Spirit & Light Portfolio

I am delighted to report that my Spirit & Light portfolio has just been published in Lenswork Extended Issue #71 (Jul - Aug 2007). A few of the published images can be seen here (click on the "Spirit & Light" gallery at the top of the Adobe flash presentation that this link will take you to). 

Here is the accompanying essay: Although I was raised in the Russian Orthodox tradition (and was an “altar boy” into my early teens), somehow – inexplicably - I have never before seriously trained my camera’s “eye” onto the rich aesthetic forms I had so long admired and that adorn most Orthodox churches. It has been quite a while since I’ve been part of a congregation, and I have tended to frown upon organized religion more than I have been attracted to it as I grew into adulthood. My spiritual core nonetheless owes much to my early upbringing. 

 A few years ago, I had an opportunity to participate in a juried exhibition at the Washington National Cathedral, in Washington, DC (and I am proud to have two of my works on permanent display in its upper gallery). As I made my frequent journeys toward one of the city’s and the nation’s best known landmarks, I kept noticing this beautiful Russian Orthodox Church, St. Nicholas Cathedral, standing off to the side. I remember admiring it from afar and making mental reminders to stop by before going home to see what was inside, but was usually so tired after a day of taking pictures at the Cathedral that I never got around to it. Until one day last year, when I finally resolved to make a special visit to St. Nicholas and see what I would find. 

 What I found was both a revelation and an awakening. A revelation, because I had, in some sense, “discovered” what was there in front me all along: an immensely beautiful church that I had essentially ignored in my erstwhile pursuit of the National Cathedral’s more heralded grandeur. An awakening, because it took but one glance at St. Nicholas’s ornate but soulful interior to remind me of my own spiritual roots, and my need to replenish those roots by revisiting them with my camera. And so began a quiet journey over the next few months that took me to several Orthodox Churches in the DC area, and the one closest to my heart (Our Lady of Kazan, Sea Cliff, NY), in my hometown on Long Island.

Somewhere along the way I also rediscovered myself.

Blackberry Picking and Abstracts

What does picking blackberries have to do with abstracts? Perhaps a better title (certainly more informative;-) would be, "How to bring home some abstract photos by listening to your wife!" Hot on the heels of my last Blog entry (which also credits my wonderful wife with getting me into position to get some shots despite myself by insisting I take my camera, when I professed "lack of muse", and didn't want to bother), my wife is to be credited with again reminding me what every photographer (except this stubborn one!) knows; namely, that photographs are everywhere.

The context for this latest denouement (i.e., and my embarrassing inability to learn this one basic lesson) was a simple, lazy Saturday. The sun was bright, the kids were anxious for something to do outside, and my wife was full of interesting ideas. "Let's go blackberry picking!" she suggested, something we had actually never done before. I was delighted to tag along; indeed, because of the horrible "photographer's weather" (i.e., bright sun, few clouds makes for ugly contrast-ridden shots; at least in general), I had already consigned the day to be "photo free" and braced myself for an onslaught of the obligatory photographer's lament and pouting about "another day lost". However, as always, my wife was far wiser than I: "Hun, you never know what you could find. Isn't that what you always tell me? Why not take your camera." As on our recent trip to Florida, I relunctantly grabbed my camera bag, but was inwardly smiling with the thought, "Yeah, I'll take it, but I won't be getting any shots today!"

So we went berry picking, my wife and kids loved every minute of it, and we now have more berries than we know what to do with. As for me, I knew I was in a photographer's Shangrila the moment our minivan sauntered into the dirt parking lot of a local organic farm. While my wife and kids were gazing out toward the berry patches, my eye was drawn to old tractors, farmhouses, dilapited storage bins, deserted cars and trucks, vine-entangled old windows and beat-up farm equipment. "I'm so glad I decided to take my camera along!", I thought (Ahem!;-)

All told, we spent two hours or so at the farm; my wife and kids picking berries, and with me prowling around looking for whatever might catch the eye. The owners were very nice, and gave me permission to roam their property at will. They were a bit puzzled, though, about my subject matter. While I took a few stray shots of tractors and some closeups of hay, I spent far more time admiring one particular section of a half-ajar door (full of other-worldly realms of peeling paint and other mysteries) to a trailer just off to the side from where the owners set up a small table to greet all incoming berry-pickers.

My wife mercifully came to my rescue as the owners' quizzical glances soon turned to outright panic that perhaps the strange man bobbing his head up and down and contorting his body in odd angles while keeping his nose barely three inches from the door is, after all, just a bit deranged. "Please don't be alarmed," she jumped in to explain, "My husband just delights in finding interesting patterns and textures. He lives for doors like this!" (She could have rightly added: "Of, course, he can only do this when he remembers to take his camera, even if it looks like it's a 'horrible' day for photography!";-)

"Chance Favors the Prepared Mind"

"Chance favors the prepared mind," Ansel Adams was fond of saying (though the original quote comes from Louis Pasteur). I was reminded of the wisdom of this aphorism during a recent trip my family and I took to Coral Gables, Florida. Armed, as usual, with my camera-bag's worth of equipment, I had a carefully preconceived plan in place to visit some of my favorite "photo-safari" haunts. I know the area well from my many visits, and places such as Fairchild Gardens and Vizcaya were firmly at the top of my list. While they didn't disappoint (they never do), and each offers delightful compositional opportunities, through no fault of theirs - since I was the one who deliberately chose them for my photo-safari - my muse was unfortunately struggling to stay awake.

There is a feeling, roughly analogous to the common dream of running through molasses, that overcomes all photographers at some point when they've prepared too much. Everything is "right", all the equipment works, the lenses are clean, the camera bag has exactly what you need, the light is right, the location is right, beautiful vistas are all around you, and ... nothing happens. There is no magic. No spark. You lift your (strangely, much heavier-than-normal) camera to your eye, and - maybe - at some point click its shutter more to alleviate the growing boredom than because of anything that strikes your aesthetic eye as "interesting." And yet, everything, objectively speaking, is perfect. How can that possibly be?, you wonder Everything is just right. All photographers - all artists - know exactly what I'm writing about.

Now, skip ahead to the last day of my family's trip. The rain starts to fall in the morning, and is unrelenting; and with it, so I think, wash away my last hopes of savoring an "Aha!" moment at Fairchild or Vizcaya. Finally, the sky clears, it is late in the day, and my kids want to go feed the pelicans at a nearby park (Matheson Hammock Park Beach). Sulking from my trip-long funk, I want to leave my camera behind (something I almost never do). My wife (as she always does;-) reminds me that I almost never do that, and gently urges me to bring it along, which I do, reluctantly (and expect nothing more than to get some quick grabs of the kids feeding their pelicans, if even that). Which is, indeed, exactly what happens. No muse, no sparks, just that same monotonous, lifeless "clicks" as before...and then the magic happens!... just as the kids finish feeding their pelicans and everyone starts walking back toward our car.

While putting away my camera, my trip-long, nearly comatose "photographer's eye/intuition" finally awakens, and forces me to glance over my shoulder...and I am absolutely transfixed by the magnificent cacophony of lines, shadows and light playing on the rapidly darkening, and by now deserted, marina. Literally breathlessly, I reset my tripod, rifle through my bag for a 3-stop ND filter (to get at least a 15 sec exposure to blur the small waves), compose more on instinct than design, and take one shot. At which time my wife and kids are already getting antsy, and remind me that dinner is waiting and that they're all hungry. And the magic goes Poof!

But what a moment. While my one shot - reproduced at the top of this blog entry - may not be an award winner, it is by far my best shot of the whole trip. It is also the one shot I didn't plan on taking at all; though I was prepared!

I hope I'll remember this little lesson in humility, though I recall saying those same words to myself countless times before, and such experiences still obviously take me by surprise when they happen. Although I almost always "plan" on going to certain places (that's my style), and always have at least some idea of what I'm "after" when I get there (in concept, if not detail), I also always try to be prepared for when chance decides to pay me a quick visit. Indeed, as a photographer, I live for these moments!

Whats Your Book? Contest

Back in the autumn of last year, The British Black & White Photography magazine (GMC Publications) announced their "What's Your Book?" contest. It was an open call to all amateurs and professionals, with the entry requirements being (1) an idea for a book ;-), (2) title, (3) strapline, and (4) a 75 word summary of what the book will be about. The winner receives an all-expenses-paid 200-copy limited edition run of a book of photographs.

Since (by coincidence) I was at that time already heavily immersed in studying my Borgesian-labyrinth-like hard-drive's-worth of photographs (while working on a portfolio, "Spirit & Light", that I only recently learned will be published in next month's Lenswork Extended CD issue #71), I decided it was an opportune time to mail in a submission to the book contest as well. Having done so in early September, and knowing the contest deadline was a long time away at the end of the year, I also knew I wouldn't hear back from the judges for quite a while; so I soon put the contest out of mind (and honestly didn't expect to hear back anything at all!).

Until, that is, I got a wonderfully unexpected email in early April informing me that I made the shortlist of seven finalists. I was of course delighted, and soon turned my attention to stage two of the contest: providing the judges with 20 additional fine-art prints (essentially to show that there's a bit of "meat" behind the basic idea). Not really expecting to go any farther in the contest, I nonetheless, and somewhat reluctantly (though with some much needed warm encouragement from my wonderful wife), put aside a planned "photo safari" in a local park to focus my attention on preparing new prints.

Shoot forward a few more months, and I'm rather shocked to find my name on a shortlist of three finalists! Only this time, the final round of "decisions" belongs not to the judges, but to the readers/viewers of B&W Photography.

There is a voting site set up that describes the contest, shows previews of the finalists' submissions (including a slide show), and provides a link to an Adobe pdf version of the six page spread summarizing the contests and finalists' entries in the July issue of the B&W Photography magazine. There is also a separate (and clearly marked) voting page.

In truth, I am thrilled beyond measure at just seeing my name on this shortlist of three finalists. Indeed, the other two finalists are both quite obviously fine artists, and each has a gifted photographers' "eye" (and poetic soul). Their images (and book ideas) are both beautiful and eloquent, and it is easy to see why the judges voted for their work. It is a sincere honor to share the temporary spotlight with them. And, also in truth (since whether I win or lose this particular contest, my images are my own and I see them every day;-) I would look forward to purchasing the book of either of my "competitors".

So, what's my book idea? All I can do from my humble perch, on this Blog, is to suggest that, if interested, you click ***here*** to find out, and (even if you choose not to vote) enjoy an interesting write-up about the contest, read the editors' impressions of all three entries, and enjoy some fine images (by all three finalists).

Toward an Aesthetic Grammar: Part I

A few years ago, I gave an invited presentation at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC, entitled Nature's Way: The Art of Seeing Complexity. My lecture was part of a multiweek workshop sponsored jointly by the Washington Center for Complexity & Public Policy and the Resident Associate Program of the Smithsonian Institution.

The ambitious goal I set out to accomplish with my talk - which, in hindsight I ought to have known would be impossible to achieve in the short time I had to achieve it (about two hours) - was to use the soul-searching inner musings of a physicist as photographer as a springboard toward forging a possible conceptual bridge between art and science; one that is defined by an aesthetic grammar, and hints at an even deeper aesthetic physics (two phrases that I promise to define more carefully below). As I diligently plowed through my slides, and talked through a few I had prepared especially to explain these subtle points, I could tell from the many blank stares and questioning smirks, that my skeletal new art-science "aesthetics theory" was destined to fall far short of my intended goal that day.

"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 (anthropologist, 1904 - 1980)

So, for another, slightly expanded attempt at communicating some soul-searching inner musings of a physicist as photographer...let me begin - in Part I of a multipart series of essays I intend posting in the coming weeks on the same topic as my Smithsonian talk, but retitled Towards an Aesthetic Grammar - by introducing a provocative theorem that I will first make a cautionary meta-claim about: please be forewarned that the theorem I am about to state will likely strike you either as obvious (at best) or idiotically vacuous (at worst). However, I will immediately argue that not only does the truth (of its interpretation) lie nowhere near these two extremes, but that the theorem is deceptively subtle and points to a universal "core truth" that underlies all cognitive, scientific and creative endeavors!

What is this remarkable theorem? It is called the "Ugly-Duck Theorem" (named after the well-known story by Hans Christian Andersen), and was proposed and proven by statistician Satosi Watanabe in 1969 (who was then at the University of Hawaii).

Suppose that the number of predicates that are simultaneously satisfied by two nonidentical objects of a system, A and B, is a fixed constant, P. The Ugly Duck theorem asserts that the number of predicates that are simultaneously satisfied by neither A nor B and the number of predicates that are satisfied by A but not by B are both also equal to P. While this assertion is easy to prove, and certainly appears innocuous at first glance - indeed, you would be forgiven to think it entirely "meaningless" since it is merely restating an obvious combinatorial fact about the set of possible predicates - it has rather significant philosophical and conceptual consequences.

"Thought is creating divisions out of itself and then saying that they are there naturally." - David Bohm

For example, suppose that there are only three objects in the world, arbitrarily labeled (@,@,#). An obvious interpretation is that this describes two kinds of objects: two @s and one #. But there are other ways of partitioning this set. For example, line them up explicitly this way: @ @ #. An implicit new organizing property seems to emerge: the leftmost @ and the rightmost # share the property that they are "not in the middle". We are free to label this property using the symbol @, and the property of being in the middle, #. Now, substituting the new property for each of the original objects, we have @ @ # -> @ # @.

Had we sorted these three objects according to the new property (that discriminates according to spatial position), we would again have two kinds of objects, but in this case they would have been different ones. Obviously, we can play this game repeatedly, since there are endless number of possible properties that can arbitrarily be called @ and #. That is the point. Unless there is an objective measure by which one set of properties can be distinguished from any of the others, there is no objective way to assert that any subset of objects is better than, or different from, any other.

The theorem demonstrates that there is no a priori objective way to ascribe a measure of similarity (or dissimilarity) between any two randomly chosen subsets of a given set. (Or, stated more whimsically, the theorem states that, all things being equal, an ugly duck is just as similar to a swan as two swans are to each other!) More technically speaking, we see that asymmetries within a system (i.e., differences) can be induced only either via some externally imposed “aesthetic” measure, or generated from within.

"Of course" ... you might be saying ... "that is obvious! But why is this important?" It is important because it demonstrates that - fundamentally - all of our perceptions of the world, precisely because they are demonstrably not all uniform, appear as sets of different things interrelated in a myriad of ways because of an internal aesthetic (or internal grammar, or physics!) that we automatically impose on what we perceive (doing so mostly unconsciously). The problem is to find a way to characterize and articulate what such a grammar might actually look like!

We "see" rocks and chairs and people primarily because nature has evolved an immeasurably powerful sensory-cognitive processing mechanism that rapidly "tags" for us (for our "I") the patterns in our environment that we will most likely be interacting with repeatedly throughout our lifetime. These objects are not visible to us (as "things") because the universe has labeled them "objectively meaningful" in a global sense (I doubt whether the universe really cares whether a particular transient pattern of atoms is called a "chair", a "collection of wooden planks" or "an exemplar of post-modern, neo-minimalist drivel"); rather, they appear to us as "meaningful" only because they are meaningful to us locally, in terms of the natural aesthetics we were born with (and evolve for ourselves as we interact with our perceptions and experiences) that determine what objects we can see, and the degree to which we can distinguish one object from another.

Who we are - our "I" - is defined and shaped most strongly by our internal aesthetic; which, I shall argue shortly, does not just describe "what we happen to think is beautiful at the moment" but molds our entire conception of the world, with all of the artistic, scientific, philosophical and spiritual depths that entails.

When I use the phrase "conceptual grammar" (or "aesthetic grammar") I mean - no more and no less - the set of aesthetic-weights we use (mostly unconsciously) to ascribe more or less "thingness" to an object A compared to another object B. According to the Ugly Duck theorem, we would expect the components of this set of weights to all be equal and therefore completely undiscerning in a rigorously objective world. Our conceptual grammar, understood in this way, therefore also constitutes the backbone of a primitive "local physics" we all use to describe our world; where by "physics" I mean a set of "organizing principles" that describe the underlying patterns of what our aesthetics "permit" us to recognize as existing.

Thus, when I write "grammar", I am thinking of primitive building blocks of "things" that (we imagine and/or perceive to) populate our (aesthetically generated asymmetric) local world, and the ways in which things may be "combined" to yield other things. And when I write "physics", I am thinking of the primitive building blocks of "patterns" that connect the things.

"Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligent picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experiences, and thus to overcome it. This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientist do, each in his own fashion." - Albert Einstein

I will discuss some important consequences of the Ugly Duck theorem, and suggest how it might be used to generalize what we (think we) know about our "scientific aesthetics" to begin probing what an (objectively artful) "aesthetic grammar" may look like, in Part II (stay tuned....) Speculations on what all of this has to do with complexity, photography, the "art of seeing", and using art to find one's "I", will also appear in forthcoming essays.

Technical Note: The Ugly Duck Theorem complements another well-known theorem called the No Free Lunch theorem, proven by Wolpert and Macready in 1996. The No Free Lunch theorem asserts that the performance of all search algorithms, when averaged over all possible cost functions (i.e., problems), is exactly the same. In other words, no search algorithm is better, or worse, on average than blind guessing. Algorithms must be tailored to specific problems, which therefore effectively serve as the external aesthetic by which certain algorithms are identified as being better than others. Technical proofs of Watanabe's theorem appear in his books Knowing and Guessing and Pattern Recognition (both of which are, sadly, out of print).

Amazing New Resource for Photographers & Students of Photography

Focal Press (i.e., the Media Technology component of Elsevier Publishing) has just published a "book" (a pristine copy of which I have been happily browsing through after it had - literally - landed on my doorstep with a loud THUD!; I put the word "book" in quotes because, as I will describe below, to call this massive cinder-block of a reference work a "book" is roughly equivalent to calling a fresh uneaten loaf of bread a "crumb";-) that has all the tell-tale signs of being a classic scholarly reference for photographers and students of photography for years to come: The Focal Encyclopedia of Photography, Fourth Edition, edited by Michael R. Peres (also available from Amazon).

The encyclopedia is a significant update of its predecessor volumes, with a massive amount of new material. The first edition, a classic in its time when it was published in 1956, has been long out of print and is obviously extremely dated given all of the advances in photographic science, engineering and art that have occurred since then. The third edition (edited by Richard D. Zakia and Leslie Stroebel), which I own and love, is only a decade old but has very little on the burgeoning field of digital photography. However, it still contains a veritable storehouse of useful information and, though it is also out of print, is available in some used book stores (given the hefty price of the new volume, some students on a budget may want to instead consider the third edition).

The new fourth edition has 880 pages in all, over 400 images, covers all major (and minor) areas of photography (ranging from photography and art / society / commerce, museums, the science of photography, galleries, workshops, education, publishing, history, theory, practice, criticism, and short biographies of selected photographers in the 20th Century), and comes with a CD-ROM that contains the entire (and fully searchable) text + images in the book (this one surprising, and most welcome, addition is alone worth the "price of admission").

The book is very handsomely produced, with strong, thick covers and thick, semi-glossy pages that give the volume a "classy feel" and give the overall impression that the editors designed it to be well thumbed and used, and to last a long, long while (which I pray it does since most of my photo books, particularly reference works, tend to become tattered and grow nested dog-ears in no time, as I repeatedly dive in for the shear pleasure of discovering some morsel of photographic delight).

The encyclopedia does have one unfortunate, but arguably unavoidable, drawback: it is so big and heavy that it is impossible to just "whip it out" on your lap and sink into (a flimsy chair) for some leisurely reading; you have to plan on when and where you will be reading this monster! ... and, God forbid, don't even think of taking it to an upstairs room to read in bed: if the staircase doesn't collapse from the weight before you get there, your bed surely will! ;-)

Kudos to Focal Press' editorial board for producing such a fine masterwork. It will likely become the "standard" such reference for all current and future generations of students of photography (and, I suspect, quite a few working professionals as well).

Wonderful Collection of Essays on Photography

Bill Jay is likely familiar to many photographers (and certainly to readers of Lenswork magazine).

Among his many accomplishments, he was the first Director of Photography at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, the first Editor/Director of Creative Camera and Album magazines, and the founder of the Program of Photographic Studies at The University of Arizona, where he has taught for over 25 years. He has published over 400 articles and authored more than 20 books on the history and criticism of photography (see, for example, On Being a Photographer, co-authored with David Hurn, and available either from Lenswork or Amazon). He also writes the delightful Endnotes for Lenswork each month, earmarked with his uniquely witty, and sardonic style.

Mr. Jay has generously posted a rich sampling of his essays and portraits on his website. To suggest that (after you click on the first essay and just start reading) you will be "staying a while" on his site is a profound understatement; plan on spending at least a few hours, and then make time for more later! Thank you Mr. Jay!