Stasis, Rhythm, and Aesthetics

"Beauty expressed by the artist cannot awaken in us an emotion which is kinetic or a sensation which is purely physical. It awakens, or ought to awaken, or induces, or ought to induce, an esthetic stasis, an ideal pity or an ideal terror, a stasis called forth, prolonged, and at last dissolved by what I call the rhythm of beauty." 

"What is that exactly?", asked Lynch.

"Rhythm," said Stephen, "is the first formal esthetic relation of part to part in any esthetic whole or of an aesthetic whole to its part or parts or of any part to the aesthetic whole of which it is a part."

- James Joyce, (1882 - 1941)

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Bildung , Gestalten, and Metamorphosis

“If we look at all these Gestalten, especially the organic ones, we will discover that nothing in them is permanent, nothing at rest or defined—everything is in a flux of continual motion. This is why German frequently and fittingly makes use of the word Bildung [formation] to describe the end product and what is in process of production as well…. When something has acquired a form it metamorphoses immediately into a new one.

...We will see the entire plant world, for example, as a vast sea which is as necessary to the existence of individual insects as the oceans and river are to the existence of individual fish, and we will observe that an enormous number of living creatures are born and nourished in this ocean of plants. Ultimately we will see the whole world of animals as a great element in which one species is created or at least sustained, by and through another. We will no longer think of connections and relationships in terms of purpose and intention; we will progress in knowledge alone through seeing how formative nature expresses itself from all sides and in all directions.

...Among the objects we will find many different forms of existence and modes of change, a variety of relationships livingly interwoven; in ourselves, on the other hand, a potential for infinite growth through constant adaptation of our sensibilities and judgment to new ways of acquiring knowledge and responding with action."

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

(1749 - 1832)

Ordering and Things Ordered

"Reality is of the senses, brain and mind – that which is knowable.  Existence is cause, ultimate cause. It is unspeakable, unknowable.  Reality is effect, manifestation of existence…  Ordering and things ordered coexist yet have independent significance…  The deepest and most profound emotion we can experience is the belief that the unknown really exists."

- Wynn Bullock (1902 - 1975)

The Photography and Philosophy of Wynn Bullock

Quietly Seeking Images

"The not-so-silent conversations between things are always present. What is not so often present is my sensitivity to these voices. As it is said, for every push there is a pull, with every affirmation denial, but with only these there would be nothing but a frozen, rigid wasteland. There could be continuing movement with each new balance point experienced. There is great beauty in this ever-shifting dance. This is very alive and transcends all notions of a static experience. This is what brings life, for without it I would be locked in without possibilities; there would be no sense of creation. All would be frozen before the existence of time, without realization; there would not be a universe. Fortunately, all is conversation and movement - or transformation - that awaits my awareness. There are many entities all about us. I refer to those entities as images (photographs that aspire to say something); they are symbolic cameos, or icons. They have an unambiguous influence upon my life - they move and their movements are instruments of transformation."

- Nicholas C. Hlobeczy (1927 - 2007)

A Presence Behind the Lens

Interpenetrating Fragments and Divisions

"[There is an...] almost universal habit of taking the content of our thought for ‘a description of the world as it is’. Or we could say that, in this habit, our thought is regarded as in direct correspondence with objective reality. Since our thought is pervaded with differences and distinctions, it follows that such a habit leads us to look on these as real divisions, so that the world is then seen and experienced as actually broken up into fragments.

...the relationship of each moment in the whole to all the others is implied by its total content: the way in which it ‘holds’ all the others enfolded within it.

...both observer and observed are merging and interpenetrating aspects of one whole reality, which is indivisible and unanalysable."

- David Bohm (1917 - 1992)

Wholeness and the Implicate Order

Chain of Connection

"In considering the study of physical phenomena, not merely in its bearings on the material wants of life, but in its general influence on the intellectual advancement of mankind, we find its noblest and most important result to be a knowledge of the chain of connection, by which all natural forces are linked together, and made mutually dependent upon each other; and it is the perception of these relations that exalts our views and ennobles our enjoyments."

-  Alexander von Humboldt (1769 - 1859)

COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1

Wave - Particle Duality

"Quantum theory thus reveals a basic oneness of the universe. It shows that we cannot decompose the world into independently existing smallest units. As we penetrate into matter, nature does not show us any isolated “building blocks,” but rather appears as a complicated web of relations between the various parts of the whole. These relations always include the observer in an essential way. The human observer constitute the final link in the chain of observational processes, and the properties of any atomic object can be understood only in terms of the object's interaction with the observer. "

-  Fritjof Capra (1939 - )

The Tao of Physics

Representations of the World

"Many people would accept that we do not really have knowledge of the world; we have knowledge only of our representations of the world. Yet we seem condemned by our consitution to treat these representations as if they were the world, for our everyday experience feels as if it were of a given and immediate world."

- Francisco Varela

(1946 - 2001)

Infinity's Impenetrable Secret

"For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either. The ends of things and their beginnings are impregnably concealed from him in an impenetrable secret. He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed."

- Blaise Pascal

(1623 - 1662)

2005-2015 Portfolio Selections

2005-2015 Portfolio Selection

In response to the gentle nudging and persistent reminders from friends and fellow photographers, I have finally gotten around to organizing and posting a selection of the portfolios I have worked on during the last decade. Interested viewers can peruse the 600+ images by clicking on the link above; the thumbnail view shows only 12 (of the 20 total available) portfolios that are available online. The images are actually a superset of the photographs included in the hardcopy version published a few months ago (which contains 'only' about 60% of the images in the online version). So, grab your favorite beverage, find a quiet place, settle back into a nice, comfortable recliner chair, and embark on your visual journey at leisure. I hope that at least a few images will resonate with you, kind reader of my blog.

Where the Sage Hides Himself

"It comes out from no source, it goes back in through no aperture. It has reality yet no place where it resides; it has duration yet no beginning or end. Something emerges, though through no aperture - this refers to the fact that it has reality. It has reality yet there is no place where it resides - this refers to the dimension of space. It has duration but no beginning or end - this refers to the dimension of time. There is life, there is death, there is a coming out, there is a going back in - yet in the coming out and going back its form is never seen. This is called the Heavenly Gate. The Heavenly Gate is nonbeing. The ten thousand things come forth from nonbeing. Being cannot create being out of being; inevitably it must come forth from nonbeing. Nonbeing is absolute nonbeing, and it is here that the sage hides himself."

- Chuang-Tzu

(4th Century BC)

Entities, Environments, and Patterns

"In an organic environment,

every place is unique,

and the different places also cooperate,

with no parts left over,

to create a global whole;

a whole which can be identified

by everyone who is part of it.

In short, no pattern is

an isolated entity.

Each pattern can exist

in the world only to the extent

that is supported by other patterns:

the larger patterns in which

it is embedded, the patterns of

the same size that surround it,

and the smaller patterns

which are embedded in it."

- Christopher Alexander

(1936 - )

Interpenetrating Worlds

"Instead of negating the conflicting aspects of a paradox, you advance your understanding when you can hold both sides of a dichotomy in your mind at the same time, reconciling rather than negating. One could embrace paradox as an operating, operative principle, rather than seeking to deny or dissolve or dilute it. Rather than seeking to resolve dualisms and institute some grand ‘theory of everything’, the science of the imagination would embrace and explore paradox, going deeper into conundrums, relinquishing delusory attempts to achieve certainty. We may find that thought and language are creative aspects of being, tools for transforming reality. If the universe is actually a projection of subtler levels of the psyche- a loom of maya- then we may discover that the vibratory lattices of interpenetrating worlds elaborated by current physics are descriptions of the psyche itself, in its fully ensouled unfolding."

- Daniel Pinchbeck (1966 - )

Breaking Open the Head:

A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism

True Quiet

"Ask the world to reveal its quietude —

not the silence of machines when they are still,

but the true quiet by which birdsongs,

trees, bellworts, snails, clouds, storms

become what they are, and are nothing else."

- Wendell Berry

(1934 - )

Parts, Wholes, and the Principle of Sufficient Reason

“Nothing takes place without sufficient reason, that is… nothing happens without it being possible for someone who knows enough things to give a reason sufficient to determine why it is so and not otherwise. Assuming this principle, the first question we have the right to ask will be, why is there something rather than nothing? For nothing is simpler and easier than something. Furthermore, assuming that things must exist, we must be able to give a reason for why they must exist in this way, and not otherwise.”

- G. W. Leibniz

(1646 - 1716)

"The division of the perceived universe

into parts and wholes is convenient

and may be necessary, 

but no necessity determines

how it shall be done."

- Gregory Bateson

(1904 - 1980)

Dormant Microcosm

"This microcosm was pregnant with the germ of a proper time and space, and all the kinds of cosmical beings. Within this punctual cosmos the myriad but not unnumbered physical centers of power, which men conceive vaguely as electrons, protons, and the rest, were at first coincident with one another. And they were dormant. The matter of ten million galaxies lay dormant in a point."

- Olaf Stapledon (1886 - 1950)
Star Maker

Hallucination, Ego, and Nature

"We suffer from a hallucination, from a false and distorted sensation of our own existence as living organisms. Most of us have the sensation that “I myself” is a separate center of feeling and action, living inside and bounded by the physical body — a center which “confronts” an “external” world of people and things, making contact through the senses with a universe both alien and strange. Everyday figures of speech reflect this illusion. “I came into this world.” “You must face reality.” “The conquest of nature.”

This feeling of being lonely and very temporary visitors in the universe is in flat contradiction to everything known about man (and all other living organisms) in the sciences. We do not “come into” this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves,” the universe “peoples.” Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. This fact is rarely, if ever, experienced by most individuals. Even those who know it to be true in theory do not sense or feel it, but continue to be aware of themselves as isolated “egos” inside bags of skin."

- Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)

The Book: On the TabooAgainst Knowing Who You Are

Nothing to Add, Nothing to Take Away

"In anything at all,

perfection is finally attained

not when there is no longer

anything to add,

but when there is no longer

anything to take away."

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

(1900 - 1944)

Process, Emergence, and Autopoiesis

"I guess I've had only one question all my life. Why do emergent selves, virtual identities, pop up all over the place creating worlds, whether at the mind/body level, the cellular level, or the transorganism level? This phenomenon is something so productive that it doesn't cease creating entirely new realms: life, mind, and societies. Yet these emergent selves are based on processes so shifty, so ungrounded, that we have an apparent paradox between the solidity of what appears to show up and its groundlessness. That, to me, is a key and eternal question."

- Francisco Varela

(1946 - 2001)

That Invisible Soul That Pervades Reality

"To hear never-heard sounds, 

To see never-seen colors and shapes, 

To try to understand the imperceptible 

Power pervading the world; 

To fly and find pure ethereal substances 

That are not of matter 

But of that invisible soul pervading reality. 

To hear another soul and to whisper to another soul; 

To be a lantern in the darkness 

Or an umbrella in a stormy day; 

To feel much more than know. 

To be the eyes of an eagle, slope of a mountain; 

To be a wave understanding the influence of the moon; 

To be a tree and read the memory of the leaves; 

To be an insignificant pedestrian on the streets 

Of crazy cities watching, watching, and watching. 

To be a smile on the face of a woman 

And shine in her memory 

As a moment saved without planning."

- Dejan Stojanović,  Serbian poet

(1959 - )

Symbols, Dreams, and Transformations

"The task of art is to transform what is continuously happening to us, to transform all these things into symbols, into music, into something which can last in man’s memory. That is our duty. If we don’t fulfill it, we feel unhappy. A writer or any artist has the sometimes joyful duty to transform all that into symbols. These symbols could be colors, forms or sounds. For a poet, the symbols are sounds and also words, fables, stories, poetry. The work of a poet never ends. It has nothing to do with working hours. You are continuously receiving things from the external world. These must be transformed, and eventually will be transformed. This revelation can appear anytime. A poet never rests. He’s always working, even when he dreams. Besides, the life of a writer, is a lonely one. You think you are alone, and as the years go by, if the stars are on your side, you may discover that you are at the center of a vast circle of invisible friends whom you will never get to know but who love you. And that is an immense reward."

-  Jorge Luis Borges

(1899 – 1986) 

Curliques, Droplets, and Energy

"It's like you took a bottle of ink and you threw it at a wall. Smash! And all that ink spread. And in the middle, it's dense, isn't it? And as it gets out on the edge, the little droplets get finer and finer and make more complicated patterns, see? So in the same way, there was a big bang at the beginning of things and it spread. And you and I, sitting here in this room, as complicated human beings, are way, way out on the fringe of that bang. We are the complicated little patterns on the end of it. Very interesting. But so we define ourselves as being only that. If you think that you are only inside your skin, you define yourself as one very complicated little curlique, way out on the edge of that explosion. Way out in space, and way out in time. Billions of years ago, you were a big bang, but now you're a complicated human being. And then we cut ourselves off, and don't feel that we're still the big bang. But you are. Depends how you define yourself. You are actually--if this is the way things started, if there was a big bang in the beginning-- you're not something that's a result of the big bang. You're not something that is a sort of puppet on the end of the process. You are still the process. You are the big bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are. When I meet you, I see not just what you define yourself as--Mr so-and- so, Ms so-and-so, Mrs so-and-so--I see every one of you as the primordial energy of the universe coming on at me in this particular way. I know I'm that, too. But we've learned to define ourselves as separate from it. "

- Alan Watts

(1915 - 1973)

Forms, Shapes, and the Implicate Order

"There is a universal flux that cannot be defined explicitly but which can be known only implicitly, as indicated by the explicitly definable forms and shapes, some stable and some unstable, that can be abstracted from the universal flux. In this flow, mind and matter are not separate substances. Rather, they are different aspects of our whole and unbroken movement."

- David Bohm (1917 - 1992) 

Wholeness and the Implicate Order

Parts, Patterns, and Networks

"The patterns are simple, but followed together, they make for a whole that is wiser than the sum of its parts. Go for a walk; cultivate hunches; write everything down, but keep your folders messy; embrace serendipity; make generative mistakes; take on multiple hobbies; frequent coffee houses and other liquid networks; follow the links; let others build on your ideas; borrow, recycle; reinvent. Build a tangled bank."

- Steven Johnson

Emergence

Ripples, Waves, and Rhythms

"To Nature nothing can be added; from Nature nothing can be taken away; the sum of her energies is constant, and the utmost man can do in the pursuit of physical truth, or in the applications of physical knowledge, is to shift the constituents of the never-varying total. The law of conservation rigidly excludes both creation and annihilation. Waves may change to ripples, and ripples to waves; magnitude may be substituted for number, and number for magnitude; asteroids may aggregate to suns, suns may resolve themselves into florae and faunae, and floras and faunas melt in air: the flux of power is eternally the same. It rolls in music through the ages, and all terrestrial energy—the manifestations of life as well as the display of phenomena—are but the modulations of its rhythm."

- John Tyndall

(1820 - 1893)

Simplicity & Beauty

"The research worker, in his efforts to express the fundamental laws of Nature in mathematical form, should strive mainly for mathematical beauty. He should take simplicity into consideration in a subordinate way to beauty ... It often happens that the requirements of simplicity and beauty are the same, but where they clash, the latter must take precedence."

- Paul A. M. Dirac

(1902 - 1984)

Duality and Forgetting

"Where there is a duality, as it were, there one sees another; there one smells another; there one tastes another; there one speaks to another. . . But where everything has become just one's own self, then whereby and whom would one see? Then whereby and whom would one smell? then whereby and whom would one speak? then whereby and whom would one hear? then whereby and whom would one think? then whereby and whom would one touch? then whereby and whom would one understand?"

- Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (2.4.14)

"My connection with the body and its parts is dissolved. My perceptive organs are discarded. Thus leaving my material form and bidding farewell to my knowledge, I become one with the Great Pervader. This I call sitting and forgetting all things."

- Chuang Tzu

(~ 4th century BC)

Sacred Tree

"The sacred tree,

the sacred stone

are not adored

as stone or tree;

they are worshipped

precisely because

they are hierophanies,

because they show

something that is

no longer stone

or tree but sacred,

the ganz andere

or 'wholly other.'"

- Mircea Eliade (1907 - 1986)
Myths, Dreams and Mysteries

Emancipation of the Mind

"Abstraction allows man to see with his mind what he cannot physically see with his eyes… Abstract art enables the artist to perceive beyond the tangible, to extract the infinite out of the finite. It is the emancipation of the mind. It is an explosion into unknown areas."

- Arshile Gorky

(1904 - 1948)

Resonance, Spirit, and Proisvedenie

" …the long Russian word for creation proisvedenie, so different from its shorter counterparts in English, French and German, express for me the whole history and process of creation, lengthy, mysterious, infinitely complex and foreshadowed by divine predestination.

...in many ways art is similar to religion. Its development consists not in new discoveries which invalidate the old truths (as is obviously the case in science). Its development consists in sudden illuminations, similar to lightning, in explosions, which burst in the sky like fireworks… …this illumination shows with blinding light new perspectives, new truths, which are basically nothing but the organic development, the further organic growth of the earlier wisdom.

...the world is full of resonances. It constitutes a cosmos of things exerting a spiritual action. The dead matter is a living spirit."

- Wassily Kandinsky

(1866 - 1944)

Self, non-Self, and Interconnectedness

"True self is non-self, the awareness that the self is made only of non-self elements. There's no separation between self and other, and everything is interconnected. Once you are aware of that you are no longer caught in the idea that you are a separate entity."

- Thich Nhat Hanh

(1926 - )

Ebb & Flow

"The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers. It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death, in ebb and in flow. I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment."

- Rabindranath Tagore

(1861 - 1941)

Symbols, Signs, and Conceptions

"We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infintesimal hairline between an all-powerfully causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality. We confuse the world as talked about, described, and measured with the world which actually is. We are sick with a fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas."

- Alan Watts
(1915 - 1973)

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.

Portfolios: 2005 - 2015

A while back, I self-published a mini portfolio on Blurb to use as a self-promotion tool for galleries and prospective clients. The idea, of course, was to keep it small, simple, and enticing. It consists of two-page portfolio samplers, with each spread providing one full-page image and 3 or 4 thumb-sized images on the adjoining page. While my mini-portfolio continues to serve its originally intended purpose, I have been asked increasingly frequently if (when?) I would ever publish a "real" edition that contains a full (or least, a meaningfully more complete) selection of the images I've captured over the last decade. To those of you who have asked for or wondered about such an edition, and for all those who may simply be interested in perusing a wider range of images than appear in the "mini," I am happy to announce the publication of SuddenStillness: Visual Echoes of Timeless Rhythms.

The new book is 440 pages long, includes over 325 images from 19 portfolios (all created between 2005 - 2015, and most of which are introduced by a short essay), and concludes with updated versions of the 10 most popular essays that I have published on this blog on the creative process in photography. Among the images that appear are those that have been published by Lenswork (issues #71, #76, #95, and #105), Black & White magazine (issues #41, #56, #80, #87, and #95), Black and White Spider Awards (2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010), and the winter/2013 edition of Stone Voices (as well as many other on-line publications). Both print and eBook (iPad/iPhone and Adobe pdf) versions are available. 

Here is a 43 page preview:

SuddenStillness by Andy Ilachinski | Make Your Own Book

An "Old" Technology Sparks a "New" Generation

I will dispense with my (by now, probably tiresome) apologies and excuses for not posting regularly, and will simply resume posting as time (and muse) permit. On this occasion, the subject is both old and new, on multiple levels. Specifically, old technology - as in Polaroid cameras and Polaroid-film-like one-step processing - and a new generation of photographers, exemplified by my 12 year old son, Josh, about whose discovery of - and burgeoning passion for - a bygone era of imaging I'd like to wax poetic about as both an admiring dad and "objective" observer.

Before we get to Josh, we need to first take a few steps back in time for context. A telling sentence that I have for years included in my artist's statement reads: "Photography became a life-long pursuit for me the instant my parents gave me a Polaroid Instamatic camera for my 10th birthday." This is indeed where my (now, 44th! year of) love of photography was born. While that old first camera of mine has long ago been relegated to an old dustbin, I have for years been  trying to find another camera I was convinced still existed and to which I have an even deeper attachment. After I moved away from long Island in 1988 to start my post-graduate life in northern VA, I gifted my dad a Polaroid Spectra camera so that he could continue archiving his art in my absence (a blessing that, years later, resulted in the book my mom and I wrote on his life, art and legacy, in the years following my dad's death in 2002). Ever since he died, I have regularly searched my mom's home for his camera, but to no avail; until, that is, my mom excitedly called me up one day to announce that she had finally found it. Miraculously, it had been tucked away in a quiet corner of the top-most shelf in her bedroom closet!

The timing, as it turns out, could not have been better, for two reasons; one technology related, the other very personal. From a technology standpoint, were it sometime in 2008, I would have been crestfallen, since Polaroid - after a sad, tragic even, downfall, in the years after its visionary genius founder and chief scientist, Edwin H. Land, left just before the landmark Polaroid vs. Kodak patent infringement judgment - stopped making new film. Happily, an extraordinary new effort - called the Impossible Project (named after Land's famous aphorism, "Don't undertake a project unless it's manifestly important and nearly impossible") - was founded (by Florian Kaps and Andre Bosman) to recreate polaroid instant film; albeit using a different recipe, due partly to the fact that details of the Polaroid's recipe had been destroyed, and partly to the fact that even had all of the details been retained, many of the required chemicals were either no longer available or, in some cases, illegal to manufacture. Though the young company's challenge was formidable, just two years after the project got going, it started producing reformulated versions of classic Polaroid instant film formats, including SX-70, 600, and Image-Spectra, as well as 8x10. As of this writing, the Impossible Project has announced Generation 2 of its 600-type B&W film, which promises to be even closer to the classic Polaroid film than its first generation recipes: image formation within 20 seconds, and a fully developed photo within 5 minutes!

And so we get to my 12 yo son Josh, who, after waiting patiently for the 30 or so minutes that needed to elapse before a ghost-like image formed after his dad took his first test shot with the rediscovered vintage Spectra (using a Gen-1 B&W film pack from the Impossible Project), stood utterly transfixed with his mouth open and proverbial jaw slackened. "Wow!" he genuinely and loudly gasped, "The image is forming by itself! That is SO COOL dad!" To emphasize how slack jawed I was at Josh's sincere, from-the-heart, reaction, I need to point out that none of the other tens of thousand images I have taken during his young life with my digital SLR (the creation of many of which he witnessed first hand, whether at the instant of capture - and instant display! - post-production in Photoshop, or via the final print) elicited so much as a peep! Indeed, I had surreptitiously probed Josh's possible interest in photography a few years ago by gifting him his own digital point-and-shoot, which he enjoyed for a time but was decidedly less than enthusiastic about. But his reaction to the polaroid was different; very different. 

In the roughly two months that have gone by between Josh's unabashed awe at witnessing what he later described as a small miracle ("I can hold the image in my hand!"), Josh, at his own request and partial payment using his own savings, has acquired a Polaroid Spectra, an SX-70 - the extraordinary SX-70 that many, myself included, consider among the finest art/science/technology blends of the 20th century), a shoulder bag and tripod (well, those were gifts from dad), and enough film to last a few months (though he is burning his way through his store like a photographer possessed). Speaking as a father, it is a joy to see such pure, unbridled passion. Speaking as a photographer (albeit, admittedly not quite an unbiased one), I take an even greater joy in witnessing an unmistakable talent anxiously bubbling up to the surface. The sample images you see sprinkled throughout this page are some early - very early (all were taken using his first 4 or 5 five film packs) - samples from Josh's eye and camera. I am impressed by both his choice of subject matter and composition.

For example, where most people (young and old, doesn't matter) inaugurate a newfound interest in photography with obligatory snapshots of friends, family, pets, and their impressions of the front lawn, Josh almost immediately turned his attention to slightly more esoteric subjects. Case in point, the picture at the top of the page (a "self-portrait of an SX-70"). Recalling a photography-related discussion he and I had about lengths of exposure, sharpness of image, and what is and is not necessarily captured on film, Josh - by himself - decided to set up his SX-70 on a tripod, so that it faced itself in a mirror in a slightly darkened room without flash. He did this so that he could take a long enough exposure so that the fraction of a second during which his hand needed to be in view of the lens (in order to click the shutter button) was too short for the film to record. The result was the beautifully crafted picture reproduced here. It is a deliberately "seen" image, somewhat reminiscent of Ansel Adams' self-professed visualization of "Monolith, the Face of Half Dome" (which is a remarkable accomplishment for someone so young). But I was equally astonished at the aesthetic elegance of Josh's composition. The image is essentially an ode to rectangles and other linear forms; with a beautifully placed Polaroid One-Step camera (my wife's, who is also getting into Polaroid photography in our family as a direct result of Josh's infectious enthusiasm) in the lower left corner, as a quiet echo of the "star attraction" of the overall image. This is just beautifully seen, especially by one who has taken so few pictures in his life. While Josh swears that his sole focus (no pun intended) was in capturing a self-portrait of the SX-70, and not composing a picture, I sense that an unconscious - but confident - will-to-order is in play and am impressed.

I am also impressed with Josh's first "abstract series," two samples of which are seen here. Josh has recently been enjoying the remarkable Space Engine program that is available for free for PCs (Space Engine allows the user to essentially navigate the entire cosmos; I have neither the time nor space ;-) to do justice to this truly visionary work. I encourage all readers with an interest in space to download this amazing simulation and explore its vast potential on their own). Thus, "naturally" (though, perhaps this does not come so naturally to everyone), Josh almost immediately pointed his SX-70 at some Space Engine screens he found during his explorations of the cosmos - and deliberately composed the appearance of specific shots to his liking. His captures show an ineffably beguiling beauty; not to mention a Zen-like compositional elegance. Once again, this is astounding for one who barely two months ago hardly ever touched a camera.

Finally, Josh's sheer exuberance with his new found passion for Polaroid photography is captured by my wife (with her iPhone) as he is unexpectedly gifted his third Polaroid on a visit to his grandmother in Florida. This kind of joy comes straight from the heart, cannot be faked, and just radiates sincerity.

Of course, I have no idea how long Josh's enthusiasm will last. It may die out, it may intensify, or it may transform into some other related art form. But if these early indications are a valid data source, he has clearly been very deeply bitten by his creative muse. May they forever more remain inseparable :-)

References: readers interested in exploring Polaroid's history (and, in particular, the biography of the great Edwin H. Land), can look at any of these sources: (1) history of the SX-70, (2) a 1970s commercial for the SX-70, (3) (short) biography of Edwin Land (at the Rowland Institute, which he founded after leaving Polaroid), (4) (video) Edwin Land's retinex theory of color vision, and (5) Time Zero is a wonderful documentary on the rise and fall of Polaroid, and the recent emergence of the Impossible Project; as of last month this documentary was available for subscribers to Netflix. Some of the better books include: (1) Insisting On the Impossible : The Life of Edwin Land, (2) Instant: The Story of Polaroid, (3) Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It, and (4) A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War. For those of you who would like to dive a bit deeper into Land's work as scientist: (1) parts one and two of Land's 1959 papers on color vision for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, (2) a 1971 paper on his retinex theory of color vision, co-authored with John Mccann in the Journal of the Optical Society of America, and (3) a semi-technical paper (in Adobe pdf format) he wrote for Scientific American in 1977. Finally, a wonderful 16-min long film, The Long Walk, made in 1970, that shows Land giving a tour of Polaroid's offices and factories in Massachusetts.

Postscript: it is not a coincidence that Apple has often been called the latter-day Polaroid. At the top of Steve Jobs' (very) short list of visionary heroes is Edwin H Land. As Christopher Bonanos points out in his book, Instant: The Story of Polaroid, and confirms with published photos, the Ikea-like small but stylish tables that Land and Jobs both used on their respective stages (Land, while introducing the SX-70 to share-holders, and Jobs while demoing the iPad) were essentially the same model. Hardly a coincidence ;-) An hour-long talk that Mr. Bonanos gave at Google in 2012 is available here.

Help yourself to a free portfolio sampler

Portfolio Sampler by Andy Ilachinski 

For those of you interested, and for this month only, I've made the iPad version of my current "portfolio sampler" completely free. If you have an iPhone or iPad, please feel free to download, enjoy (I hope), and pass on this "freebie" to anyone you think might be interested. It contains 16 portfolios in all (with shorter previews of a few others). Since photography is ultimately about sharing (one's aesthetic, travelogues, perhaps even a philosophy of life), my "epiphany" on the way home from work tonight, was simply, "So, why not share?"

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.

Kauai Bamboo

“A monk asked Ts'ui-wei about the meaning of Buddhism.  Ts'ui-wei answered: "Wait until there is no one around, and I will tell you."  Some time later the monk approached Ts'ui-wei again, saying, 'There is nobody here now.  Please answer me.'  Ts'ui-wei led him out into the garden and went over to the bamboo grove, saying nothing.  Still the monk did not understand, so at last Ts'ui-wei said, 'Here is a tall bamboo; there is a short one!'” ― Zen Parable