Morrison House Photography Talk

I am delighted to announce an upcoming slide presentation in Alexandria, VA, 6:00 to 8:00 pm on August 2 (Tuesday). The talk will be given at Alexandria's historic Morrison House (116 South Alfred Street, Alexandria, VA 22314) and is sponsored by the Torpedo Factory's Art Center.

From the press release:

Photography, Physics, and Complexity: Strange Bedfellows or a New Aesthetic?

Morrison House Presents: Andy Ilachinski, Photographer and Physicist

Physics and photography have always been inextricably linked: by chemistry, light, diffraction, refraction, reflection, polarization, etc. But these are only the most obvious and superficial of connections. This talk uses complexity theory – which describes the fundamental relationships between parts and wholes – to point to a vastly deeper, resonant level on which physics and photography – any creative art – are linked, and offer a possible glimpse of a new fundamental aesthetic grammar. In the end, it is argued, the outwardly-directed journey toward objective realities, and the inner passage toward subjective truths are revealed as but two interrelated aspects of a single creative thread of self-discovery.

Born in 1960 on Long Island, NY, and the only son of an architect and artist, Andy's life has always straddled left– (analytical, logical) and right– (creative, artistic) brained worlds.

On the left-brained side, he earned a Ph.D. in theoretical physics (specializing in complex systems) in 1988 and has over 20 years experience as a research analyst and project director at the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) – a federally funded research and development center headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia – where Andy has pioneered the application of complex adaptive systems theory to military operations research problems. He has authored two graduate-level mathematical physics texts on nonlinear dynamics and agent-based modeling, co-authored a book on artificial-life models and contributed to Springer-Verlag's 10-volume Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science, and is on the editorial board of two physics journals.

On the right-brained side, and both by temperament and inner muse, Andy is a fine-art black-and-white photographer, and has been one for far longer than his Ph.D. gives him any right to claim an ownership by physics. He has delighted in taking pictures ever since his parents surprised him on his 10th birthday with a Polaroid camera. Andy has won numerous awards (in both print and on-line juried contests), has exhibited in many juried solo and group shows, appeared in Lenswork (a preeminent fine-art journal of black and white photography), Focus magazine, both U.S. and U.K. Black & White magazines, and won a photo-magazine sponsored book contest. He has received multiple awards at the prestigious Black and White Spider Awards, and was one of the founding juried members of Lorton Art's Photography Workshop (in Lorton, VA). In 2010, Andy's work was featured (alongside two other artists) in a four month exhibit at the American Center for Physics (in College Park, MD).

More About the Series

This series of monthly talks is sponsored by the Torpedo Factory Artists’ Association, the Alexandria Archaeological Commission, and the Morrison House Hotel. The talks take place on the first Tuesday of each month. Cocktails will be available for purchase through The Grille at Morrison House Hotel, and dinner reservations can be made for guests who would like to continue their experience following the event.

About Morrison House

The Morrison House, a Kimpton Hotel, is an elegant boutique hotel located in the heart of Old Town, Alexandria. Named an outstanding hotel on Condé Nast Traveler’s 2008 Gold List, the hotel exhibits the romance of Europe and the charm of Early America through its decorative federalist-style reproductions. The architecture blends into the historic surrounding of Alexandria, while its warmly lit rooms, soft music, and outstanding cuisine define an experience that is graceful and effortless. The AAA Four Diamond property also features The Grille, an intimate restaurant that serves a menu of relaxed American fine dining. The hotel is located at 116 South Alfred Street, Alexandria, VA 22314, (703) 838-8000.

Solitary Patterns

"The interpretation of our reality

through patterns not our own,

serves only to make us ever more unknown,

ever less free, ever more solitary."

— Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Author (1927 - )

Evidence of Mutability

"Through falling from its previous function, and thus outliving the use originally conferred upon it, the ruin transgresses and subverts our everyday encounter with space and place. In the space of order and regulation, boundaries are delimited and linear. Being in place means knowing the limits of that place. So long as those limits are respected, then indeterminacy is evaded and the impression of space as productive can be maintained. At the same time, urban space undergoes domestication until it gathers a sense of how it ought to be. Rendering its structural properties apparently a priori, the space for malleability automatically assumes a deviant quality. If delimited space is productive, then space which broaches those boundaries will be termed wasted or otherwise expendable. In the ruin, the elements of waste and marginalization are crystallized...what was once built to testify to a singular and eternal present becomes the symbol and proof of its mutability."

- Dylan Trigg

The Aesthetics of Decay

"Straining to win the sky..."

"The tree is more

than first a seed,

then a stem,

then a living trunk,

and then dead timber.

The tree is a slow,

enduring force straining

to win the sky."

- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

(1900 - 1944)

"The tree which moves

some to tears of joy

is in the eyes of others

only a green thing which

stands in their way."

- William Blake

(1757 - 1827)

Emancipation of Mind

"Abstraction is real,

probably more real than nature.

I prefer to see with closed eyes."

- Joseph Albers (1888 - 1976)

"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)

"Photographing the Photographer" Diptychs

"The universe as we know it

is a joint product of the

observer and the observed.”

- Teilhard de Chardin

Philosopher / Mystic

(1881 - 1955)

While looking over some old photos (going back to trips to Scotland in 2009 and Greece in 2008), I ran across an interesting set of pictures taken by my wife that I turned into what I call PPDs, or "Photographing the Photographer" Diptychs. My wife, an avid videographer and occasional still photographer, took a series of images showing yours truly in the act of "doing" photography.

Some of her photos contain "me" only in the sense that I am somewhere in the picture, but the shot itself is focused on something else; a landscape, our rental car, a hotel, the front of a restaurant, whatever. But many of them are (as my wife confessed) deliberately focused on my (not always elegant) photo machinations: my scurrying to and fro like a frenzied zombie, climbing, prowling, bending, scrunching up like a pretzel, maneuvering my body and tripod for decent angles. A few actually catch me in the "act" of going click.

For many of these I was able to find and match the "shot" I was capturing (or a shot taken at nearly the same place and time) with the shot my wife has of me doing so. I made a few diptychs to show my wife and friends, who all enjoyed them, commenting that the diptychs reveal something not normally seen, or appreciated.

The diptychs show two different - but obviously correlated - experiences by two different people of ostensibly the same "experience" (almost the same). While my wife and I were obviously both at the same place and time, we were looking at the world from our own (not quite identical) local reference frames and slightly different perspectives: she, as an empathic observer of "life (in this case, her husband's) in environment," and I, as landscape photographer immersed in Scotland's innate physical beauty. To my eyes, our respective images of a given time and place, combined in diptych form, achieve an interesting transcendent synergy. While neither image, if considered alone, shows anything more than it does by itself, when reflected upon simultaneously with its partner provides a tangibly more meaningful, deeper glimpse of our shared experience.

I have posted a small portfolio of ten such "Photographing the Photographer" Diptychs (8 from Scotland, 2 from Greece); if nothing else, it gave me an opportunity to revisit some of the many spectacular sights and visual delights my wife and I have been privileged to see. It also gives an opportunity to those of you (you know who you are ;-) who have, from time to time, seen a bespectacled photographer bent over a tripod somewhere, seemingly trained at nothing in particular, and been puzzled about just what this bespectacled photographer is looking at? My wife has kindly provided an answer.

Churchville Photo Club Talk Slides

This is a short note intended mainly to provide a link to the slides (about 5 MB, Adobe pdf) I used for a talk I gave on June 20 to the Churchville Photo Club in Pennsylvania.

My presentation used selected images and portfolios to illustrate (and give at least some credence to the sincerity of) my ongoing journey toward self-discovery as shaped by physics, tao, and photography.

I'd like to thank the club's president, Felix Gomes, and Vice President, Marty Golin, for their kind invite and hospitality; and all the attendees who endured not just the 2+ hours worth of (what must surely have been less than completely intelligible) "babble-speak" about the philosophical dimensions of fine-art photography, but did so in a non air conditioned room that barely shielded all those enclosed within from the 90+ deg(F) heat and 90% humidity outside. (By the time I finished, I felt - and looked - as though I had just escaped from an unsupervised sauna set to an inhuman "Danger: lethally hot and humid" setting!).

But while the conditions were far from ideal, the venue itself - nestled within a wonderful nature center about an hours' drive from Philadelphia - could not have been more idyllic. My 12 yo son, an avid naturalist, and I arrived about an hour early, and had an opportunity to walk the grounds and just revel in the quiet gentle ambiance of the center. We both promised to return here for some quality time whenever the opportunity for such a trip next arises: he, to just explore and look for insects and frogs; his dad to train his "other eye" on the beauty of the park (I was sans camera gear for this entire trip, and felt, as all photographers do, considerably less than whole).

Later that evening, and after my talk (that I was happily surprised to see my son sit through in its entirety; this was the first time my son had heard me speak on photography - his take: "Not bad, dad." I'll take it ;-), he and I shared a magical moment of shared bonding, punctuated by a few hugs and a hint of a tear or two on our cheeks. And this experience had nothing at all to do with my talk!

After many handshakes, discussions, and chats with people as we all made our way to our cars - I should mention that my talk ended fairly late, way after sunset - the last car except ours finally left, and my son and I turned to our own car parked in a corner. At this point, it was essentially pitch black, with but an insignificant light some distance away. As our eyes adjusted to the dark...

...we both froze in our tracks; jaws dropped. An otherwordly event was unfolding before our eyes. I briefly entertained the scary thought that I must be having a seizure! There, in front of us - to the sides; all around us - were more fire flies than my son and I have likely seen in all our combined years on this planet! Clusters and clusters of hundreds upon hundreds of fireflies; flying, spiraling, blinking, flashing, and - collectively - putting on a dazzling fourth-of-July-like display that would put to shame (as my son later described) any fourth-of-July show that we'd ever seen.

My son and I just sat in revery on the grass, not speaking, not thinking; mindlessly - dare I say Tao or Zen-like? - absorbed in one of nature's wondrous dances. After 20 minutes or so, my son turned to me to give a hug, and said, "Dad, I'll never, ever forgot this day!" (And neither will his dad :-)