Passion, Ecstasy, and the Heart-o-meter: The Way of Dionysus.

<p>Does anyone think passion has some relationship to suffering?</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p><em>Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith but they are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the passion of Christ.</em> --C. S. Lewis</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Affliction, not sin. I like that.</p>

<p>______________________</p>

<p>Also, to answer Ralph Gibson. Sex, indeed, may not look the way it feels. And (photographed) sexual passion doesn't have to look like sex.</p>

<p><strong>Julie Heyward:</strong> <em>Pop quiz for Mr. Kaa -- why isn't Joel Peter Witkin's work Dionysian?</em></p>

<p>Witkin is in a quite different plane from the Apollonian - Dionysian axis. A one-word description might be "decadent". For Witkin sex is very serious business. Sex is very much not serious business for Dionysus.</p>

<p>Re passion -- it seems that different people in this thread have quite different ideas about what the word "passion" means: "simple enthusiasm" of Alan Zinn, "unstoppable willpower" of Wouter Willemse, "ignition chamber" of Julie Heyward...</p>

<p>My own idea of Dionysian passion is close to how Wouter Willemse defines ecstasy. It is an irresistible, overflowing force that "does not hold back in any way", that forgets about rules and lines, that bubbles and splashes and erupts chaotically. My threshold for this concept *is* high :-) An important component of the Dionysian passion is its anti-rationality and I want to stress that it's not a-rational but <strong>anti-</strong>rational.</p>

<p>Anyway, I don't know about passion, but let me offer you what I'd call a <a href="http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm161/kaa_photobucket/20060528_0242_S1.jpg">Dionysian image</a>.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Julie, that image is too evident, too self conscious, too much in your face. For me, successful images of strong and unbridled passion are wild, erratic, ecstatic and imaginary, but are, surprisingly, not so evident as that one, and not always easily discernable as passionate statements at first glance. They develop slowly like the orgasmic melody of "A day in the Life". </p>

<p><strong>Fred - "</strong>Does anyone think passion has some relationship to suffering?"</p>

<p>"I am a man of passions, capable of and subject to doing more or less foolish things – which I happen to regret, more or less, afterwards." --- Vincent Van Gogh</p>

<p>I think it can, and sometimes does. The Passion of The Christ, to cite one example, was no joyride.</p>

<p>Passion can and often does involve perseverance & patience, as well. </p>

<p> </p>

<p><strong>Fred</strong>: <em>Does anyone think passion has some relationship to suffering?</em></p>

<p>I don't think so with two caveats. The first one is that Christianity heavily associates the two words, "passion" and "suffering". And the second one is that it's not uncommon for passion to lead to suffering. In fact, a Buddhist would insist that this is unavoidable :-)</p>

<p>By the way, Arthur, are you talking to me and not to Julie, by any chance?</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Yes, sorry, .Kaa. My comment is the same, though.</p>

<p>Arthur, note that I did not say this image embodies passion. I thought I was explicit about that, but evidently not. I do think this picture has the Dionysian flavour, but that, of course, is only my opinion.</p>

<p>As to being too direct, well, subtlety has its advantages but sometimes just hitting someone over the head with a heavy blunt object is a wonderfully efficient method of getting things done :-) Besides, Dionysus isn't subtle at all.</p>

<p>P.S. I'm just Kaa. The initial dot was nothing but an offering to the Thou-Shall-Not-Have-A-Blank-First-Name god of photo.net registration forms...</p>

<p>As I think about it, creating a passionate photo is a passionate experience. For me, the making is at the apex and there would have to be passion in the making itself, even as there would have been passion in the moments already lived that were being expressed through this making. I think what Tharp and Nietzsche are saying is that the making is not separate or separable from the experience of passion. And the craft isn't a rope around passion. Rather the craft becomes a passion even as it may be a force of the opposing dimension. I honestly never thought about whether Dionysus was or wasn't into making things. But I know photographers are.</p>

<p>I don't know if I can separate passion from suffering. And I don't think I could create the kind of passionate photo I'm eventually going to create without a sense of my own suffering, without being in touch with it, and without being able not just to feel it but to open it up and on some level lay it bare. I think some of this may have to do with difficulty and resistance. We generally don't resist joy but we often resist suffering. So it's stronger, more intense . . . the stuff associated with passion.</p>

<p>While listening to a panel discussion on the radio early this morning, on contemporary artist Damien Hirst, I checked the net to improve my minimal knowledge of his works. Whatever you may think of his approach and work, I think they speak at least to the range of expression that is available in contemporary non-photographic art and its ability to interest/shock viewers and to represent a Dionysian theme and to invoke spontaneous emotional reactions from viewers. So where is photography in that sense? Do you think that photography has its oft-followed paradigms and physical limits, and if not, are there photographers that are adventurous enough of spirit to exploit the medium of photography in the manner that a Hirst does in other art forms? Does contemporary photography allow the possibility of expressing passion or are photographers using the medium in sufficiently new and unique ways? I do not mean this as some departure from the present OP, which has much room for expansion, but simply as a sort of corollary to Luis's original statement.</p>

<p>http://www.google.ca/search?q=damien+hirst&hl=en&prmd=imvnso&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=2fAvT5WKD8uI0QGTmfn3Cg&sqi=2&ved=0CEQQsAQ&biw=1299&bih=1031</p>

<p>Where can passion come from in a passionate work if not at least to a significant degree from the maker? I disagree with the idea that all passion involves suffering, but would have to agree that a lot of the best does. It also embodies a lot of deferred gratification, which I read as patience (but feel as suffering, hah!).<br>

_________________________________________________</p>

<p>Kaa, so your threshold is so high that of all the photographs in the world you could only choose one of your own, and <em>that</em> one? I think Arthur described it well. You overestimate your threshold or were avoiding linking to any passionate pictures. I also never understood your response to Julie's question about J-P Witkin & Dionysos. Another level? Which one would that be?<br>

_________________________________________________</p>

<p>Arthur, the qualities of the Apollonian/Dionysian (A/D) are both present to some degree (and each contain the seed of its opposite, BTW) in everyone. One defines the other, and the friction between the two is the wellspring for artistic (and other) energies. I believe the potential range of expression in photography is about the same as the other arts (within obvious limitations, less so in the digital age). Hirst is a master at the spectacular, something he has used to great advantage, particularly in present-day Western culture (no, I am not implying that is monolithic, but the spectacular is very much "in".<br>

________________________________________________</p>

<p>"Sometimes when you're drunk you can see better." --- Damien Hirst</p>

<br />________________________________________________

<blockquote>

<p>Kaa, so your threshold is so high that of all the photographs in the world you could only choose one of your own, and <em>that</em> one? I think Arthur described it well. You overestimate your threshold or were avoiding linking to any passionate pictures. I also never understood your response to Julie's question about J-P Witkin & Dionysos. Another level? Which one would that be?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Oh, boy. Let me try again. Slowly. In simple sentences.</p>

<p>That photograph is -->*<strong>NOT</strong>*<-- supposed to illustrate passion. It does *NOT* have anything to do with passion or high thresholds. In fact, since it is my photograph, I can tell you directly that I wasn't particularly passionate at the moment I snapped it. Moreover, I have *NOT* put up this image as an example of art, high or otherwise. To qualify as art (bullet points to the rescue! :-D) it would have had to do much better with expression (as opposed to mere capture) and with depth which it basically lacks. But that was *NOT* the purpose of this picture. It's purpose was to illustrate "Dionysian flavour" where Dionysian, as a counter-point to Apollonian, (see the post that started the thread) is much wider than just passion. Perhaps it fails at that, but my point is that it is -->*<strong>NOT</strong>*<-- an example of a picture which passes my sky-high passion thresholds.</p>

<p>About Witkin, what I tried to say was that I don't think it's useful to characterize him in terms of the Apollonian-Dionysian terminology at all. His work is clearly not Apollonian, but it doesn't strike me as particularly Dionysian either. Saudek, for example, has a considerably more pronounced Dionysian vibe for me.</p>

<p> </p>

<p><strong>Kaa - "</strong>Perhaps it fails at that, but my point is that it is -->*<strong>NOT</strong>*<-- an example of a picture which passes my sky-high passion thresholds."</p>

<p>Surely in the history of photography there must be at least one picture that approaches your standards? One?</p>

<p>Might be, but I don't know what it is :-) I am not convinced there *must* be some pictures, anyway. If there are, I would expect them to be in (or close to) the boundary zone between photography and painting but for such pictures the question arises to what degree they are photographs. That's quite a separate topic, however.</p>

<p>But keep in mind that I'm a simple creature. If, while eating a cheesecake, I'm told that there is great passion in the interplay of overtones of true cinnamon and cassia that arise in the aftertaste, well, I might notice the interplay and might even appreciate and enjoy it. But I would be disinclined to see passion there, much less Dionysian passion.</p>

<p>Passion, I think, is not something that requires long meditations on subtle aspects to see.</p>

<p><strong>Kaa - "</strong>Passion, I think, is not something that requires long meditations on subtle aspects to see."</p>

<p>It's taken Kaa <em>days</em>, and still nothing. Now it's quick and easy to see, but he remains mum.</p>

<p>Let's look at the point he raises. If we look at the aspects that speak of passion to us, perhaps that will be helpful not only in detecting it, but in encoding passion in a photograph. From Fred we have suffering. My suggestion is: Exaggeration. In the way I detect passion in photographs, exaggeration may not be a constant, but it's frequent.</p>

<p>Just in case, let me say it: Not all exaggeration is about passion.</p>

<p>Fleshing out my thoughts . . .</p>

<p>Tears of joy suggest something deeper than the emotion of joy. The experience of joy when deepened by the suffering of sorrow becomes a passion. Loving my partner becomes deep and passionate as we suffer through something (or suffer each other) together.</p>

<p>Passion has an obsessive side, in that it takes over, or at least we give ourselves over to it. There is an element of sacrifice. In being passionate, we give something up, something of ourselves, maybe our innocence. We trade in some sanity. We let go of or are robbed of a kind of control or a kind of relationship to rationality in the moment. We lose the comfort or safety of knowing what this should feel like or where this will take us.</p>

<p>My own passions have a dark side, which gives them depth, makes them rich. Light wouldn't be enough for me without that darkness. Even sexual passion, for me, comes with some amount of non-pleasure, a darkness that makes it so much more than just getting off. Desire, need, longing.</p>

<p>Ecstasy? Without agony?</p>

<p>I like the idea of exaggeration.<br>

Myself, I kept coming back to ideas as high dynamics, energy. But there is also the passion in intense and total quietness, or in suffering as Fred mentions. But indeed, it's in the exaggeration where the passionare exceeds the normal. It's not a bad kind of exaggeration, though (there is a bit a negative connotation there for me, which I feel does not apply here).<br>

The obsessive makes the exaggeration. It's letting the balance tip to one end of the scale.</p>

<p><strong>Luis:</strong><em> It's taken Kaa </em>days<em>, and still nothing. Now it's quick and easy to see, but he remains mum.</em></p>

<p>Maybe I can't see. Maybe I am blind to it -- how would I know?</p>

<p><strong>Luis:</strong><em> My suggestion is: Exaggeration</em></p>

<p>Not sure about exaggeration. I associate it in photography with, say, a landscape photographer pushing the saturation slider up, or a fashion photographer lengthening the model's legs... Exaggeration is, by definition, depicting more than there really is, and I think with passion you don't depict more, there *really* is that much. Besides, exaggeration suffers from being badly overused by anyone who figured out that post-processing exists.</p>

<p>I'd suggest two things: power and anti-rationality, not necessarily in the madness sense, but more in the sense of rage/rebellion against the lines and the rules.</p>

 

<p>Exaggeration, as was mentioned, likely refered to exaggeration in terms of the content and emotion in regard to what is being photographed and how it is being photographed and not necessarily to post exposure manipulations as Kaa stated. I like the concepts of exaggeration, suffering, obsession and intensity (which I look at as being a subtle or quiet form of energy), each of which have been mentioned above.</p>

<p><strong>Arthur - "</strong>Exaggeration, as was mentioned, likely refered to exaggeration in terms of the content and emotion in regard to what is being photographed and how it is being photographed and not necessarily to post exposure manipulations as Kaa stated."</p>

<p>Exactly. And the Dionysian itself has changed. Back in the Greek days, the ultimate spirit of form was Nature and the symbolic system that had developed from earlier human interaction with, and memory of it. Many still think on those terms, but the world and human consciousness has changed. Most of us are no longer that close to Nature. Instead we live in a multidimensional fun house of mirrored simulacra. The closest we get to it is with Camille Paglia's latter-day interpretation of the Dyonisian, mainly the feminine and the chthonic. </p>

<p>The reality is that that the lens can copy only it "sees" physically. It cannot record from the scene in front of it such abstractions as ideas, thoughts, philosophies or anything else that does not have physical presence. This is a constraint that the photographer is faced with and no metaphysical truth nor mystic charm is going to change it. That is a fundamental truth that applies today as it has since the beginning of photography. There are those in the past who have bemoaned the mechanical nature of the camera but nevertheless accepted it and moved on.<br>

Passion is a French word which in it's first usage meant sorrow in the biblical sense. It has gone through 5 different usages down to the present for which many synonyms apply; i count at least twenty. Too many to list here and would serve no purpose anyway. No matter what you call it the result would be the same, the passion you hope to convey will not be embodied in the print. If it were possible then everyone who viewed the print,such as the one Fred G posted on this thread, would probably feel some compassion for the man but in the real world, one person would feel sympathy for him but the next would maybe feel contempt for such a weakling. Anyway thats how I feel about it.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>Most of us are no longer that close to Nature. Instead we live in a multidimensional fun house of mirrored simulacra. The closest we get to it is with Camille Paglia's latter-day interpretation of the Dyonisian, mainly the feminine and the chthonic.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I am glad I don't belong to "most of us".</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Though exaggeration is different from enthusiasm, I'm not seeing that they are that much different in their relationship to passion. They both relate to the intensity of the emotion quotient, IMO. I think it's important and am glad that Luis underscored the fact that not all exaggeration is passionate or about passion. And, I do think exaggeration can be an important tool in expressing passion. But I don't think it's a key to understanding passion itself. It's a tool used to convey it.</p>

<p>I think passion has a particular quality. It's not just a matter of intensity, degree, or exaggeration of emotions. It's got to do with both the intensity and the <em>character</em>* of emotion. I'll get to my disagreement with Warren in a moment, but what I agree with is that passion has undergone various iterations throughout history. I'm trying to see its relationship to art. And, for that, I don't mind going back to original usage and I especially don't mind going back to its religious roots. That's why I think suffering (or darkness . . . or sorrow, as Warren puts it) is very significant.</p>

<p>I agree with Arthur and Luis that exaggeration through post-processing slider bars is often just an example of bad or kitschy exaggeration. Post processing can be used subtly and significantly to exaggerate in some really great ways. And there are many other ways, long before post processing, that a photographer can use exaggeration effectively and expressively.</p>

<p>____________________________<br /> *Maybe exaggeration is meant to be more than a matter of degree or intensity and does have a certain character. I think a case could be made for this. (I think Kaa approaches this when he talks about exaggeration and the sense of what <em>really</em> is.) But I don't see the specific case being made for this or some other character of exaggeration being related to passion.</p>

<p>Warren, I don't think you've made a good case for singling out photography as not being able to show passion. Sure, one of its differences from other art forms may be its mechanical nature. But a painting is also a physical thing: paint on canvas. A sculpture is materials. So how would those record the abstractions of ideas, thoughts, or passions if a photograph can't? I think they <em>all</em> can. Music seems best suited to this experience and expression of passion precisely because it seems inherently abstract. Though a case can be made for music's greater level of abstraction than the visual arts, all art is capable of (one could say somewhat dependent upon) abstraction. Even the most realistic of visual portrayals has many abstract qualities which transcend the material.</p>

<p>You also seem to put some stock in whether or not all people would see the passion or react similarly to a given work. I agree with you that not all would see it in my photo (especially since I only see a bit of potential in it myself). But not all people would see passion in any given painting or sculpture or hear it in any piece of music, either. Just because passion is not universally seen doesn't mean it's not happening.</p>

<p>It is curious that one who cannot cite a single instance of a passionate photograph can tell us so much about them, and another, who doesn't believe it is within the scope of the medium, therefore impossible for him, thinks it is impossible for everyone.<br>

______________________________</p>

<p>Having said all that, I also agree with Warren about the evolution of the meanings of the word 'passion', and would extend it, as I have hinted, in the direction of the Dionysian as well.</p>

<p>A lot of what we're talking about here is connected to something like:</p>

<p>"Got to pay your dues if you want to sing the blues".</p>

<p>Imbuing a picture with passion, ecstasy, Dionysian qualities or anything else happens with a semblance of grace at the nexus of <em>performance and authenticity</em> . A kind of entanglement fuses these things together, the wall between the maker and the work become permeable, and a transfer to the image becomes possible, and hopefully will pass on to some viewers. It's as much about learning as it is about letting go.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Given Kaa's standard of passion, I do not want to know what ecstacy would be like then.....<br>

And yes, as with all emotions, they're not necessarily visible for everyone. Passion is not going to be different as images that seek to transmit happiness, sadness, feeling lonely etc.<br>

____<br>

Which still leaves me seeking for an image that transmit passion - as passion (hence, not the passion for photography or the subject). I think one of the things where I keep stumbling is the association of passion with the ecstatic. But I see the potential Fred means in his earlier posted photo. It's a silent, more introvert, version of passion maybe, or a reference to passion lost? For the latter, <a href="../photo/6934422">this one</a> evokes that idea for me. But at the same time, this might be my reading on passion, or the way I experience it. I'm a bit afraid that these differences in experiences/emotional handling are inevitably going to keep us close in understanding, but not reach mutual understanding.</p>

<p>With regard to the exeggeration, though. Just thinking out loud as to why it may be so difficult to find in a photo...<br>

Yesterday I attended a short 'lecture' of a local photographer; he showed a very nice series on the differences and similarities of people. Black and white portraits, which all used a symbolic birthmark in the face to indicate the similarity. People argued that the rather obvious sign wasn't necessary, as lighting, the facial expressions and the backdrop already provided a solid similarity, the symbol being seen as maybe a bit over the top. I keep wondering: would we have noticed without the obvious symbol? I doubt it - it gave an obvious pointer, which "drew" the rest of image in line. It put us on the track the photographer wanted us to be.<br>

As normal language, a visual language also needs and has some very simple and clear "words". Unambiguous sentences are usually short. Dark is negative and light positive.<br>

Now maybe too subtle emotions, shades of emotions or ambiguous emotional expressions (and I would count passion in for these) might too easily get lost in a visual language - unless we use a strong unambibuous tool to express it. At which point do the tool and the message become the same?<br>

In other words, maybe we swamp passion in exaggeration?</p>