The Eightfold Path Toward Self-Discovery Through Photography

A while back, I posted an entry called The Eightfold Way of the Artist, in which I describe the basic "steps" by which most artists - and most photographers (not that there is any meaningful difference between the two;-) - typically develop an aesthetic language over a lifetime's worth of "seeing" and "expressing" their own unique vision. That earlier discussion, however, was fairly abstract; and emphasized how the evolution of one's personal art may be used to reveal, over time, the artist "behind" the emergent work. I'd like to revisit this idea, but from a slightly more practical (but no less philosophically deep) point of view: namely, how the nature of the expressed art form itself changes over time, and what we - as artists - can learn from the forms of change.

In keeping with this entry's more prosaic tone (though, as I glance ahead to what I wrote below, I'm not sure how much "philosophy" I've actually stripped from my earlier post; I'll leave that up to the patient reader to decide;-), I should note that it was prompted by a disarmingly simple and straightforward question my mom asked me a few weeks ago (well, it was straightforward, but only before I realized that answering it - in a meaningful way - would prove anything but). Having just seen my Micro Worlds portfolio, my mom asked: "Andy, these are lovely, but why do you take so many pictures of the same thing? You used to show me such a variety of subjects; why the change?"

My immediate reply was accurate but shallow. I said that I no longer find individual images adequate to fully express what I want to communicate about what I'm seeing and feeling. My mom - who is not used to shallow answers about art, having lived with a rather deep artist (namely, my dad) for as long as I can remember - called me on my flippant reply, and probed for something deeper. I tried again: "I don't think in terms of individual images anymore; and when I see a subject that interests me, I want to explore it more, with multiple exposures and viewpoints." In some ways, of course, that was worse than my first answer...my mom countered with: "Andy, you've restated my question quite nicely. Now, how about explaining why you don't think in terms of individual images anymore?"What follows is a summary of the deeper answer I gave my mom after I took a few hours to ponder her probing question. I concluded that my mom very perceptively discerned a genuine meta-pattern shift in the gestalt of my photography; and that the essence of that meta-pattern shift provides an important clue as to what stage I'm in, in my natural (and still very much ongoing) evolution as an artist. I also thought that it might be a worthwhile exercise to think through, and describe, the various stages that I suspect most (if not all) photographers gradually move through as they mature as artists. While my notes contain the germs of ideas for "stages of artistic evolution" whose numbers range from a only a few to more than a dozen, I eventually settled on eight stages (perhaps an unconscious homage to Buddha's Eightfold Path).

Let me begin by stating up front that my description of the "8-fold path toward self-discovery" in no way implies that I have any special insight into the deepest strata of art or photography; it is offered simply, and humbly, "as is" and is to be read - and understood - purely as an expression of but one point of view (which the reader is entirely free to disagree with; indeed, I hope does disagree, with at least parts of it, so as to foster a dialectic by which we can all collectively probe the meaning of art and photographer even deeper).

"A man's work is nothing but
this slow trek to discover,
through the detours of art, these two or three
great and simple images in whose
presence his heart first opened."
- ALBERT CAMUS

Stage 1: Joyful snapshots of anything and everything. What is the first thing anyone who gets a new" toy" (or serious tool) wants to do? Play with it, of course; see what it can do, learn how to use it - mechanically, at least - and just have some fun with it. The beginning photographer - such as I remember myself being when I was barely 10 and my parents had given me a Polaroid instamatic camera for Christmas - doesn't really care much about anything other than taking pictures of whatever strikes their fancy. And that's precisely what they get: pictures of their dog or cat, their room, mom and dad, their own reflection, snapshots of their friends, a tree, a shoe, a baseball game, an apple, whatever. Everyone begins somewhere; and that "somewhere" for photographers is a joyful - but otherwise essentially indiscriminant - expression of a new found tool that takes pictures. And pictures they will take; all kinds of pictures, with hardly any rhyme or reason. In a basic sense, anyone who is alive and is the least bit curious about the world - and is given a camera, or any other artistic tool - instantly becomes a stage-1 artist.

Stage 2: A passive stirring of aesthetic value. As the photographer evolves from stage one to stage two, she still takes images of anything and everything that strikes her fancy but now finds that certain objects draw a deeper attention than others. Her gaze still falls on most everything that surrounds her, but her embryonic photographer's "eye" begins to discern that aesthetic value is not homogeneously distributed; certain scenes, and certain things, draw her eye more than others. For the first time, though perhaps weakly, some aspect of the environment draws the artist's attention. But the second stage artist is mostly passive, reacting to aesthetic stimuli as they appear and are recognized, but still largely undiscerning as to their relative merit and eager to "take in as much as possible." The stage-2 artist creates pictures in which others recognize that certain things are given more or less visual weight than others; but - because the stage-2 artist is still only a "beginner" - the pictures themselves are not necessarily as aesthetically pleasing as they could be.

Stage 3: Willful engagement of the aesthetic environment. The transition from stage two to stage three is both difficult to see "from the outside" (for observers of the artist's inner journey) and dramatic (as experienced directly by the artist). The transition occurs when the artist finds herself discontent with the merely passive capture of objects, and instead actively seeks objects she deems "interesting." She has started to categorize the world according to her own unique measure(s) of lesser and greater aesthetic value. Objects (or places, or people, or situations, ...) that the stage-three artist holds in high regard become beacons in the environment that both immediately draw the artist's attention, and are "attractors" toward which the artist actively makes her way. If the artist finds trees of particular interest, for example, she is no longer content with leaving a park with a "few stray shots of trees," but now deliberately goes to different parks (and other places that has lots of trees) to "see" as many different tree as possible. The stage-three artist begins to learn what she values most, and then goes out to find it. She also learns to better express what she "sees" and is better able to create aesthetically pleasing images. "Objects" of attention in the stage-3 artist's picture repertoire are no longer appreciated by others merely as objects that clearly "stand out" from the background, but as bona-fide "aesthetic elements" assembled by the artist's growing creative powers of expression.

Stage 4: Recognition of the power of expression. The transition between stage three and stage four is marked by a gradual recognition of the power of using photography - traditionally, a print - to express not the object itself, but what draws the artist's attention to the object. In practical terms, this means that the stage four artist is concerned less with depicting trees merely as objects of interest (in keeping with our "tree" example) - being quite happy to display a set of "shots of pretty trees" that are otherwise unremarkable in any way - and more with finding the one shot (and the one resulting print) that best expresses to others why the artist loves to photograph trees. This subtle (and not so easy) transition represents a very significant worldview shift; as well as a shift in artistic sensibility. Indeed, many artists (myself included) find themselves "stuck" at the boundary between stages 3 and 4 for years, as they patiently develop and explore ways to express meaning, and not just being. Making matters even more difficult is that the stage 3->4 transition involves a gradual recognition of - and increased attention to - two different worlds of reality and expression: (1) attention to using a print to isolate the tree as it "appears" to us, as an otherwise embedded feature of the external environment, and (2) attention to using post-capture tools (either in a traditional or digital "darkroom") to properly express the most "important" features of the tree as captured in a photograph. Again, this distinction is both subtle and deep. It is meaningful only insofar as the stage-4 photographer realizes there is an important aesthetic difference between using tools to render differences between trees and their environment (in order to "make them stand out" better from the surrounding clutter), and using tools to selectively render the inner parts of a given photograph (the first inkling to dodge, burn, and make other tonal "changes" to an image), so that the viewer can better "see" what the photographer is trying to express. The slow and careful learning, nurturing, and refining of these skills can (and often does) take years, if not decades, to develop fully.

Stage 5: One picture is not enough. Sooner or later, but only after comfortably settling into stage 4, every artist yearns to go beyond the "image" - to go beyond just showing a single picture, or at most a few individual prints, of a subject the artist holds dear. More effort and more care are put into every single capture (and its attendant post-capture processing); and more and more finished prints are deemed "worthy to show others" by the artist. But the stage-5 artist also grows increasingly dissatisfied over what she is beginning to perceive as "too shallow" an expression of an inner vision that is slowly trying to make its own voice heard. "I like this tree," she finds herself thinking to herself more and more often, "but it doesn't - can't ! - by itself express why I've been taking pictures of trees for as long as I have." She continues, "Each of my trees is lovely, and I'm proud to show them to others, but I'm somehow missing the bigger picture here. It is as though each of my pictures is a chapter in a book yet to be assembled." The artist may not yet quite know what this nascent "book" is, what form it will eventually take, or what it will "say," but her aesthetic eye has measurably raised its line-of-sight to higher levels. The stage-5 artist no longer thinks (or "sees") in terms of individual pictures. Rather, the world is seen as a patchwork; a tapestry of overlapping images. Or, simply, in terms of groups - or portfolios - of pictures.

Stage 6: Telling a story. Inevitably, the artist becomes interested in not just putting together a set of assorted - but only marginally related - prints (as in collections of "best of" shots), but in carefully crafting and sequencing the images in a portfolio of prints to tell a specific story. If the original interest was (and remains) trees, for example, the artist now wishes to move beyond her ever growing collection of "individual trees," to a new form of expression designed to reveal both how "sets of trees" are related, and a bit of the process by which the artist's perception and expression of her general "love of trees" has itself evolved over time. The stage-6 artist thus naturally steps away from a focus on prints as prints (even if they are otherwise a part of a larger collection) and moves toward an increased focus on portfolios of interrelated images. It is no longer enough to just find that one "good" or "best" image - even if it is one for the ages (though any artist is always happy to find it! ;-) - the artist now first thinks in terms of mutually related groups of images. Ideally, each image both stands on its own and compliments and/or enhances all of the others. In more practical terms, the artist now wishes to express not so much her love of "trees" per se, as represented in the "best possible way" by a single image, but a deeper aesthetic experience of trees in general; as exemplified perhaps by a selection of personally meaningful images captured in a favorite park, or accrued over several weeks or months (or years) even as the artist explores other subjects and themes. The stage-6 artist's attention has moved from "pictures" to projects that culminate in portfolios of interrelated images; all motivated by a growing desire to use sets of images to tell a story about what the artist's eye (and heart) is drawn to, and why..

Stage 7: Portfolios of Portfolios. The penultimate stage typically appears only when an artist has attained a certain level of "aesthetic maturity"; by which time a meaningful body of work - consisting mostly of portfolios (though "individually meaningful" images still pop up from time to time) - has naturally emerged. Each and every portfolio has both a story to tell, and is an element of an as-yet unrevealed and unrealized deeper story; a story about which the stage-7 artist hears the first faint murmurs of. A story concerning the truths of the world "out there" as revealed to the photographer through her lifetime's worth of aesthetic judgements as to what to shoot, what to keep, how to express, what to show, and what to sequence into portfolios. The artist realizes that her art has not only captured an aesthetic impression of the world - an aesthetic that is uniquely hers, though the details may overlap with that of other artists - but is a manifest imprint of a deeper aesthetic order of the external world. The artist begins to understand and appreciate certain universal objective truths by examining the subjective aesthetic order that she herself has "imposed" on the world. By studying her own portfolio of portfolios - as though her life's work was itself a "world" open to capture with an aesthetic eye and camera - the artist discovers universal truths about the world itself. In my own case (though I suspect I am far from moving into stage-5, much less stage-7), I can glimpse some of the feelings associated with a stage-7 worldview by looking inward to my motivation for creating my recent "portoflio of portfolios" called Sudden Stillness. Sudden Stillness consists of four fundamentally interwoven portfolios called Chaos, Order, Complexity, and Entropy. The subtitle of the book conveys the deeper meaning behind (and reason for the particular sequencing of images in) the book: visual echoes of timeless rhythms. Collectively, the four portfolios weave a "story" about the fundamental rhythmic patterns that regulate our world (from this one photographer's point of view, of course). In short, the stage-7 artist uses her own work - consisting now mostly of portfolios of portfolios - to transcend art and begin addressing deeper and universal themes and issues regarding the order of the world around her. Art is no longer concerned solely with the here and now - for its own sake, and regarding limited sets of objects, themes, and contexts - but assumes an added dimension of seeking a transcendent truth about the nature of the world itself. And part of that truth is revealed - to the artist - by the artists own body of work.

Stage 8: Self-discovery. Stage-8 is not all that different from stage-7, at least outwardly, and if measured objectively in terms of the artist's physical output (in terms of images and prints). The stage-8 artist still typically produces portfolios of portfolios, still diligently practices her artform, relentlessly striving toward perfection, and delights with each every "beautiful print" as though it was her first, just as she has always done and will always do; but the artist shows no outward sign of doing anything different from the stage-7 artist. Indeed, paradoxically, the stage-8 artist may even appear to others as being stuck on a plateau (albeit an aesthetically very high one), and no longer willing, or able, to "evolve" artistically. But something fundamental has changed - and in a dramatic way, but one invisible to anyone but the artist at first - in the way the artist understands and interprets her own work. Of course, all of the technical components of image capture and mechanical procedures of post-capture processing have long ago been turned into virtually reflex action on the artist's part. Without this being true - something that requires years and years of dedicated and full immersion in art - no artist can progress to stage-8 (this - namely, the need for total immersion - also appears to be universally true of any creative field, if the practitioner wishes to attain the highest levels of "creative accomplishment"). And what is the fundamental change that occurs? In the same way as we indicated that the stage-7 artist uses her art to uncover truths about the world, the stage-8 artist discovers truths about her own soul. The world, and the artist's own work, have both come full circle: the world revealed through an artist's vision; and the artist's expression of the world uncovering the depths of the artist herself. Seer and seen become one; and the seen brings the seer back to self.

“A man sets out to draw the world.
As the years go by, he peoples a space
with images of provinces,
kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships,
islands, fishes, rooms, instruments,
stars, horses, and individuals.
A short time before he dies,
he discovers that the patient labyrinth
of lines traces the lineaments
of his own face.”
- JORGE LUIS BORGES

Mystic Flame Portfolio

After devoting almost four months of work to my Micro Worlds portfolio (which I'm delighted to announce has recently been published in Lenswork issue #76, print and extended DVD editions) - a project that required me to be painfully hunched over my tripod like a old pretzel - I naturally wanted to choose a follow-on project that would give some much needed rest to both my back and eyes. But I didn't necessarily want to back away from the kind of abstract images that make up Micro Worlds. Indeed, while I've always been attracted to abstract forms (perhaps driven there by my admiration - awe even! - of my dad's paintings), I am finding my photography descending to ever deeper levels of abstraction.

And so, in a step that seemed a natural one to take (at least I could temporarily free myself of a tripod and not be scrunched up for hours on end in some inhumanly back-breaking stance; see my attempts to photograph a time exposure of fast breaking waves at Miami beach in a stiff wind to see an example of just how inhumanly scrunched up I can get!), I turned my attention to the wonderfully abstract and ephemeral patterns of fire.

“All things, oh priests, are on fire . . .
The eye is on fire;
forms are on fire;
eye-consciousness is on fire;
impressions received by the eye are on fire.”
- BUDDHA

All one needs to start a fire is some flammable or combustible material and an adequate supply of oxygen (or some other oxidizer). Subject the two to enough heat to initiate a chain reaction and...voila. On a more technical level, fire - or, more precisely, combustion - involves a complex series of molecular interactions. The burning of even comparatively "simple" few-atom molecules may involve more than 100 unique chemical reactions. The flame itself is an exothermic, self-sustaining, chemical reaction that produces energy and glowing hot matter (a tiny fraction of which is plasma). It emits both visible and infrared light; though the actual frequency range is a function of the chemical composition of the burning elements and intermediate reaction products.

Aesthetically, flames can be quite mesmerizing; displaying rapidly shifting patterns and complex nested tones and textures. Of course, capturing such patterns presents somewhat of a challenge, not unlike that of capturing images of flowing water and breaking waves. One cannot readily predict what specific patterns will arise. The best one can do is get whatever equipment will be used (camera, lens, tripod, exposure time) in place, and take as many shots as necessary so that interesting patterns can be "discovered" after the fact.

As I've only just started my new project - with the working title, "Mystic Flame" - I can offer but a small preview of shots to come. But judging from the results thus far, I foresee this project consuming at least as much attention of my photographic eye (and passion) in the coming weeks (months?) as "Micro Worlds" did before it.

Please click here to see my - still quite nascent - Mystic Flame portfolio. What you will be seeing are actually digital negatives. That is, a collection of reverse-toned images in which the darkest portions (of the "real" image) appear the lightest, and the lightest portions appear darkest. The most striking feature of these photographs, at least from a philosophical point of view, is that they provide a glimpse of the unseeable. Because the exposure times for most of these images lie between 1/500th and 1/4000th of a sec - or, in a slice of time that is far shorter than what our eyes need to "see" (and/or discern) patterns - they depict a reality that is fundamentally inaccessible to us. Yet here it is...simultaneously a beautiful enigma revealed, and an invisible reality not quite completely exposed; for once a pattern is "captured" by the camera, its ephemeral form vanishes forever.

Selection, Selection, Selection,....

Michael Reichmann, author of the wonderful blog Luminous Landscape, recently posted an interesting essay on the convergence of still and video photography. Citing such new cameras as Casio's EX-F1 and the Red Scarlet (which can shoot 60 frames per sec and 100 fps, respectively, without mechanical shutters, and at speeds approaching 1/40,000 sec), Reichmann suggests that new technologies are harbingers of a future in which the distinction between still cameras and video cameras is blurred, if not made moot entirely.

His assertion is both well argued and nuanced, and I encourage interested readers in clicking on the provided link to enjoy the article for themselves. For my purposes here, I'd like to focus on the aesthetic issues that such a convergence of technologies portends; and will argue that the distinction between "still" and "video" is - artistically speaking - somewhat of a red-herring.

While still photography and videography obviously represent two objectively distinct modes of expression, the distinction has heretofore been largely a technological - not artistic - one (I hope to explain what I mean by this in what follows). Because the two technologies have up until now been sufficiently "different," they required an artist (note I do not say photographer or videographer, but artist, because I think the category must now be made larger) to invest (sometimes huge amounts of) time and dollars in two sets of "still" and "video" equipment. What the technological convergence is leading to - indeed, what it already has led to, judging from cameras such as the EX-F1 - is a time when all serious artists can now use one and the same recording instrument to express their artistic sensibilities. The real issue is "artistic expression"; or what the artist wishes to convey with his/her art, be it still photography or videography. And what lies at the heart of any form of expression is selection; indeed, an almost endless (and endlessly nested) sequence of selection upon selection upon selection. The fact that the act of "taking pictures" has now become essentially synonymous with "taking videos" only serves to emphasize the fundamental role that "selection" plays in the creative process. And that part, at least, has not changed; if anything, it is becoming more difficult to do.

Consider the basic steps that any traditional photographer follows when approaching a subject and, ultimately - after recording and processing the images in either an analog or digital darkroom - using some medium (print, folio, gallery exhibit, or book) to express and communicate a "vision." Each step entails a myriad of decisions - or selections - that a photographer needs to make to complete the work. The not-quite-infinitely-long chain of selections begins with a basic question: "What does the photographer wish to express?" Is it a feeling? A thing? A sense of place? A sense of family? A still-life? The list is almost endless, but a selection must at some point be made. Once made, the photographer must decide on where to go to "find" (or "search" for) pictures.

Having arrived somewhere, the real work begins. In no particular order, and from a first-person perspective (speaking from my own inner experiences): What grabs my attention? Where do I look? Where do I stand? What light do I need? What do I exclude? What lens do I use? What f-stop/exposure-time combo do I use? Do I need to change the ISO? Do I need a filter? Should I shoot a sequence? Should I take a couple of different perspectives? Do I need to position my tripod any lower or higher? I could go on, but the point is clear. While most of this is automatic, much of the "creative process" consists of making a repeated series of selections.

Of course, the need to "select" continues (intensifies even) after we get back to our darkroom. What images do I keep (and "work on")? What software do I use? What factors need adjustment? White balance? White/black points? Tonal distributions? Shadow noise? Global/local contrast? Dodging or burning? Toning? Sharpening?

Now, suppose you've processed dozens (or hundreds) of images for a shooting project, and are ready to start thinking about what needs to be done to "communicate" a vision to an audience. More selection. Which images do I use? What sequence of images do I combine? What manner of expression do I use? If a book, how many to a page, and in what layout? If a gallery, what is wall placement? One row or two? How large should the prints be? ...the list goes on and on. And so we come full circle to the new cameras, such as the Casio EX-F1, that purportedly blur the distinction between still and video photography. While the fact that the distinction between these two technologies is becoming more and more blurred is arguably and demonstrably true, the deeper question is, "How does the lack of any distinction impact the creative process?" If one accepts the premise that art, in the broadest sense, consists of however many selective steps a given artist needs to go through in order to express (in some form, of the artist's choosing) an original idea or feeling, then the only way in which a convergence of still-video technologies impacts art is in providing the artist a richer set of technologies for recording and expressing images.

The question of whether what results remains "photography" (albeit in a different form), changes to videography (but, again, different from more traditional forms) and is no longer photography, or becomes some as-yet undefined "hybrid recording process" (that is different from either of its two historical antecedents), seems to me to be the wrong (or, at least, not most meaningful) question to ask. A better question is, "In what ways will artists adjust their creative process to find a better way to express their artistic vision?" It may turn out that some photographers find great artistic merit in having not one image (or only a handful of images) with which to express their vision but an entire movie; and/or find clever ways to combine still and "moving" images to expand their repertoire of artistic expression. The way in which they "do art" will therefore change, and the "art" that they eventually wind up doing may bear little or no resemblance to what may have in the past been called "photography." Other photographers, earnestly trying out the new technology for the first time, may find themselves overwhelmed with the now thousands of images from which to choose the "right one" - where before they had to sift through a few or at most a dozen - and either walk away from the new technology or (regrettably) take a step backwards as artists. Annie Lebowitz, in a PBS documentary of her life's work, admitted to having virtually no editorial skill when it came to selecting the one or two images that would make it into print from a shoot; a task she was more than happy to leave to the editors. Being good at one aspect of the creative process - or being good at making some "artistic selections" - does not guarantee the same success for other aspects of the creative process or ensure that the photographer will be equally as adept at making all required selections. In the unfortunate event that some new technology enlarges the "selection space" in precisely the dimension in which a given photographer is least gifted as an artist, it behooves that photographer to proceed slowly.

For many photographers (particularly those still working with "analog" large-format cameras), the convergence between still and video recorders will likely make no difference whatsoever. Their art will remain what it is, and evolve as it has and will continue. Still others will inevitably forge a new and unanticipated path - and an entirely new form of art - for which we do not yet have a handy label or phrase, and the nature of which none of us, at the moment, are prescient enough to predict or imagine.

Art, by its nature - and as life - grows, adapts, and evolves. In time, perhaps the very words "art" and "photography" will be supplanted by something else; and, in some future time, be recalled by historians as archaic "symbols of something that used to be done using some older forms of technology." But whatever the new words will be that convey the essence of what we now call "art," I suspect that the creative process itself will remain fundamentally unchanged. And what lies at the core of that process is selection, selection, selection, ... (as determined by the artist's soul).

Finding New Things in Old

I am always amused when I hear young photographers lament about there not being anything interesting left over to take pictures of (after they have spent all of a few hours somewhere taking pictures). The lament only deepens and becomes more poignant after a particular place has been visited a number of times (days, weeks); and reaches a fever pitch after visiting the "same old place" for months (or - goodness - years!). To be sure, even experienced professional photographers go through inevitable dry spells, during which they find their wellspring of inspiration at a low ebb, and nothing seems aesthetically inviting or interesting (especially - so the argument goes - a place that the artist knows extremely well).

But there are really two issues at play here: (1) the feeling that one's inner muse has temporarily put up an "out to lunch" sign and does not wish to be disturbed, and (2) that the worst place to find the muse quietly "munching on its lunch" (and in a receptive mood) is somewhere where the photographer has already "been" with his or her muse. An artist’s chagrin during such lows is certainly understandable, and (speaking as a photographer who has had his fair share of "searching" for his "lost" muse) immediate family members are usually the ones who suffer most since they must bear the brunt of the artist's unhappy "low tide" mood (never a pleasant experience for anyone involved! ;-) But it is still sad for me to see young photographers, who genuinely aspire to find and develop their artistic vision, continually lament the apparently dull visual landscape that they've convinced themselves is all their "day jobs" permit them to be surrounded by and in which to find their "vision." I suspect that the real problem is not the place - per se - but what needs to be done to reconnect to the place (the "connection" being what may otherwise, and more poetically, be called one's "muse").

"Spirit always stands still long enough for the photographer It has chosen." - Minor White

“How many times can I go to that same park?” one might ask; or, “I’ve shot a dozen rolls of film in that garden, and I’m bored; all the flowers are beginning to look alike!” While there is no magic elixir to remedy such moments of temporary angst—which all artists, from aspiring to established, are destined to experience countless numbers of times in their careers—I can offer two useful pieces of advice: (1) the angst is temporary, and requires nothing more than simple patience for its effects to wear off, and (2) to accelerate its disappearance, remind yourself that any place in nature, no matter how small or transient or seemingly devoid of any interesting features, can be perceived in an infinite number of ways, in an infinite number of contexts, and yield to an infinity of interpretations.

Case in point...not far from where my family and I live in Northern Virginia is Great Falls state park; indeed, I have written about it several times (Rocks, Leaves & Water and Staccato Flow Abstracts). Because parks and kids go rather well together, and my wife and I have two, we visit this park often all year round.

It is no exaggeration to say that both my wife and I are familiar enough with this park’s many paths and walkways to be able to navigate it in the dark. As such, one may be forgiven for believing that my intimate familiarity with the sights of this park robs me of my photographic muse.

But - perhaps paradoxically - not only does my familiarity not diminish my desire for picture taking, it — if anything — amplifies my ability to tune out distractions and focus entirely on what intuitively catches my inner eye. Familiarity, in other words, somehow (for me) breeds detachment. A detachment (i.e., an "objectivity") that, in turn - and involving yet another seeming paradox - enhances my subjective artistic/aesthetic sense. Despite frequenting this park dozens and dozens of times over the years, I have never failed to see something entirely new, or failed to reinterpret—contextually and photographically—something that I may have seen and photographed many times before.

Perhaps the most visible benefit of my frequent visitation of Great Falls (at least, from the point of view of the consumers of my photography, namely my family;-)...is that sometimes (but just sometimes;-), I manage to leave the park with images that actually look like something that was photographed in the park (rather than my usual "abstractivization" that robs photographs of all possible clues as to where they were taken; see previous blog entry).

Not Taking Pictures of What We're Taking Pictures Of

Brooks Jensen, editor of Lenswork, recently posted a humorous podcast entitled "That's Not What We Do" in which he recounts an incident while shooting in a park with a friend. He and photographer Joe Lipka were photographing at Fort Warden, WA. At some point, Joe went to the tourist center and got noticed by the woman at the service counter, who inquired about what he and Brooks were doing. Upon explaining that they were both photographers, the woman suggested they talk to the park manager, who was interested in buying some tourist shots to sell. Joe politely explained that neither he nor his other photographer friend take those kinds of pictures. Seeing that the woman was puzzled by his answer - after all, he is standing there with a bunch of camera equipment; what would all that gear be used for if not "taking pictures"? - Joe offered a the following line (that I suspect is familiar to most fine-art photographers placed in a similar situation): "We make pictures that don't look like pictures of what we're taking pictures of." I only wish I were there to see the look of confusion on the poor woman's face!

I've already blogged about my personal favorite story of this type, namely the one about Brett Weston returning from a trip to London with a handful of pictures of rust from the London bridge. Here are a few from my own archives. Any one of my numerous trips to Great Falls State Park in Virginia typically result in shot after shot of totally "unrecognizable" shots of rocks; big rocks, small rocks, rock formations, you name it. "Where were these taken in again?" I'm usually asked.

Last year, in the autumn, when my family and I all went to Cox Farms for hay rides and pumpkin picking, "daddy the family photographer" was busy clicking away with his camera, but not necessarily at the kids or the rides they were going on. Among the more recognizable shots I came away with that day was this one...

...which at least has the virtue of being recognizably "something" (if not exactly declaring, "I was taken at Cox Farms!").

When we took a similar family outing to a local apple orchard for apple picking, daddy got two shots of an old barn (recounted in a previous blog entry) and this "Shot Taken While Apple Picking" shot...

And then there are my "beach" shots. Sand, water, waves, toddlers frolicking on the shore, sunbathers,...? Nah! Sissy stuff for fine-art photographers ;-) Here's a keeper from last summer's sojourn to a beach in Key Biscayne, Florida:

...which I was "lucky" enough to find just inside the entrance to an out house. And, speaking of outhouses, here's one of my favorite shots from a trip my wife and I took to Hawaii to celebrate our tenth anniversary in 2006 (this one from a Oahu beach outhouse, though whether any "beach" is evident in the picture, or any hints of a beach in Hawaii, I leave up to the viewer to decide):

Oh, and the ripple-triptych at the top of this blog entry was a quick series taken a few weeks ago at Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden, though - again - I'll admit that deducing that it was taken at Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden may not be that - Ahem - obvious. Then again, with some of my shots, such as the ones in my Micro Worlds portfolio, most people are mystified even after I explain what the shots are "shots of"! Par for the course, I'd say, for a fine-art photographer ;-)

Wittgenstein's Sublime Dialectic

"1 The world is all that is the case; 1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things; 1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts; 1.12 For the totality of facts determines what is the case, and also whatever is not the case; 1.13 The facts in logical space are the world." - Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico - Philosophicus)

Wittgenstein devoted his life to understanding "language games," as logico-cognitive attempts to make sense of the world. There is no essential type of language for Wittgenstein; language consists of multiple games in which meaning (of words and sentences) depends more on their relationship to other language games than on a one-to-one correspondence of the words and sentences of any one language to reality. "What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence...It will therefore only be in language that the limit can be drawn, and what lies on the other side of the limit will simply be nonsense." - Ludwig Wittgenstein (Preface to Tractatus)

Language can only describe facts about the world, not the physico-logical structure the underlies those facts, or that defines the world out there. Indeed, the world - as itself - cannot be described at all; it can only be pointed to, or shown implicitly and indirectly, and always in relation to other self-consistent "pointers." "Feeling the world as a limited whole -- it is this that is mystical" - - Ludwig Wittgenstein (Preface to Tractatus, 6.45) Mysticism, for Wittgenstein, is a kind of knowing that transcends prepositional logic and knowledge; a sense that despite the "fact" that the limits of the world cannot be articulated in any language, those limits nonetheless exist and can be known. Science and all conventional forms of language, however, must by their nature remain silent on the deepest truths about the universe. At best, they are signposts towards the sublime.

The word "sublime" means, literally, "up to the threhold" (sub = "up to" and limen = "threshold"). "Sublime" therefore means "up to the boundary, but no farther"; referring, in Wittgenstein's world, to taking meaning right up to the limit of what can - and cannot - be thought, and language to the interface between the representable and nonrepresentable. (A fascinating book, by the way, on precisely this notion of "representability of the sublime" has recently been written by James Elkins: Six Stories from the End of Representation: Images in Painting, Photography, Astronomy, Microscopy, Particle Physics, and Quantum Mechanics, 1980-2000; highly recommended). And from these thoughts - these pointers to the sublime - it seems to me, emerges a deep yearning for photography and art...for what is art if not an attempt to communicate meaning beyond what is possible using conventional language? The precise meaning may not be conveyed (indeed, it is unlikely the artist fully comprehends that which he or she is trying to communicate), but the meaning of art lies in this attempt to communicate something beyond the categories imposed on the world by words and sentences alone.

In the end, of course, I always fall back on the sage words of Ansel Adams: "When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence."

Hawaii: Visions of Primal Serenity

I've recently self-published a book of photographs of Hawaii, taken while my wife and I were celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary back in the summer of 2006.

Hawaii is an indelible part of me. More so even than my blood, my skin, or any of my physical possessions, for these are all far more transient and ultimately communicate far less about who I really am. But the depth and timelessness of my affection - my reverence - for these sublime, preternaturally beautiful islands, speaks volumes about the nature of my soul.

I visited the islands for the first time in the early 1980s as a beginning graduate student in physics. As soon as I stepped off the plane, and saw the gentle giant green mountains, the billowous clouds serenely floating over them, the deep inviting aquamarine blue water lapping the ragged shore - its dull roar echoing somewhere off in the distance - and tasted that intoxicatingly sweet scented tropical island air, I knew my soul had found its home. It is sublime, it is mysterious. There is an abundance of raw wild energy; and an immersive transcendent tranquility that subsumes all.

God, Yahweh, Buddha, Brahman, Tao, Ein-Sof, or whatever other linguistic "label" one is comfortable in using to refer to the infinite, attains a physically manifest luminous form in this paradisical oasis. Hawaii is magic.

At the end of the book, I've included a section of much older images, taken during my first series of visits to the islands between 1982 and 1988. The time I took to design the layout of the book, and to select the images for it, gave me an opportunity to compare my "eye" and aesthetics as they are now to what they were about 25 years ago; and to reflect on my own evolution as an artist (as well as to learn something about the creative process in general).

Something immediately struck me as I was viewing my large collection of "old" and "new" shots. The much older shots, which were all taken at a time when I was (possibly) a technically proficient photographer but had not yet matured as a "fine-art" photographer, were technically well executed "depictions of what I happened to be looking at" at the moment, in this case being Hawaii. While most are better than standard postcard fare (at least I hope so ;-), the truth is that, if I give an honest self appraisal of my earlier work, I see "scenes of Hawaii" and little more. Yes, they're pretty; yes, a few might (and do!) look nice on a wall. But they are pictures of Hawaii and little else. It is not false modesty for me to assert that any technically competent photographer, with a requisite skill level, could easily have reproduced (indeed, surpassed) many of my earlier photographs. So how are the new ones different; and in what way do I think they are "better"?

Well - jumping 25 years or so forward in time (and, in my case, about 75 thousand or so more images, give or take a few thousand, film and digital) - what I see myself doing more and more of (at least trying to) is incorporating the scenery "out there" into my bag of photo tools that I use to express what I feel "on the inside" when otherwise looking at the scenery. This represents both a subtle and profound shift.

The scenery, in an important sense, has become an integral part of my photographic toolkit, as important as - and distinct from - my usual assortment of purely technical tools (such as camera, lenses, filters, and so on). The scenery itself is no longer the core "object of focus" for my other tools. It has become an essential part of my toolkit.

It no longer really matters to me, in the deepest artistic sense, whether I am in Hawaii, or here in Northern VA, or Florida or anywhere else, in particular. My "goal" as a photographer is no longer to "show someone what I'm looking at." Rather, my goal is to communicate - express - a bit of "what I felt" when taking a picture to someone viewing the resulting photograph or print. I am much less concerned with whether the viewer "likes" what he or she "sees" - or identifies, objectively - in a photograph; and much more interested in conveying a feeling, a mood, a state-of-mind and/or heart, that persists even as viewer steps away from the image.

What is of lasting value (to both the viewer as an "involved interpreter and recipient" of an art work, and the photographer as its author) is not the fact that a particular photograph contains, say, a recognizable image of a "door," but rather the subjective emotional impression that the image of the door imparts to the viewer both while the viewer is actively viewing the photograph and afterwards, when the physical photograph is transformed (during the act of viewing) into a hybrid objective-subjective memory in the viewer's mind. It is my feeling that I am trying to convey; not the "object" that I took a photograph of to express that feeling.

What the viewer objectively "sees," of course, is the "object" (or objects) in the photograph; just as what I objectively "see" before I press the shutter is the (almost, but not quite identical) "object." Art, when it happens, depends on the simultaneous appearance of two transformative acts: (1) the photographer uses "objective reality" as an implicit tool to craft and communicate certain elements of his own - inner, subjective - reality; and (2) the viewer sees past the "objects" in a photograph and feels something - a residual imprint, perhaps - of what is, objectively speaking, not physically present, but hints at what the photographer felt while taking the photograph.

Of course, the degree to which the viewer "feels" what the photographer does (or what the photographer wishes to express) is impossible to measure. That is as it should be, for were this to be possible, art would be reduced to an "objective" science, which would be a pity. While I would certainly be delighted to know that someone resonates with one of my photos for exactly the same reason as I (or at least, in the same way I remember resonating with a "scene" while capturing it with my lens), it is not imperative that this is the case.

In truth, at this current juncture of my ongoing evolution, what I strive for in all my work is to convey the simplest feelings of calm. I understand that each viewer will take away from my images what he or she is predisposed to feel. Perhaps some find disharmony in what my eyes sees as serene patterns. But even in these cases, if viewers react more on an emotional level to my photos (even if the emotion they feel is different from the one I wish to convey) rather than in some detached, emotionally sterile or empty, fashion, I am still partly satisfied as an artist. For my goal is never the object, but a feeling.

So, getting back to the Hawaii book, why include my old pictures at all? Collectively, these early images define the first real "breeding ground" for my art. For it was in Hawaii that I first turned my camera onto something that I was truly impassioned about. Rather than taking the "same old" tired shots of "emotionally inert" subject matter (that may nonetheless have been a part of an otherwise valuable learning experience in a photography workshop, for example), I found myself taking shots in Hawaii for reasons that emerged quite naturally out of my own soul. In short, somewhere in the mists of time, lost among these old photos, is a magic Borgesian moment - well-defined but impossible to directly point to - during which I was born as a photographer.