artist rather than by objective reality, in photography, in which images are produced by the lens, this distinction is difficult to sustain. In the broadest sense of the term, an optical image is an abstraction from the natural world-a selected and isolated fragment of what stands before the camera. When the selected image is self-explanatory and does not imply more than what lies within its area it is usually referred to as abstract, that is, independent of its surroundings-a pattern of rock, for example, or lichens, or grasses. On the other hand, in the wider scenic view common in most landscape photography, the selected image implies a world outside the limits encompassed by the lens."

- Eliot Porter (1901 - 1990)
Intimate Landscapes

Hidden Reality

"'It is a mystery to me,' he told me, 'why we have quantum mechanics when there is only one state of the universe.' In other words, why should there be probabilities of alternative conditions of our universes when we inhabit only one condition? And do those other potential conditions actually exist in other universes somewhere?

...

Some people believe that there is no distinction between the spiritual and physical universes, no distinction between the inner and the outer, between the subjective and the objective, between the miraculous and the rational. I need such distinctions to make sense of my spiritual and scientific lives. For me, there is room for both a spiritual universe and a physical universe, just as there is room for both religion and science. Each universe has its own power. Each has its own beauty, and mystery.

...

Since Foucault, more and more of what we know about the universe is undetected and undetectable by our bodies. What we see with our eyes, what we hear with our ears, what we feel with our fingertips, is only a tiny sliver of reality. Little by little, using artificial devices, we have uncovered a hidden reality. It is often a reality that violates common sense. It is often a reality strange to our bodies. It is a reality that forces us to re-examine our most basic concepts of how the world works. And it is a reality that discounts the present moment and our immediate experience of the world."

- Alan Lightman (1948 - )
The Accidental Universe

Cosmological Cycling

"'Tlingit language reflects subtle differences between ordinary and extraordinary, commonplace and mysterious, safe and dangerous ... the language is rich in verbs and emphasizes activity and motion, making no sharp distinction between animate and inanimate [as defined in Western thought]. Hence, mountains, glaciers, bodies of water, rocks and manufactured objects all have qualities of sentience.' 

...

A system of cosmological understandings about the nature of existence, its entities, forces, processes, and the nature of time and space is found in virtually all human cultures. Tlingit cosmology was grounded in the principle that all living entities had 'spirits' and those entities cycle between domains of life in the world of direct experience followed after death by residence in another domain waiting for rebirth or reincarnation into this world. This process has been referred to as cosmological cycling.

...

'...people understood that all entities of nature – plants, animals, stones, trees, mountains, rivers, lakes, and a host of other living entities – embodies relationships that must be honored. Through the seeking, making, sharing, and celebrating of those natural relationships, they came to perceive themselves in a sea of interdependent relationships.'"

- Steve J. Langdon (1948 - )
"Spiritual Relations, Moral Obligations and Existential Continuity,"
in Indigenous Sustainable Wisdom

Distortion of Reality

"Mysticism tends to combine the strictest concept of the Absolute, one that points to transcending any polarity, duality and distinction, and a vision of relativity that both denies the reality of the world of manifestation, when considered independently from its Source, and affirms an essential continuity or unity between the Ultimate and that which is not in an ultimate sense.

The Absolute is literally ab-solutum, which means that it is 'unbound,' 'detached' and 'free.' Although most often understood as 'complete' and 'self sufficient,' and therefore also 'cause of itself,' the Absolute must also and consequently be approached in terms of its perfect freedom, which is itself a dimension of its transcendence vis-à-vis any “relationality.” In this connection “relationality” entails an aspect of 'obligation' or 'reciprocity' by virtue of the 'relationships' and 'relations'  it involves. Therefore, our understanding of “absoluteness” as utter freedom immediately brings the central question of this inquiry to the fore by highlighting the apparent logical impossibility of positing concurrently the ontological reality of both the Absolute and “non-absolute realities” –including ourselves.

...

Metaphysical relativity is, in Advaita Vedānta, primarily identified with Māyā. Now Māyā is most often approached by Shankara as an epistemological phenomenon of superimposition upon Reality.  In other words Māyā is that which makes us mistake 'the rope for the snake.' It is a principle of distortion of Reality that stems from one’s inability to recognize Reality as it is, that is as the non-dual Self or Ātman. On the one hand, Māyā is the 'epistemological' fruit of a false identification of the Self with the body, on the other hand it is Māyā itself, or more specifically tamas - the lowest, most opaque of the three cosmological elements that enter into the composition of Māyā’s world of relativity, that is constitutional of delusion as such: 'The power of tamas is a veiling power.  It makes things appear to be other than what they are.  It is this which is the original cause of an individual’s transmigration and is the cause of the origination of the action of the projecting power.'

It must be noted ... that the ontological status of Māyā is incomprehensible: 'She is most strange. Her nature is inexplicable,' to use Shankara’s words. Māyā is fundamentally the unintelligible, and this lack of intelligibility is a function of  the 'obscurity' or uncertainty of its origin, as well as being bound to the  undecidability of its ontological status. "

- Patrick Laude
Shimmering Reality: The Metaphysics of Relativity in Mystical Traditions

A Universe Comes into Being

"A universe comes into being when a space is severed or taken apart. The skin of a living organism cuts off an outside from an inside. So does the circumference of a circle in a plane. By tracing the way we represent such a severance, we can begin to reconstruct, with an accuracy and coverage that appear almost uncanny, the basic forms underlying linguistic, mathematical, physical, and biological science, and can begin to see how the familiar laws of our own experience follow inexorably from the original act of severance. The act is itself already remembered, even if unconsciously, as our first attempt to distinguish different things in a world where, in the first place, the boundaries can be drawn anywhere we please. At this stage the universe cannot be distinguished from how we act upon it, and the world may seem like shifting sand beneath our feet.

Although all forms, and thus all universes, are possible, and any particular form is mutable, it becomes evident that the laws relating such forms are the same in any universe. It is this sameness, the idea that we can find a reality independent of how the universe actually appears, that lends such fascination to the study of mathematics. That mathematics, in common with other art forms, can lead us beyond ordinary existence, and can show us something of the structure in which all creation hangs together, is no new idea. But mathematical texts generally begin the story somewhere in the middle, leaving the reader to pick up the threads as best he can. Here is the story traced from the beginning."

- G. Spencer Brown (1923 - 2016)
Laws Of Form 

Postscript. This simple "point and shoot" image (albeit with an assist from Photoshop's perspective-crop tool) was taken with my iPhone as my wife and I were waiting for yesterday's matinee of Les Mesirables to start at the Kenney Center in Washington, DC. I have been drawn to mirrors and reflections ever since my teenaged-self stumbled across their deep mysteries through Borges' stories. Objectively speaking, the image is composed of nothing but metal, glass, some branches and leaves, and just a hint of a massive chandelier hanging just inside the Kennedy Center. But, as all Borgesian souls know, this "objectively banal reality" is but a shadow of the dynamic undulating froth of invisible universes! The first step toward catching a glimpse of these other realities is - as G. Spencer Brown reminds us - to draw a subjective distinction.

The Original Mystery

"Let us consider, for a moment, the world as described by the physicist. It consists of a number of fundamental particles which, if shot through their own space, appear as waves, and are thus… of the same laminated structure as pearls or onions, and other wave forms called electromagnetic which it is convenient, by Occam’s razor, to consider as travelling through space with a standard velocity. All these appear bound by certain natural laws which indicate the form of their relationship.

Now the physicist himself, who describes all this, is, in his own account, himself constructed of it. He is, in short, made of a conglomeration of the very particulars he describes, no more, no less, bound together by and obeying such general laws as he himself has managed to find and to record. 

Thus we cannot escape the fact that the world we know is constructed in order (and thus in such a way as to be able) to see itself. This is indeed amazing. Not so much in view of what it sees, although this may appear fantastic enough, but in respect of the fact that it can see at all.

 

But in order to do so, evidently it must first cut itself up into at least one state which sees, and at least one other state which is seen. In this severed and mutilated condition, whatever it sees is only partially itself. We may take it that the world undoubtedly is itself (i. e. is indistinct from itself), but, in any attempt to see itself as an object, it must, equally undoubtedly, act so as to make itself distinct from, and therefore false to, itself. In this condition it will always partially elude itself

It seems hard to find an acceptable answer to the question of how or why the world conceives a desire, and discovers an ability, to see itself, and appears to suffer the process. That it does so is sometimes called the original mystery. Perhaps, in view of the form in which we presently take ourselves to exist, the mystery arises from our insistence on framing a question where there is, in reality, nothing to question.
...
Thus the world, whenever it appears as a physical universe*, must always seem to us, its representatives, to be playing a kind of hide-and-seek with itself. What is revealed will be concealed, but what is concealed will again be revealed.

* unus = one, vertere = turn. Any given (or captivated) universe is what is seen as the result of a making of one turn, and thus is the appearance of any first distinction, and only a minor aspect of all being, apparent and non-apparent. Its particularity is the price wo pay for its visibility."

- G. Spencer Brown (1923 - 2016)

Laws Of Form

Macro and the Micro

"It is all very beautiful and magical here - a quality which cannot be described. You have to live it and breathe it, let the sun bake it into you. The skies and land are so enormous, and the detail so precise and exquisite that wherever you are you are isolated in a glowing world between the macro and the micro, where everything is sidewise under you and over you, and the clocks stopped long ago."

- Ansel Adams (1902 - 1984)
Letter to Alfred Stieglitz

Postscript. The purest simplest joy of life is life itself: living, being, breathing, seeing, feeling, sharing, ... But there are preternaturally precious moments when the experience is so all-consuming and so far transcends what words alone are incapable of revealing (though the wisest among us are sometimes able, in Zen-like fashion, to capture glimpses of the deepest truths), that one is simply lost in the Einsteinian awe of it all ("I have nothing but awe when I observe the laws of nature," as quoted in Einstein and the Poet). For me, this happens (alas, far less frequently than I wish) when I become "lost" amidst the "macro and the micro"; when otherwise arbitrary language-driven distinctions among trees and forest and leaves and space and time ... all dissolve and become one and inseparable. A feeling that seems to be also shared by my eldest son, Noah, who is seen here contemplating his own universe of mysteries by the side of a small footpath he and I took this weekend in a local park:

This Place is a Dream

"This place is a dream.
Only a sleeper considers it real.
...
A man goes to sleep in the town
where he has always lived,
and he dreams he's living
in another town.

In the dream, he doesn't remember

the town he's sleeping in his bed in.
He believes the reality of the dream town.

The world is that kind of sleep.
...

We began as a mineral.

We emerged into plant life

and into animal state,
and then into being human,

and always we have
forgotten our former states,

except in early spring when we
slightly recall being green again.

That's how a young person turns

toward a teacher. That's how a baby leans

toward the breast, without knowing the secret

of its desire, yet turning instinctively.

Humankind is being led along an evolving course,

through this migration of intelligences,

and though we seem to be sleeping,

there is an inner wakefulness

that directs the dream,

and that will eventually startle us back

to the truth of who we are."

- Rumi (1207 - 1273)

Postscript. The triptych consists of three "quick grabs" with my iPhone during the trip my family and I took to the Pacific Northwest this past summer (e.g., see this blog entry). The left- and right-most images show the play of sunlight (reflected off the door of our car) with the pavement as we were going to breakfast one day in Sequim, WA. The middle panel shows a similar play of light (this time reflected off a kettle on our stove) with the stucco walls of the kitchen in the cabin we rented in the northern cascades. Most of my photography is quasi-deliberate, by which I mean that most of my images arise during planned "expeditions" (such as to a local park, or hikes on a family vacation 😊 using my "real" camera. But some of my favorite images - such the ones in this triptych - are captured purely by happenstance, and when my conscious "attention" lies elsewhere (such as on, say, getting breakfast at a restaurant or the first sip of coffee in the morning). Of course, any distinctions I may choose to draw among these various states of being and attention are, of course, at best illusory, and, at worst, utterly meaningless. Even as my "eye" looks toward the path to a restaurant or at the handle of a coffee kettle, my "I" never ceases to revel at the magic of light, color and form that surrounds us in each moment in time and space!

Abstract Forms

“And what is it that experiences our self? Only our self! There is only one substance in experience and it is pervaded by and made out of knowing or awareness. In the classical language of non-duality this is sometimes expressed in phrases such as, ‘Awareness only knows itself’, but this may seem abstract. It is simply an attempt to describe the seamless intimacy of experience in which there is no room for a self, object, other or world; no room to step back from experience and find it happy or unhappy, right or wrong, good or bad; no time in which to step out of the now into an imaginary past or into a future in which we may become, evolve or progress; no possibility of stepping out of the intimacy of love into relationship with an other; no possibility of knowing anything other than knowing, of being anything other than being, of loving anything other than loving; no possibility of a thought arising which would attempt to frame the intimacy of experience in the abstract forms of the mind; no possibility for our self to become a self, a fragment, a part; no possibility for the world to jump outside and for the self to contract inside; no possibility for time, distance or space to appear."

- Rupert Spira (1960 - )
Presence: The Art of Peace and Happiness

Nature's Eternity

"If we are absorbed in a movie it may seem at first that the screen lies behind the image. Likewise, if we are so captivated by experience that we overlook the simple experience of being aware or awareness itself, we may first locate it in the background of experience. In this first step, being aware or awareness itself is recognized as the subjective witness of all objective experience. Looking more closely we see that the screen is not just in the background of the image but entirely pervades it. Likewise, all experience is permeated with the knowing with which it is known. It is saturated with the experience of being aware or awareness itself. There is no part of a thought, feeling, sensation or perception that is not infused with the knowing of it. 

This second realization collapses, at least to a degree, the distinction between awareness and its objects. In the third step, we understand that it is not even legitimate to claim that knowing, being aware or awareness itself pervades all experience, as if experience were one thing and awareness another. Just as the screen is all there is to an image, so pure knowing, being aware or awareness itself is all there is to experience. All there is to a thought is thinking, and all there is to thinking is knowing. All there is to an emotion is feeling, and all there is to feeling is knowing. All there is to a sensation is sensing, and all there is to sensing is knowing. All there is to a perception is perceiving, and all there is to perceiving is knowing. Thus, all there is to experience is knowing, and it is knowing that knows this knowing. Being all alone, with nothing in itself other than itself with which it could be limited or divided, knowing or pure awareness is whole, perfect, complete, indivisible and without limits. 

This absence of duality, separation or otherness is the experience of love or beauty, in which any distinction between a self and an object, other or world has dissolved. Thus, love and beauty are the nature of awareness. In the familiar experience of love or beauty, awareness is tasting its own eternal, infinite reality. It is in this context that the painter Paul Cézanne said that art gives us the ‘taste of nature’s eternity’."

- Rupert Spira (1960 - )

Being Aware of Being Aware

Spiritual Freedom

"Many colors have been described as rough or sticky, others as smooth and uniform, so that one feels inclined to stroke them (e.g., dark ultramarine, chromic oxide green, and rose madder). Equally the distinction between warm and cold colors belongs to this connection. Some colors appear soft (rose madder), others hard (cobalt green, blue-green oxide), so that even fresh from the tube they seem to be dry. The expression “scented colors” is frequently met with. And finally the sound of colors is so definite that it would be hard to find anyone who would try to express bright yellow in the bass notes, or dark lake in the treble…

Color is a power which directly influences the soul. Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.

This essential connection between color and form brings us to the question of the influences of form on color. Form alone, even though totally abstract and geometrical, has a power of inner suggestion. A triangle (without the accessory consideration of its being acute — or obtuse — angled or equilateral) has a spiritual value of its own. In connection with other forms, this value may be somewhat modified, but remains in quality the same. The case is similar with a circle, a square, or any conceivable geometrical figure [which has] a subjective substance in an objective shell.

The work of art is born of the artist in a mysterious and secret way. From him it gains life and being. Nor is its existence casual and inconsequent, but it has a definite and purposeful strength, alike in its material and spiritual life. It exists and has power to create spiritual atmosphere; and from this inner standpoint one judges whether it is a good work of art or a bad one. If its “form” is bad it means that the form is too feeble in meaning to call forth corresponding vibrations of the soul… The artist is not only justified in using, but it is his duty to use only those forms which fulfill his own need… Such spiritual freedom is as necessary in art as it is in life."

- Wassily Kandinsky (1866 - 1944)

Concerning the Spiritual in Art

Beauty and Mystery

"Some people believe that there is no distinction between the spiritual and physical universes, no distinction between the inner and the outer, between the subjective and the objective, between the miraculous and the rational. I need such distinctions to make sense of my spiritual and scientific lives. For me, there is room for both a spiritual universe and a physical universe, just as there is room for both religion and science. Each universe has its own power. Each has its own beauty, and mystery."

- Alan Lightman (1948 - )

 The Accidental Universe

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 :-)

Upcoming Online Photography Workshop - An Update

"Be still with yourself until the object

of your attention affirms your presence."

- Minor White (1908 - 1976)

This is an update on (along with a few more details about) my upcoming Shanti Arts sponsored "Cultivating the Art of Simplicity in Photography" online workshop (scheduled for Sep 11 - Oct 23). I just learned that the 8th and last available slot has been taken. For for those of you who have signed up - thank you! - and I look forward to meeting you all (virtually), and engaging in what I hope will be a fun and stimulating couple weeks' worth of discussions and picture making :-)  For those of you who wanted to participate, but were unable to sign up on time, I am sure there will be future possibilities. In the meantime, my email inbox and comment box are always open; and if there is one thing I'm always ready and eager to engage in a dialectic about, it is art, photography, and the creative process in general (well, that, and a bit of physics thrown in once in a while ;-)

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 how the sessions have broken out:

Session 1 (Sep 11 - 17): 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 18 - 24): 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 25 - Oct 1): 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 2 - 8): 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 9 - 15): 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 16 - 22): 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. Hope to see you online soon :-)

Skye's Evanescent Moods

"The light of memory, or rather the light that memory lends to things, is the palest light of all. I am not quite sure whether I am dreaming or remembering, whether I have lived my life or dreamed it. Just as dreams do, memory makes me profoundly aware of the unreality, the evanescence of the world, a fleeting image in the moving water."

- Eugene Ionesco

(1909 - 1994)

Sometimes the most revealing shots of all - that record otherwise invisible rhythms of light and mood - are the simplest, requiring the least effort. As I've already written about in previous blog entries, Skye's one constant is its evanescence. One minute, one is enveloped in a cool mist, or is pummeled hard by cold rain; a minute passes, and rays of bright sun light up a valley that was all but invisible an instant ago; another minute passes, and the clouds magically transform into a symphony of light and shadow and - inexplicably - wondrous color that seems to simultaneously come from nowhere and infuse everything (the act that so transfixed and inspired the abstract artist Jon Schueler); then, suddenly, a mysterious, imperceptibly soft, wind, stirs away the magic, and renders Skye's secrets invisible once more, leaving only the soft "moooos" and "baaaahs" of the omnipresent cows and sheep in place to remind one that Skye's evanescence is fundamentally defined by an endless - irreducibly complex - play between the real and the surreal; with neither giving up its secrets easily.

The image at the top of this blog entry contains a short sequence of the same photograph, captured from the same spot (my position at our breakfast table, with me looking at our cottage's south facing window) and at the same time, but on different days during our stay. While not a fine-art masterpiece - it is nothing more than a quick "pick up the camera, steady the view, click, and go back to munching on the bagel" shot - the sequence provides an unadorned glimpse of Skye's alluring shifting moods and light. The specific images do not matter, as does not matter the order, nor the fact that the images were all taken on different days. I could have conveyed essentially the same meaning by capturing arbitrary images throughout any relatively short interval of time on any given day. Skye's "reality" cannot be captured by focusing on the details of how its moods and light change, but only by appreciating the constancy of change. On the other hand, Skye's "surreality" cannot be captured by a camera at all, and is best simply experienced. 

And that, perhaps, is Skye's second deepest lesson and mystery (the first mystery was mentioned in an earlier post: how - despite the incessant drama of Skye's landscapes, and unending froth of light and shadow - Skye nonetheless manages to impart a spiritually infused fantastical sense of quiet): while photography can be a powerful tool for self-discovery, its utility for this process can - paradoxically - sometimes be at odds with a photographer's ability to "discover" external truths. The ability to do the former precludes, to a degree, the ability to simultaneously to do the latter (echoes of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle?) For me, this certainly appears to be the case on Skye, where I can either: (A) capture certain aspects of Skye's shifting "lights and moods" with my camera (in a "fine art" / documentary manner, that focuses attention on the specifics of Skye's shifting "lights and moods" but ignores - because my camera's digital sensor cannot capture - deeper spiritual dimensions), or, (B) explore and become increasingly aware of richer levels of aesthetic and spiritual understanding by directly experiencing Skye's shifting "lights and moods (sans camera). But I cannot do - Skye does not permit one to do - both simultaneously.

On the other hand, I may be over-complicating matters, as is my penchant to do, for as Lao Tzu reminds us, "The Way to do is to be." Ultimately, whatever distinctions may or may not exist between "doing A" and "doing B" are mine, and mine alone. I can experience Skye, I can capture (aspects of) Skye with my camera, I can be on Skye, but these seemingly disparate acts are all just "me being me" on Skye. Skye itself remains blissfully evanescent and eternally ineffable. And that is why I can't wait to go back to "me being me" on Skye.

Your Own Self

"Whether you are going or staying

or sitting or lying down, 

the whole world is your own self. 

You must find out

whether the mountains, rivers,

grass, and forests 

exist in your own mind

or exist outside it. 

Analyze the ten thousand things, 

dissect them minutely, 

and when you take this to the limit 

you will come to the limitless, 

when you search into it you come

to the end of search, 

where thinking goes no further

and distinctions vanish. 

When you smash the citadel of doubt, 

then the Buddha is simply yourself." 

- Lanxi Daolong 

(c. 1213-1278)

Creating Distinctions

“In the sky, there is

no distinction of east and west;

people create distinctions

out of their own minds

and then believe them to be true.” 

- Gautama Siddharta

(563-483 B.C.)

Forms, Space, and Distinctions

“A universe comes into being when

a space is severed or taken apart… 

by tracing the way we 

[make such distinctions] 

we begin to reconstruct …  

the basic forms underlying linguistic,

mathematical, physical, 

and biological science.”

- G. Spencer Brown (1923 - )

Laws of Form