Ten "Epiphanous" Photographs: #5

The fifth of ten "epiphanous photographs" - a hand-picked series of photographs as defined in an earlier Blog entry - is...

Epiphanous Photograph #5: André Kertész's Mondrian’s Glasses and Pipe, Paris, 1926


André Kertész (1894 - 1985) captured his first photograph while working as a clerk at the Budapest stock exchange in 1912. A member of the Austro-Hungarian Army during WWI, Kertész photographed his experiences of the war until he was wounded in battle in 1915. Unfortunately, many of the images he captured during this time were lost during the Hungarian Revolution of 1918.

Thereafter, this preturnatually gifted poetic soul traveled to Paris (in 1925), where he worked as a freelance photographer and published three books of his images; and on to New York (in 1936), where one of the 20th Century's most gifted photographers was effectively cold-shouldered by the photographic "establishment" and relegated to taking pictures of architecture and home interiors for House and Garden. In what must be one of the most egregious oversights in photographic history, not a single one of his images was selected for Steichen's famous The Family of Man exhibition in 1956! It was only after Kertész retired from commercial work (in 1962) that he was again able to devote his considerable powers of observation and feeling to the same "simple" everyday subjects of his "amateurish" youth. Kertész left behind a legacy of beautiful, meloncholic tonal poems for all future generations of aspiring photographers to marvel at; and to marvel at the breadth and depth of his feeling for the human condition.

I have selected Kertész's Mondrian’s Glasses and Pipe as my epiphanous image #5 for two reasons: (1) it is a wonderful example of his visual poetry, with the gentle perfection of the geometry of the composition (that slightly evokes the "Decisive Moment" component of Henri Cartier-Bresson's approach, though with a decidedly less-fast-paced subject!), and (2) it is also an example of how subtly Kertész is able to fuse the everyday with the abstract. On one level, the photograph is about nothing more than glasses (and a pipe); on another level, it is an "abstract" in the spirit of Minor White (in the way it uses the objective image to reflect the inner meloncholy of the photographer).

However, Kertész's fusion of the everyday and abstract features an important additional dimension (as does much of his life's work); a dimension that makes this one photograph so memorable to me (and places it firmly on my list of personally epiphanous photographs): the tonal forms of the photograph are used not just as a symbolic language of the inner emotions of the photographer, but as a language that speaks directly about how the photographer relates to humanity.

Where Minor White deliberately used essentially unrecognizable abstract forms to communicate inner states, Kertész instead used immediately recognizable shapes and symbols to convey the nature - and feeling - of his connection (or, more often than not, dis-connection) to the world around him. The fragile interconnected bond between artist and humanity was the real "subject" of Kertész's poetic gaze; and we can all feel it, as we look upon the shapes and tones of Mondrian's glasses and pipe. His work is less about the traditional subjects of photographs (people, places and things), even as the traditional subjects populate his portfolio, and more - much more - about his feelings about his relationships with the traditional subjects that came within view of this gentle artistic soul.

"The moment always dictates in my work. What I feel, I do. This is the most important thing for me. Everybody can look, but they don't necessarily see. I never calculate or consider; I see a situation and I know that it's right, even if I have to go back to "get the proper lighting." - André Kertész.

Kertész's work in general, and this one picture in particular, made me appreciate the fundamental role the capture of one's raw, emotional attachment to the human condition plays in shaping the communicative power of photography. It also intensified - immeasurably! - my love of fine art photography.

Ten "Epiphanous" Photographs: #4

The fourth of ten "epiphanous photographs" - a hand-picked series of photographs as defined in an earlier Blog entry - is...

Epiphanous Photograph #4: Edward Weston's Pepper No. 30, 1930


Edward Weston (1886-1958), was one of the masters of 20th century photography. Working primarily with large-format cameras and natural light, Weston elevated the photography of "common objects" such as rocks, sea shells, and vegetables to an artform. Through impeccable composition, masterful attention to tone and design, and consummate printing skills, everyday things became works of art. Ansel Adams wrote that "Weston is, in the real sense, one of the few creative artists of today. He has recreated the matter-forms and forces of nature; he has made these forms eloquent of the fundamental unity of the world. His work illuminates man's inner journey toward perfection of the spirit."

Weston's Pepper, No. 30, is a perfect example of Weston's artful perfection and unique eye. It is, in fact, a "mere" pepper; a "thing" we have all seen countless times, mostly without ever really looking at any given pepper's unique, and uniquely beautiful, curves and tones. But the world had to wait for Weston to show us how magnificent a humble pepper really is; and by so doing, to also show us all how all things, if seen - and displayed - with the proper eye/I, possess a resplendent inner glow.

The existence of Weston's Pepper, No. 30, has made it impossible for me to look at anything -however outwardly and objectively "ordinary" it may at first appear - as devoid of photographic opportunity and potential latent beauty. In short, this one photograph (which I first saw when I was about nine or ten) instantly transformed the banal landscape of the "everyday" into something wondrous, mysterious and beautiful. It is also another reason why I love fine art photography!

Ten "Epiphanous" Photographs: #3

The third of ten "epiphanous photographs" - a hand-picked series of photographs as defined in an earlier Blog entry - is...

Epiphanous Photograph #3: Henri Cartier-Bresson's Siphnos, Greece, 1961


Though definitive statements of the following form, particularly in an aesthetic medium, are as a rule at best controversial and at worst meaningless, one could nonetheless well argue that Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) was the most prodigiously gifted photojournalist ever to use a camera.

Paraphrasing what the mathematician Mark Kac once said of Richard Feynman (the great 20th Century physicist), one can say of Cartier-Bresson that "there are two kinds of geniuses: the 'ordinary' and the 'magicians'. An ordinary genius is a fellow whom you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his mind works. Once we understand what they've done, we feel certain that we, too, could have done it. It is different with the magicians. Even after we understand what they have done it is completely dark. [Henri Cartier-Bresson] is a magician of the highest calibre." (see Wikiquote entry on Feynman for original quote).

Cartier-Bresson is most famous for introducing the idea of the "Decisive Moment" into the photographer's lexicon, which he described in his celebrated book of the same name in 1952 as "...the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression."

One can see the "Decisive Moment" at play in virtually all of Cartier-Bresson's photographs; there is no "one best" representative of it, and which images illustrate the idea better than others depends more on context, mood and the temperament of the observer than innate quality. The first Cartier-Bresson image that I can remember having a profound influence on me was his Siphnos, Greece shot reproduced above.

I was struck (when I first saw it as a young photographer, and even more so now, after trying, mostly unsuccessfully, at capturing that stubbornly elusive "Decisive Moment" for a few decades!) by the perfectly seamless (and, seemingly effortless) blend of geometry, time, and dynamics.

The geometry is exquisite in its "imperfect" precision; the buildings are old and withered, the road is well traveled and decaying, but together there is a deep harmony. The harmony is only enhanced by the deep contrast, with the shadows - falling just so, at this precise moment - adding an almost surreal virtual dimension to the physical architectonic shapes. As if all of that were not enough to yield a magnificent moment, the girl racing up the stairs is positioned in exactly the right spot to give life to the entire picture, and with a body posture whose geometry exactly matches that of the surrounding forms and shadows. Masterful, is not the word! You can feel her energy; you feel her heart racing as she makes her way up the stairs; the coolness on her skin as she is momentarily embraced by the precise shadow. And then, as a final reward, as the eye slowly pans around the scene, small details to savor are revealed: the texture of the road, the detail on the door on the right, the architectural "accent" on the otherwise featureless wall at the upper left. The ineffable transience of space, time, geometry, dynamics, and the natural flow of human life, is captured at the Decisive Moment. And then, Poof!, the girl is gone, the shadows pass, a cloud moves in overhead, and the moment is gone, forever.

I have been chasing decisive moments ever since; and it is the third reason I have always been passionate about fine art photography.

Ten "Epiphanous" Photographs: #2

The second of ten "epiphanous photographs" - a hand-picked series of photographs as defined in an earlier Blog entry - is...

Epiphanous Photograph #2: Ansel Adam's Monolith, The Face of Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, 1927


Apart from its aesthetic appeal, what makes this photograph so special to me, is what I learned a few months after I first saw it a book (when I was still in my teens) about how Adams made it. I subsequently learned that Monolith was the image that taught Adams the art of previsualization; that is, the ability to previsualize, in one's mind, what you want the print to look like, and to then use whatever filters (in Adams' case, a deep red filter to properly render the sky deep black) and exposure are required by the previsualized print. Adams had to work fast, and, as I recall, had only a single plate of film left to expose (after a long day of photography).

This particular image, and most importantly the way this image was conceived, previsualized and printed, marks a cornerstone in my own photography in two ways: (1) I have never approached a subject since without first previsualizing what it is I want the final print to reveal about the subject, and (2) it was the first time that I truly appreciated that a photograph need not exactly recreate a scene (as might be observed by a passive "viewer" at the scene); rather, it can - sometimes must - depict the scene in a way that best communicates what the photographer saw and felt.

In the case of the Monolith, Adams' epiphany (and thereby the epiphany for all succeeding generations of fine art photographers!) was that a filter was needed to convey how awe struck he was, as observer/as photographer, by the Monolith's shear magnificence. I, in turn, was awe struck, by the resulting print's power to communicate Adams' moving experience (just as he was sure it would when he previsualized in his mind's eye how a red filter would render this scene). And it is another important reason why I am so passionate about fine art photography!

Ten "Epiphanous" Photographs: #1

In Lenswork Issue #63 (March-April, 2006), editor Brooks Jensen has a wonderful essay that begins with the question: "If you were going to demonstrate to a non-photographer the nature of fine art photography and why you are so passionate about it, which ten photographs would you show them?"

What a provocative (and deceptively difficult) question! Naturally, it prompted me to reflect on what my own choices might be at this time and stage of creative life. Of course, I realize that what my 45 year self currently believes are the "epiphanous" photographs that have helped form and shape my photographic I/eye's evolution are likely representative of neither what my I/eye most deeply cherished ten or twenty years ago (though the overlap is large) nor what I may cite as my first inspirational visual stepping stones 20 or 30 years from now.

Having done away with this obvious, but important, caveat, I offer the first of ten photographs that were - each in their own way - epiphanous to me, as an ever-evolving photographer, and my best "explanation" (as per Brooks Jensen's question) to others why I am passionate about fine art photography...

Epiphanous Photograph #1: Minor White's, Capitol Reef, Utah (1962):

Minor White (1908-76), who taught at MIT from 1965 until his death and was one of the founders of Aperture Magazine (in 1952), was arguably one of the most gifted "spiritual" photographers of the 20th century. By that I mean that White's lifelong approach to photography was predicated on the notion that a photograph - in particular, a fine art photograph - must transcend its merely physically manifest form and capture something of the timeless inner presence that defines the soul "taking" it.

White's Capitol Reef (the exact date of my first viewing of which I cannot recall) is the very first photograph I remember seeing that absolutely stunned me, rendering me virtually speechless; all I kept saying for days afterward was "Wow!".

The reason for my reaction was (and still is) how subtly it enfolds objective and subjective realities. What at first site appears to be nothing more than a "mere" beautiful pattern of stone, quietly, almost imperceptively, shifts into an unrecognizable, and - almost paradoxically, even more beautiful - subjective pattern of shapes, textures and tones. Reality, in short, has simply dissapeared, and has been replaced - by what? - anything the viewer's eye/I happens to see at the moment of viewing.

Outer objective reality blended, and enfolded, into subjective, inner truth and vision; and a "mere" representational photograph transformed into a glimpse of a transcendent dynamic reality. It is also the photograph that made me fall in love with fine art photography.

God is at Eye Level

I saw this wonderful book at a local bookstore and was very moved by its sincerety, elegance, and depth (not to mention its fine photography!).

The book is a sublime gem that anyone who is interested in what photography is really all about, what life is all about, and what their soul is all about, owes it to themselves to keep it by their side! It will enhance and broaden your sense of the world, and deepen your interconnection with it.

The author/photographer, Jan Philips, is a rare creature who is equally well proficient (indeed, gifted), in being able to both effortlessly capture the timeless beauty and spirit of nature in her photos and provide an eloquent written context for those images to help others find the sacred in the ordinary. Spending time with even just a few pages leaves one with feelings of peace and tranquility; reading over the entire book, a few times perhaps, depending on mood and temperament, cannot fail to leave even the most downtroden of souls feeling joyful at simply being alive and having the privilege at marveling at life's beauty. The book, in short, is all about how everything that one looks at - and most of all the inner "I" that is always lurking somewhere in the mysterious depths of our souls looking outward through our "eyes" - is nothing but God looking in.

Phillips book is a small treasure of a book that is now on the short list of books I will never part with. Highly recommended. (Readers for whom this short description is enough to arouse their interest, should also look up Nicholas Hlobeczy's A Presence Behind the Lens: Photography And Reflections and Volume IV of Christopher Alexander's four volume opus, Nature of Order).

Readers are also strongly encouraged to visit Jan Phillips' website, which has information about her many other books, music CDs and workshops schedules.

Kwanon (the original Canon Camera)

I have been a devoted Canon Camera user ever since my purchase of the venerable AE-1 35mm SLR when it first came out in 1976. For fellow Canon afficionados, here is a great site that chronicles the entire history of the camera company.

The company was founded by Saburo Uchida (1899 - 1982) and Takeo Maeda (1909 - 1975), who called their prototype camera the Kwanon (after the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy). The prototype was never marketed, however, and the name "Kwanon" was soon changed to "Canon," which means "standard for judgement or biblical scriptures." The first official camera release by the new company, the Hansa Canon, was released in 1935.

Here is the announcement, as it appeared in the October 1935 issue of the Asahi Camera: "Hansa Canon camera… Canon is a Leica imitation made in Japan. Although some influence of Contax is found, the majority of its features are modeled after the Leica. The dimensions of the camera are 13.5cm x 6.8cm x 4.5cm, while its weight is approximately 650g. It uses a special magazine and the lens is Nippon Kogaku’s Nikkor 50mm f/3.5. The lens is removable… The viewfinder is a box-type, and is designed to pop up to a specified position by pressing a button on the back. 275 yen with a snapshooting case included."

Highlights of this impressive sight include separate histories of film cameras, digital cameras, and an overview of the entire design process. Here is the Museum Site Map.

Appearance vs. Reality

The checkershadow illusion is one of the more remarkable "illusions" I've encountered, that goes to the heart of how we (as visual information processors) interpret and categorize the world; it also goes to the heart of the question, "Are you really sure of what you are looking at?"

Believe it or not, the squares marked A and B are exactly the same shade of gray! If you do not immediately believe your senses (as I suspect you won't!), just copy/save the image to a jpeg file and use any image processing program to sample the actual luminosity of each square...truly amazing!).

The "explanation" is that our visual systems require more than just luminosity to assess the shade of grey to be assigned; it also needs such features as local contrast and boundary effects. A complete explanation is provided here.

The checkshadow illusion was devised by Edward H. Adelson, Professor of Vision Science in the Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His site includes many other startling illusions that explore the nature of perception and interpretation of reality (see his Illusions and Demos), as well as technical papers explaining his theories and findings. Adelson's site is a must-see for all photographers who "believe" they know all there is to know about appearance, reality, and the true nature of tonal gradations.

Additional references (and illusions) appear on the Perceptual Sciences Group homepage.

Cymatics: Revealing Nature's Hidden Patterns

Cymatics (from the Greek kyma, meaning "wave" and ta kymatica, meaning "matters pertaining to waves"), is the study of wave phenomena, pioneered by Swiss medical doctor and natural scientist Hans Jenny (1904-1972). Over the course of more than ten years, Jenny conducted landmark experiments pumping acoustic energy into, and animating, otherwise inert powders and liquids into life-like, flowing forms that mimic patterns found throughout nature, art and architecture. All of these patterns are a direct physical manifestation of pure tone vibration: dynamic form induced by material vibration.

His work is documented in a remarkable book, Cymatics: A Study of Wave Phenomena & Vibration. A few videos are available as well: (1) Cymatics: The Healing Nature Of Sound, and (2) Cymatic Soundscapes.

Jenny's work builds upon much earlier work by Ernst Chladni who, in 1787, published "Discoveries Concerning the Theory of Music." This work introduced the basic physics of acoustics (the science of "sound"). One of Chladni's many practical (and aesthetic) discoveries was a way to make sound waves visible . By using a violin bow, stretched perpendicularly across the edge of flat plates covered with sand, he produced the patterns and shapes that today go by the term Chladni figures.

Jenny's work also overlaps a bit with the work of mathematician Nathaniel Bowditch, who was among the first to study the patterns generated by parametric sinusoidal waves called Bowditch curves, but are more often called Lissajous figures.

Apart from the incredible innate beauty of Jenny's patterns, there lies perhaps an even deeper, and deeply mysterious, "beauty" that has to do with the underlying patterns of nature. As Cathie E. Guzetta puts it so eloquently in "Music Therapy: Nursing the Music of the Soul"..."The forms of snowflakes and faces of flowers may take on their shape because they are responding to some sound in nature. Likewise, it is possible that crystals, plants, and human beings may be, in some way, music that has taken on visible form." You can read more in the article Cymatics: The Science of the Future.

More recently, work on oscillons has revealed many of the same mysterious features, including that of effective atomic and crytaline structures. The physics of "small" granular media (sand, powder, BBs from a toy shotgun,...) that sit between the microscopic (atomic) and macroscopic (and cosmic) is in its infancy. Two more articles on oscillons: (1) From waves to particles: the oscillon, and (2) "Localized and Cellular Patterns in a Vibrated Granular Layer" (Tsimring & Aranson, Phys. Review Letters, Vol. 79, No. 2, July 1997).

Camera Obscura

The camera obscura (Lat. dark chamber), the basic principles of which have been known since antiquity, is essentially just a box (which may be room sized: see discussion below) with a small hole on one side. Light passes through the hole and forms an image on the opposite wall (the sharpness of which depends on the size of the hole, and with very small holes leading to problems stemming from diffraction; as the hole becomes smaller, light sensitivity also naturally decreases).

The camera obscura has long been a favorite of artists because the artist can use the projected image as the base on which to draw; since the image is in perfect perspective, the realism of the rendered image is thus hightened. Pinhole cameras are camera obscuras with light-sensitive film.

Now we come to the reason for this Blog entry: to highlight the work of a master photographer - Cuban-born Abelardo Morell - who uses a room-size camera obscura to record wall-size images of Manhattan, New York, San Francisco, CA, and the cityscape of Havana, Cuba (among many other locations). Interested viewers are encouraged to explore Morell's complete Camera Obscura gallery.

His full (and extensive) on-line gallery of photographs (including some of his early work) can be viewed here. His most recent publications include Camera Obscura, and A Book of Books. See also Abelardo Morell (by Richard B. Woodward).

Local fused w/Global via Video Feedback

Talysis (a 9 min DVD, made for the Crystalpunk Workshop for Soft Architecture held in Utrecht, Holland in Autumn 2005) navigates the "possibility of a sentient geometry to produce a stream of geometric archetypes, a collective unconscious for emergent dynamical systems, a video feedback language system for scrying and pattern recognition."

This is not "new age" silliness;-), but rather a very serious attempt to, essentially, blur the distinction between local behaviors and rules, and global patterns. As Paul Prudence (the scientist/artist behind Talysis) describes on his site, the program combines aspects of symmetry with digital video feedback, resulting in highly recursive geometric structures, including ones that are eerily reminiscent of cellular automata patterns. Cellular automata (CA) are simple discrete dynamical systems whose agents (typically endowed with a discrete set of states, such as ON and OFF) evolve according to strictly local rules. Some CA (such as the well known two-dimensional Life rule, introduced by mathematician John Conway) are known to be universal computers, and so harbor a fundamentally irreducible level of complexity (see Wolfram's New Kind of Science).

What Prudence's Talysis shows is that video feedback can mimic the calculations of recursive algorithms; which begs the question whether it can also behave as a universal computer? (Prudence claims on his site that some patterns reproduce those of the Life rule, and conjectures that video feedback therefore can act as a computer).

Prudence says..."Many of the forms generated in Talysis appear to model biological morphogenesis and suggests that at the heart of all biological growth lies some degree of feedback of information to the system. At first glance many of the stills from Talysis might have been taken from an atlas of biology. There are neural networks, synapses, biological tissues, capillaries, plant structures, and embryonic forms. All of these images were arrived at from pointing a DV camera at its own output, they are entirely self-generative."

A quote from a classic paper on the space-time dynamics of video feedback (by James Crutchfield, published in Physica, 1984): "One goal in studying video feedback is to see whether it could be used as a simulator for dynamics in other fields. Turing’s original proposal of reaction-diffusion equations for biological morphogenesis comes to mind, as well as the image processing and hallucinogenic dynamics of the visual cortex."

I have always suspected that life-like "complexity" (true nested systems-of-systems autopoietic self-organized systems) lies at the Godelian-like cusp where local and global fuse; the Godelian-loop reaching into itself and pulling itself up to higher dimensions by its own bootstraps. Video feedback may just prove to be the practical/conceptual tool with which to visualize a bit of this fundmanetal bootstrapping. Absolutely fascinating!

Additional resources can be found at this link.

Microworlds

Hidden Beauty: Microworlds Revealed, by France Bourely, is one of the finest examples I've seen of a synergy of art and science (as well as a bit of philosophy); extraordinarily beautiful images of the microworld await the lucky reader who purchases this amazing book.

Some of the photographs (captured using a scanning electron microscope), if judged on a purely aesthetic level, arguably rank with some of the great abstract photographs that have ever been taken! Indeed, I am tempted to equate what Dr. Bourely has accomplished here to what Ansel Adams accomplished for the American West with his magnificent large format photography. What Adams represents for the macroscopic world, Dr. Bourely represents for the microscopic one. She is that good...as a guide, as a scientist, as photographer, and as a visionary artist of the highest caliber.

Quite simply this is one of the most beautiful books I've ever had the pleasure of owning and I shall treasure it for a long, long time to come. If you love photography, or science, or abstraction, or philosophy, or ever simply marvel at the ineffable mystery we call the universe, you owe it to yourself to get this book. It is destined to be a classic.

Space, Time, and Perception

The Hirshhorn Museum is currently exhibiting a career survey of Hiroshi Sugimoto (b. 1948, Tokyo), a master of using photography to explore the nature of space, time and perception. The exhibit runs between February 16, 2006 and May 14, 2006.

Sugimoto is known for his starkly minimalist, conceptual images of seascapes, movie theaters, natural history diaramas and architecture, that often border on the mystical. While, at one level, his images are "simple" (his seascapes for example sometimes offer little or no contrast between object and background at all!), at another, deeper level, they all compell the viewer to ponder such questions as "What is time?", "What is space?" and "What is real?"

According to the Hirshhorn site, the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery will feature Hiroshi Sugimoto: History of History (from April 1, 2006 through July 30).

Here are two online galleries of some of Sugimoto's work (the first includes an interview with the photographer): Eyestorm & Robert Klein Gallery.

A generous sampling of his images (that require much time to slowly digest, emotionally, cognitively, and spiritually) appear in the book Hiroshi Sugamoto, by Kerry Brougher.

Harry Callahan: The Photographer at Work

Harry Callahan: The Photographer at Work, is a magnificent new book by Britt Salvesen (with an introduction by John Szarkowski) on the creative life of one of the 20th century's most creative photographic artists. It is so much more than a "mere" biography.

What sets this biography (which a generous sampling of Callahan's work) apart from other books in this genre, is its elegant focus on the creative aspects of photography. In discussing Callahan's dedication to constant experimentation, choice of subject matter, his visual approaches to a particular shot, selection of themes and improvisations, sequential ordering, and the all important print process, the book provides a rare invaluable resource to the inner reflections of an artist at work (and play). Callahan's lifelong body of work is testament to the fact that an artist need not travel to the ends of the earth to find beauty; beauty is not just in the eyes of the beholder, but in the dedication and loving attention to craft and creative experimention in one's backyard.

Bytes of Science

A good friend of mine, David Mazel, who is extremely well versed in science and engineering (indeed, he is making a comfortable living with a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering), has a wonderfullly informative and entertaining site called Bytes of Science.

On it, you will find commentary and links to such topics as infinite minimal surfaces, satellite tracking, chaos for encryption, and video fly-bys of some of M.C. Escher's graphic works (among many others).

What makes the Blog special is David's passion for all things relating to math and science, and a unique gift for teaching and writing; you will likely not even notice how much serious math or science you've picked up while you're simply immersed in the shear pleasure of reading one of David's short passages. Highly recommended.

Gregory Bateson and "Seeing" with the Mind's Eye

Some of the most important basic lessons of learning to see in photography do not come directly from the masters of photography (though they obviously impart quite a bit of wisdom;-) For example, consider a deep lesson that is taught by anthropologist, Gregory Bateson...

Bateson was one of the last century’s most original thinkers. Trained as an anthropologist, Bateson made deep and lasting contributions to biology, cybernetics, and systems theory. He was also a gifted teacher. One of Bateson’s central ideas is that of the “Pattern that Connects,” or metapattern, which means, literally, a pattern of patterns.

This idea was first introduced in Bateson’s masterwork — Mind and Nature — in a story about how he sometimes pulled out a freshly cooked crab out of a bag and asked his students (who were typically nonscientists) to argue that the object represents the remains of a living being. The object of the Socratic exercise was to force his students to ponder the question, “What is the difference between the living and nonliving?” To answer this question, the students had to learn such concepts as relationship, symmetry and topology as they apply both within an organism (or object) and outside an organism (on higher levels). The deeper lesson was taking their first step toward appreciating the need for “discarding of magnitudes in favor of shapes, patterns, and relations.”

What does this have to do with photography and seeing? Well, one can begin by drawing a lesson from Bateson’s concept of metapatterns. A uniquely personal aesthetic grammar may be developed by following these three steps: (1) recognize that all conventional distinctions between objects are essentially arbitrary (i.e. learn to see the world as shape, pattern and relation rather than purely form), (2) draw your conscious attention to the visible boundaries between conventional forms that make up a photographic scene, and then (3) use your unconscious intuition to guide the camera, as a compositonal tool, to recompose the scene as if it were made up of visual elements of your own choosing. In short, decompose the world into its basic building blocks, then build it back up the way you really see it.

Another great book by Bateson (coauthored with his daughter Catherine Bateson, is Angels Fear: Towards An Epistemology Of The Sacred.

Photography and the Creative Process

Three exceptional new DVDs, released by Arte Video (and a coproduction of Arte France, KS Visions and The National Center for Photography), explore the creative process behind the works of some master photographers. Each DVD consists of about 10 short (10-15 min long) "essays" focusing on one photographer, using images (contact sheets, proofs, prints, or slides) with commentary by the artist himself. Together, these films provide an unparalleled excursion into the creative process of photography.

Contacts Volume 1: The Great Tradition of Photojournalism includes Henri Cartier-Bresson, William Klein, Raymond Depardon, Mario Giacomelli, Josef Koudelka, Robert Doisneau, Edduard Boubat, Elliot Erwitt, Marc Riboud, Leonard Freed, Helmut Newton, and Don McCullin.

Contacts Volume 2: The Renewal of Contemporary Photography includes Sophie Calle, Nan Goldin, Duane Michals, Sarah Moon, Nobuyoshi Araki, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Jeff Wall, Lewis Baltz, and Jean-Marc Bustamante.

Contacts Volume 3: Conceptual Photography includes John Baldessari, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Christian Boltanski, Alain Fleischer, John Hilliard, Roni Horn, Martin Parr, Georges Rousse, Thomas Struth, and Wolgang Tillmans.

Brilliant Lectures on the History of 20th Century Physics

My Ph.D. thesis advisor (back in the 1980s!) was Max Dresden, whose career as a theoretical physicist spanned both many decades and many countries. Max was born in Amsterdam in 1918, and earned his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1946. During his long career (he passed away in 1997), he made made important contributions in statistical mechanics, superconductivity, quantum field theory and elementary particle physics. Another of his empassioned interests was the history and sociology of modern science. Though all of his lectures, technical and otherwise, were always a delight to listen to and behold (he was quite a showman!), it was his lectures on the history of physics that were something truly special, and his unique gifts as expositor shown brightly. Aside from his ebullient, infectiously joyful, style of presentation, his lectures were infused with personal knowledge of some of the greastest physicists of the 1920s and 1930s.

Here is an incredible collection of videos of some of Max's lectures on the history of physics (delivered between 1990 and 1996 at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center). One would be hard pressed to find better examples of love and intimate knowledge of subject matter, and simple unabashed joy at sharing it with anyone willing to listen!

During his life, Max published articles in over 35 scientific journals and was the author of a well received biography of physicist H.A. Kramers, titled Between Tradition and Revolution. As all of us who were graced by this gentle soul know well, Max was a profoundly gifted and inspiring teacher. He is intensely missed.

Here is an article, In Appreciation: Remembering Max Dresden, by Peter B. Kahn, that appeared the May 2003 issue of Physics in Perspective. Max's obituary, as it appeared in Physics Today in June 1998 appears on this page (from the State University of New York, Stony Brook).

Fine Art Photography Portfolios

Here is a real treat for aficionados of fine-art photography, in the classical tradition: an exquisite set of on-line portfolios of some of true masters of fine-art photography, including those of Ansel Adams (19 photos), Brassai (17 photos), Edward Burtynsky (20 photos), Harry Callahan (17 photos), Andre Kertesz (20 photos), Josef Sudek (12 photos), and Edward Weston (46 photos); among many others. The reproductions are relatively small, of course, but a delicious treat to the eyes and soul nonetheless.

Forget Megapixels! How about Gigapixels?

Want to see what kinds of images a gigapixel camera might take? Here is an incredibly detailed "photograph" of Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. It consists of 196 separate photographs taken with a 6 megapixel digital camera, and then stitched together into one seamless composite. The complete image measures 40,784 x 26,800 pixels in size! When originally posted (in Dec 2003) it was the world's first gigapixel image. Since then there have been other attempts: (1) a 2.5 gigapixel panorama of Delft (an article about this project can be found here), and the Gigapxl project.

Max Lyons, the original gigapixel image creator, is -- apart from his technical prowess (he is the developer of a wonderful stitching program called PTAssembler) -- quite an accomplished photographer, specializing in stitched panoramas. Here is a samping of his beautiful work. Finally, and not to be missed (!), here is a shot of Max standing next to a huge print of his gigapixel Bryce Canyon image (shown at the 2004 Photo Marketing Association Annual Show).

Transcendent New Vision of Nature, Order and Beauty

Christopher Alexander's four volume Opus, Nature of Order, is an absolutely stunning achievement of the highest caliber! I agree with a quote that appears on the inner flap of each of the volumes, to the effect that while very few (if any) philosophical/conceptual works (and their authors) are likely to be remembered 500 years hence, there is a strong possibility that Alexander's Opus will be remembered as a precursor to what our present day (only partially overlapping fields of) "science" & "art" will have evolved to in 500 years (a unified, wholistic body of "Sci-Art" in which the schism between objective & subjective / inner & outer no longer exists).

What Alexander presents in these books is a tentative first stab at a magnificent new concept; not a mathematical or physical theory (though rudiments of what might go into a more formal description are also discussed). Although many of Alexander's ideas are quite subtle and require thoughtful reflection to fully comprehend and integrate into (ironically) a whole (new worldview), the basic thesis is original and profound: everything that exists contains life, and the degree (lesser or greater) to which life is manifest in "X" can be objectively determined by probing one's subjective (inner) world. Nature is seen, in this view, simply as the totality of life, continually unfolding; and beauty (as generated by local life-forms such as humans), as a resonance between outwardly objective forms and (the very deepest) subjective inner feelings.

Western science's longstanding divide between "what's out there in the world" and "what is in here, in our hearts and souls" is exchanged for a new worldview in which our understanding of the cosmos is predicated on an active unity between objectivity and subjectivity; between dispassionate form and intensely personal beauty; between "eye" and "I"; between the deepest inner feeling and continually unfolding outer life. If this sounds radical (and perhaps even a bit strange), that is because it is radical; Alexander is proposing a sweeping idea that is both revolutionary and (only in hindsight, after having read his extraordinary Opus) obvious! For it really cannot be any other way! Every thinking -- no, every feeling -- creature who wants to know our cosmos and his/her unique role in it needs to read these books. They are truly remarkable! The next great strides in art and science will be made (simultaneously) when, one day, an Einstein-Alexander appears and uses the ideas expressed in these books to develop (using a mathematics not yet created) a rigorous new theory of "Sci-Art-Beauty-Life". These are ostensibly books on "architecture"; but they far -- far -- transcend that field; they speak, collectively, about everything that exists.

Other links: Amazon, Notes (by Nikos Salingaros), and a landmark (semi-technical and deeply philosophical) paper called Harmony Seeking Computation (about which Alexander writes: "In this paper, I am trying to lay out a new form of computation, which focuses on the harmony reached in a system. This type of computation in some way resembles certain recent results in chaos theory and complexity theory. However, the orientation of harmony-seeking computation is toward a kind of computation which finds harmonious configurations, and so helps to create things, above all, in real world situations: buildings, towns, agriculture, and ecology."). This paper may just contain the essential ingredients for how "complexity science" as it is currently understood may itself evolve into a deeper understanding of nature's patterns and rhythms.

Entropic Melodies in B&W Magazine

I am thilled to have several images from my Entropic Melodies series appear in the Feb 2006 issue of the internationally distributed B&W Magazine (pages 98-101, Issue #41). Since this particular issue features photos of such master photographers as Ansel Adams, Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, and Frederick Sommer (among others from the archives of the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, AZ), it is a double treat to be included in the same publication with them!

Richard Feynman Videos

The Vega Science Trust has posted a set of four archival recordings from the University of Auckland (New Zealand) of lectures by Richard Feynman, arguably one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century. Feynman's lectures on audio tape are wonderful, and every aspiring physicist owes it to him/her-self to listen to a selection of those available, but these videos are truly something special! They give a real flavor of what it must have been like to be in Feynman's class.

Cartier-Bresson's "Decisive Moment"

Henri Cartier-Bresson was arguably one of the most gifted photographers (in photojournalism) that has ever used a camera. One of his earliest books, a mini masterpiece of exposition on the art and craft of photography as well as timeless images, was called the "Decisive Moment" (and is now a catch phrase for which he is justly famous). It is also notoriously difficult to obtain; Amazon, for example, lists a used copy for $1600! Here is a site, however, that has lovingly reproduced the entire opus on-line, one page at a time. It is an incredible gift to the photography community. Read, and enjoy!

Fractals and art

Here is an interesting NY Times article about how fractal analysis may (or may not) help determine the "artist" behind a specific work of art. The artist in question here is Jackson Pollock, and the artwork is a particular piece that many believe are created by him, but Pollock's unique fractal pattern doesn't quite match...read on. Here are a few other references, (1) a short paper by Ivars Peterson, (2) a technical article from Physics World, (3) an article from the journal Nature, and (4) Richard Taylor's homepage.

Great book on the "art" of photography

Here is a great book on the art of photography by Nicholas Hlobeczy, called A Presence Behind the Lens: Photography And Reflections. The book is part memoir (including stories of Hlobeczy's friend and mentor Minor White), part meditation on photography, and part philosophy of art and the art of finding oneself through art. It also contains a wonderful selection of quiet, Zen-like B&W photos that simultaneously instill a sense of calm and wonder.

While there are millions of "photographers" in the world (both amateur and professional), and thousands of books on and/or "about" photography, few - very few - actually say anything deeply lasting about the fine art of photography as a meditation on life and meaning. Hlobeczy's book stands apart from the far more conventional offerings by not only sharing his quiet soulful view of the world, but allowing us to glimpse, however briefly, the process by which his soulful vision came to be.

It is truly a small treasure of a book, one to be cherished and reflected upon again and again by all aspiring photographers. Hlobeczy's website contains numerous other samples of his work.