Photography and spirituality?

[charleswood]

<p>Wouter I'm with you and yet to one extent, not with you and Fred on one point. Because let's say my picture of the coyote pair is a symbol that associates to known meanings, to commonly felt universals, and yet however an element of the spiritual is also that of an unknown. But instead of the word symbol I would prefer to use the word 'sign.' A sign points to something known and familiar, whether common place or profound. I reserve the word 'symbol' as an expression for something that is not known, that can't be known completely, or fully understood, or be finally integrated in some way into our lives. One example, and I hesitate drawing from Christian symbolism, is that of Jesus pierced on the cross. It is a symbol of a wounded deity, and what can we really know about a deity and its wounds? So I'll drop that example immediately offer another.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.readysetfashion.com/2010/08/androgyny-story-pretty-boy.html">http://www.readysetfashion.com/2010/08/androgyny-story-pretty-boy.html</a></p>

<p>The second image on that page. Is it of the divine? I'm thinking of what androgyny means to a culture, and asking seriously, because in some ways, there is something beautifully beyond culture, hard to talk about, in such an image, and the subject becomes hopelessly confused if we stick to the literal when trying to comprehend what I would all the fascination. Consider Minamoto no Yoshitsune (1159-1189) "He is considered one of the greatest and the most popular warriors of his era, and one of the most famous samurai fighters in the history of Japan.<sup id="cite_ref-1" ><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamoto_no_Yoshitsune#cite_note-1">[</a></sup>" If you have seen the Kurosawa film "The Men Who Tread On the Tiger's Tail", note the androgynous actor who portrays Yoshitsune. That is because among the traditions in Japan that interpret the legendary general, one treats him as just such a personage. It's odd for the heterosexual to acknowledge that there is something there, but there is also no explanation for it. It just is. But what are we to make of it? There is something there that for me, speaks more to the spiritual than the physical, speaks more to the unknown, than to the known, is a symbol, not a comfortable 'sign.' As a symbol, there is some veneration involved and present in Japanese culture, the veneration of a general and the representations of that general as a pretty boy. Something is being expressed in that, in a figure culturally in Japan venerated almost to the point of ascribing divinity to Yoshitsune.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Wouter, thanks for your words about the pic of my dad. Hard for me to talk about right now, so I'd prefer to leave it as you've said it, which is a nice tribute to both of us.</p>

<p>Charles, great points about symbols/signs. Thanks for that.</p>

<p>Counterculture as divine . . . ??? Interesting idea. Maybe not a place I want androgyny or sexual ambiguity to reside. Too heavenly. I'd rather think of it as acceptably, alternatively, diversely, even shockingly profane . . . but in the most positive of ways. Rather tweak people's notions of profanity than yield to an acceptance of divine as better.</p>

<p>When I would say a photo is spiritual is, in most cases, when there seems to be more than meets the eye, when there's an <em>intangible</em> quality (maybe like Charles's "unknown" as opposed to known) even to the most tangible of subjects. Weston's Pepper? Or when I can't quite put my finger on something. Or when atmosphere becomes more the subject than the subject residing in that atmosphere.</p>

<p>Wouter, a lot of your photos have it or have that potential . . . it's in the sense of mood . . . in the space beyond the facades, in the feel of your approach which comes through visually often as much as the rendering of your subjects.</p>

[laur1]

<p><em>Wouter:</em></p>

<blockquote>

<p>Laurentiu, that's a very simplified reading, and almost insultingly so. If you reread any of my previous posts, I think it was more than clear I never meant "a quest for the truth". If I would have, I'd call it that. The fact that I did not do so, could also be a reminder for you that maybe it's not summarised all that easy.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Wouter, I was merely working with your use of Plato's cave allegory. You mentioned looking for the fire that causes the shadows, which seemed to suggest looking for the cause. None of your previous posts used this allegory so I could not use them to help me understand your reference.</p>

<p><em>Fred G:</em></p>

<blockquote>

<p>Sacred and profane seem to me wrapped up in moral judgment rather than spirituality.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>They're not necessarily related to either. Eliade's book, The Sacred and the Profane, first made me realize that the sacred sometimes just reflects a need to be at peace with the world. The concept of "home", for example, is an example of sacred that neither implies moral judgment nor spirituality.</p>

[Julie H]

<p>Some Deleuze ... on the abyss that we are circling here ...</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>"Philosophy has not remained unaffected by the general movement that replaced Critique with sales promotion. The simulacrum, the simulation of a packet of noodles, has become the true concept; and the one who packages the product, commodity, or work of art has become the philosopher, conceptual persona, or artist."</p>

<p>[ ... ]</p>

<p>"Philosophy, science, and art want us to tear open the firmament and plunge into chaos."</p>

<p>"In a violently poetic text, Lawrence describes what produces poetry: people are constantly putting up an umbrella that shelters them and on the underside of which they draw a firmament and write their conventions and opinions. But poets, artists, make a slit in the umbrella, they tear open the firmament itself, to let in a bit of free and windy chaos and to frame in a sudden light a vision that appears through the rent -- Wordsworth's spring or Cézanne's apple, the silhouettes of Macbeth or Ahab. Then come the crowd of imitators who repair the umbrella with something vaguely resembling the vision, and the crowd of commentators who patch over the rent with opinions: communication. Other artists are always needed to make other slits, to carry out necessary and perhaps ever-greater destructions, thereby restoring to their predecessors the incommunicable novelty that we could no longer see. This is to say that artists struggle less against chaos (that, in a certain manner all their wishes summon forth) than against the "clichés" of opinion."</p>

<p>"Art is not chaos but a composition of chaos that yields the vision or sensation, so that it constitutes, as Joyce says, a chaosmos, a composed chaos -- neither foreseen nor preconceived. Art transforms chaotic variability into <em>chaoid</em> variety, as in El Greco's black and green-gray conflagrations, for example, or Turner's golden conflagration, or de Staël's red conflagration. Art struggles with chaos but it does so in order to render it sensory, even through the most charming character, the most enchanted landscape (Watteau)."</p>

<p>"Opinion offers us a science that dreams of unity, of unifying its laws, and that still searches today for a community of the four forces. Nevertheless, the dream of capturing a bit of chaos is more insistent, even if the most diverse forces stir restlessly within it. Science would relinquish all the rational unity to which it aspires for a little piece of chaos that it could explore."</p>

</blockquote>

<p> </p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>To Wouter and Charles, it's been a pleasure to come back to the forum and to have this discussion. One of the best for me in a long time, especially because I've been able to process some thoughts and learn a few good things. Also to be exposed to how some others work and think.</p>

<p>I always keep in mind that what I'm doing in these threads is thinking and talking, not making photos. And, when I'm making photos, that's what I'm doing. Hey, maybe I'm spiritual after all! Though my mind does wander on the rare occasions when I peel potatoes.</p>

[charleswood]

<p>I'll take a photograph of a potato then!</p>

[charleswood]

<blockquote>

<p>they tear open the firmament itself, to let in a bit of free and windy chaos and to frame in a sudden light a vision that appears through the rent</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I like that a lot.</p>

<p> </p>

<blockquote>

<p>Then come the crowd of imitators who repair the umbrella with something vaguely resembling the vision, and the crowd of commentators who patch over the rent with opinions: communication.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>The sentence immediately above makes more sense to me if I rewrite it:</p>

<p>And when the rent closes, when the vision subsides, the artists may try and repair the umbrella with something that can only vaguely resemble the original vision, a commentary of patches, the artist patching up the rent with honest opinion and with the effort of communication. The poor artist, perhaps then feeling poorer than even the crowd! Yet the art lives, is something, even though with vision's subsidence, all mere talk of its creation is as a clanging cymbal or banging gong. We're all like cargo cultists, though our particular cult is of words and texts. We only know if we're on to something, or getting close to it, when our words fail. Where our words fail, art begins. What you have given me Julie, is a new admiration for mere words.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><em>"Where our words fail, art begins."</em></p>

<p>Tell that to Steinbeck. :-) (I know you're talking about criticism and opinion and not novel-writing but I couldn't help it!)</p>

<p><em>"all mere talk of its creation is as a clanging cymbal or banging gong"</em></p>

<p>I'll agree only since you include "mere." All "mere" talk can be cheap. Lots of other kind of talk is helpful, constructive, insightful, inspiring, and cathartic.</p>

<p>Good critique is not mere talk. I critique others and talk about art to help my own vision and to start dialogues. Others likely have other reasons. I find honestly critiquing and discussing photos means taking chances -- the chance that I'll step on some toes, the chance I'll be told off, the chance I'll see something superficially or naively, the chance I won't know what I'm talking about, the chance I'll strike on something significant that will mean something to the person receiving the critique, the chance I'll force myself to articulate something and, thereby, see more deeply into a photo. Giving a critique makes me vulnerable, sometimes as vulnerable as sharing my own photos. Good critique from others, in the form of words, has helped me tremendously to develop and grow as a photographer. If I didn't want opinions, which are a genuine kind of reaction and response from viewers, I wouldn't share my photos. I'll take any kind of response a viewer wants to offer. And I won't, as a photographer, shun the viewer or critic who has an opinion, or separate him from my supposedly lofty place on high in the heavens of art.</p>

[charleswood]

<p>Well said Fred, Julie, point taken. I would have, yesterday, said that talking of such private things isn't necessary unto oneself, and that the talking carries risk, and that the private somehow gets drowned out despite the well intended effort. Today, I acknowledge that it's worth the risk and the effort to communicate more fully, and I appreciate that others have been more willing to communicate that way than I. I will not, however, be able to get caught up on the reading, talking, and listening that you all have done!</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Wonderful to hear, Charles. And I look forward to more compelling exchanges. Who'd a thunk a thread about spirituality would have been so appealing to me? Not me!</p>

[Julie H]

<p>Charles, : )</p>

<p>The risk can be private. Think of Emily Dickinson with her unpublished bits of paper.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>In the name of the Bee -<br>

And of the Butterfly -<br>

And of the Breeze - Amen!</p>

<p>— <em>Emily Dickinson</em></p>

</blockquote>

[laur1]

<p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurentiucristofor/6676745937"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7175/6676745937_351350acdb.jpg" alt="" width="375" height="500" /></a></p>

[Julie H]

<p>Laurentiu,</p>

<p>Your picture is a really interesting exploration of the deliberate use of one of the things cameras do really well -- the meaningful exploitation of blur/sharpness (movement). In particular, it's interesting that the cloud-fluffiness of the water doesn't seem very scary; those toe marks look like missiles ... is the water running away from the toes?</p>

<p>I'm purposely ignoring the overt "message" that would be something like 'The Transience of Life' -- because, for me, the message erases the image. To the extent that it is Hallmark-ish, it stops being seen. This is not necessarily a bad thing; Hallmark knows exactly why it uses that kind of image -- it communicates a familiar message almost instantaneously, and there are times when that's exactly what is wanted.</p>

<p>Which, with apologies to Laurentiu (thank you for posting the photo; I truly do like it for the reasons said, and as I hope you'll see, even if explored negatively, may carry this discussion into new, interesting areas) -- leads me to the topic of mythology. Mythology encompasses religion or settled belief. This is the side of "spirituality" that the deleted comment of Keven Laracy: "<em>All this talk of spirituality will lead you to start taking photographs of sun lit mountains, clouds with jesus figures in them, misty water shots, flowers with dew, kids looking skyward and pretty animals and monks and such. I say embrace life in the here and now for what is is, a painful march towards our eventual demise. Once you have all the romance squeezed out of your style you can focus on things that really mater (subject, form, composition) and leave all that maudlin crap to photo magazines with oversaturated colours and HDR</em>" is talking about. Further, and even more negative is this from Roland Barthes:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>"... every day and everywhere, man is stopped by myths, referred by them to this motionless prototype which lives in his place, stifles him in the manner of a huge internal parasite and assigns to his activity the narrow limits within which he is allowed to suffer without upsetting the world: bourgeois pseudo-physis is in the fullest sense a prohibition for man against inventing himself. Myths are nothing but this ceaseless, untiring solicitation, this insidious and inflexible demand that all men recognize themselves in this image, as if for all time."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>LOL . (<em>Okay</em>, Roland, we get that you don't like it ... )</p>

<p>Aside from the fact that the strait-jacket interpretation of myth/religions is not the only one available (and is not mine), I think there is truth in the fact that a myth's -- or this negative formulation of spirituality's -- code of fixed beliefs can work to prevent exploration of a photographs -- can empty them of their "own" meaning; close rather than open minds.</p>

<p>**********************************************</p>

<p>Compare that to the work of Sally Mann with her wet plate collodion photographs of the South. You may be able to get examples by Googling (I don't have time to scan and link). The collodion process gives an uneven, blotched, wavy, irregular ... strange black and white image that is, as she says (of working in the hot-humid South) "... the resulting image often appears to have been breathed onto the negative, a moist refulgence within deepening shadows."</p>

<p>But, to get to how her pictures escape mythology even though swimming in it, first, her description:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>"Flannery O'Connor said the South is Christ-haunted, but I say it's death-haunted. The pictures I took on those awestruck, heartbreaking trips down south were pegged to the familiar corner posts of my conscious being: memory, loss, time, and love. The repertoire of the Southern artist has long included place, the past, family, death, and dosages of romance that would be fatal to most contemporary artists. But the stage on which those are played out is always the Southern landscape, terrible in its beauty, in its indifference."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>That last bit, "terrible in its beauty, in its <em>indifference</em>" is, to me the spirituality that interests me. It is "indifference" that escapes (blows away!) myth. It is "indifference" that is the chaos, that terrifies and attracts, and that salts the "terrible" beauty with mystery and power. Hallmark doesn't do "indifference."</p>

<p>[Aside: Charles, who likes to edit (and I enjoy his edits), if you missed it, Dickinson's poem is an 'edited' version of the trinity.]</p>

<p> </p>

[charleswood]

<p>Yes Julie I did miss that. Don't mistake me for someone well read ;), but not to worry I suppose, no one would so mistake me.</p>

<p>As to myth, if we have new wine we may put it into old wineskins and have it still wine as potent and enduring as new wine in new wineskins, spirit being indifferent to its container, and in Laurentin's 'Facing oblivion' the ocean is there in the picture with its indifference and chaos (though in a cream-soda sort of way). Given that it is foot prints pictured, not two feet: because it is footprints pictured it make me wonder if the walker moved into oblivion or away: though Hallmark-like it would never be a Hallmark because they just wouldn't offer a Contemplating Suicide series of cards: is Laurentin's photograph a Hallmark lampoon? If it is a lampoon of a Hallmark card cover, imagine the fun we could all have scribing the message inside the cover. (I do have a old family friend who writes for Hallmark, has done his/her own line, has an advanced degree in literature or something and was told by my mother that turning those Hallmark phrases is harder than you would think!)</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>http://www.google.com/search?q=footprints+in+sand&client=safari&rls=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=Xs_7Uc3DO-OkiQKt6IC4Bg&ved=0CCwQsAQ&biw=1920&bih=1102</p>

[charleswood]

<p>Well, I did say I didn't read.</p>

[charleswood]

<p>"Myths are nothing but this ceaseless, untiring solicitation, this insidious and inflexible demand that all men recognize themselves in this image, as if for all time."</p>

<p>Yep. That's the problem with telling a story too many times.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>In many cases, myths were innocent and grounded in nature, which appeals to me. Especially early myths are, in many ways, a kind of original art.</p>

<p>The re-telling of myths often comes with era-specific and culture-specific changes, which wind up telling their own story.</p>

<p>I tend to think of the way repetition works in music.</p>

[charleswood]

<p>- Especially early myths are, in many ways, a kind of original art.</p>

<p>I wonder if every prehistoric home had its own <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_figurines">Venus figurine </a>and which by repetition endlessly drove the point of fecundity home.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>It's hard to place other ages into my own moral context. I'm not sure it works terribly well in terms of making the most out of history. Which doesn't mean I turn a blind eye, but might mean I gain understanding, perhaps empathy, and even a little humility if I don't impose my morality backwards in time, especially as far backwards as Venus. Like so many things, nuancing understanding, appreciation, and judgment are a balancing act and a dance.</p>

[charleswood]

<p>Well I don't know if prehistorics winced at repeated messages in their then form the way I wince at proselytizing today, but I can imagine them coming home pretty tired from the hunting and gathering and that damn venus statuary nagging them for the nightly chore may have been a little much at times, all that be fruitful and multiply stuff can be tiresome.</p>

<p>So for Laurentiu's wordless presentation: I don't know now if he was proselytizing by his submission or offering a parody of Hallmark classics. It seems with these footprints in the sand images, that there are in the original worded story supposed to be two sets of footprints. In that story, the message and impact is accomplished by the story's waiting to put the second set of footprints onto the stage until the end of the story, a delay technique.</p>

<p>So what is going on Laurentiu? Am I supposed to think that when someone takes photographs of their footprints that the un-pictured pair's presence are supposed to be assumed by the viewer? This one pair of footprints photographic form: is it becoming a sort of spiritual graffiti marking everywhere that the feet went with the unseen but present 'lord' in their travels? In photography, isn't the delay supposed to be accomplished not by omitting an object altogether , but by including the object and using a visual slight of hand to but momentarily conceal it from the viewer's attention? There isn't given in your photograph even enough room for the missing second set of footprints to be placed. Are we to think of them as beyond camera left, right, if not in the water, or behind you? If in front of you, then the message is that the lord's footsteps are in oblivion, not your intent unless your intent was parody. If behind you, to save you from or push you into oblivion? If no room for the other footprints in the frame, what, the lord is riding on your back? You, I would argue, are better to root those other footprints firmly somewhere that doesn't leave the viewer wondering those sorts of things. By the story when two sets of footprints aren't present, the visible set of footprints are the lords. So literally, even the parody doesn't work, because what you have pictured are the lord's footprints, a kind iconic and not considered universally to be in good taste. Literally, it says that the lord is always carrying you around. Or perhaps "carried away" by your spirituality, so much so that even in a picture, you are almost not even there.</p>

[charleswood]

<p>So here is the question. As photographers, do our photographs always say more about us than we may be aware of? If Laurentiu's photograph contains a message to him, the message may a warning to him that he may be in the throws of a psychological inflation, an identification with message, and his photograph reveals that state, ideally to him, but not necessarily to him. The photograph is an odd arrangement of symbol. By the footprints in the sand story, his picture is of the lord's footprints. Yet the photographer represents them as his own. That is the core of inflation, identification with unconscious psychic complexes, an undifferentiation. Has the symbolic content been arranged, despite the photographer's intent, by some unknown Ouija board guiding his hand, by an unconscious internal operation, to accurately portray his "carried away by something" psychological state? Is this always the case with photography, that some unknown but independently formed intent is present in the photograph's creation? Is there a devil at work in Laurentiu's photograph, forming it into an admonition to him, an admonition towards proper balance within, the true voice of a spiritual authority, a devilish voice? Is his photograph an example of a Freudian slip?</p>

[Julie H]

<p>Charles, now you've made me grumpy. I feel I have to defend Laurentiu, or at least his picture, and I *really* don't want to do that, but I also feel that it needs at least a public defender of some sort. So I'm going to try to get by with an anecdote (so, if nothing else, you'll have been entertained).</p>

<p>I live in the mountains, in a wilderness (relatively speaking) and I often hike by myself. Putting wilderness and hiking and by-myself-ness together, you'll not be surprised to hear that sometimes (maybe two dozen times) I encounter bears. Such was the case (the first in almost two years, I'm sorry to say) about two weeks ago (July 18 to be precise). Going up rough access road that leads to communication towers at the top of a mountain, the bear crossed above me, a short way ahead of me. It did not know I was there; paused mid-road to snuffle something. It was a really big bear -- the second biggest I've ever seen (the biggest was huge, but that's another story). It was also quite close (maybe fifty feet; I strongly suspect, since I hike so much, that <em>they</em> see <em>me</em> all the time and are bored by me and so don't bother to get out of the way). Getting to how this relates to Laurentiu's picture; there are things in life that are simply stop you. No matter how many times I encounter bears in the wild (nothing between me and it), it *always* seems ... strange. They are very "other." If I had had a camera with me (I didn't), I surely would have taken a picture. Yet if I showed it here in this thread on spirituality, it would look kind of silly. A photo interferes, does not "get" that kind of encounter, in its primal simplicity. Seeing the full moon does the same thing to me, and think how cliché and common are photos of it.</p>

<p>I am not ashamed to admit that *all* of the things that Kevin Laracy sneered at, "<em>sun lit mountains, clouds with jesus figures in them, misty water shots, flowers with dew, kids looking skyward and pretty animals and monks and such</em>" also ... often move me (okay, maybe not Jesus in a cloud -- haven't seen that one yet ... ). I just have sense enough to know that the semiotization of an image pretty much kills the effect when mediated by a photograph.</p>

<p>Nevertheless, or because of my empathy for what I suspect Laurentiu felt, on seeing those footprints real-time, in the sand, I defend at least the making of his picture (read the Flickr comments to for background).</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><em>"As photographers, do our photographs always say more about us than we may be aware of?"</em></p>

<p>Single photos, without other knowledge of the photographer, probably not. I tend to think of bodies of work, or at least selected photos in a group or series, as revealing more about the photographer.</p>

<p>And yet, a single critique, such as yours, can reveal a lot about the critic, which is why critique can be so important and engaging. Thanks for that and for making yourself vulnerable.</p>

<p>I assume my photos reveal stuff about me, more as a collection than as individuals, and I generally assume I'm not completely self-aware so there must be things I can learn about myself even from my own photos. Making photos gives me an outlet. Not only to reveal stuff about me but to reveal stuff about my world and some of the folks around me. To make visible what might otherwise be or seem invisible or barely visible.</p>

<p>But it's a revelation in pictures, which can make it more suggestive than definitive, often more figurative than literal. That's nice for me who, though I have long used words to describe things, found words wanting. It's the imprecision, when it comes to figuring out meaning or expression, of the photographic world I like. The looseness, the open-endedness, the intrigue. It can be the show without the tell.</p>

[charleswood]

<p>Certainly if Laurentiu had with his picture included as personal and clear an explanation of his thoughts and feelings as Julie I wouldn't have ranted. Fred's invitation for us to post photographs was an invitation to take the discussion of spirituality and photography forward with photographic examples and our own words about the photographs, a suggestion offered to help us with our difficulty in deciding what the word spirituality meant to us personally.</p>

<p>Here are Laurentiu's own words, contained in his earlier contributions to this thread:</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>Yes, but that is no excuse for not attempting to explain what they mean to *you* in a way that others can understand your point of view.</p>

<p>I am not against "discussion" - I am just against discussion that is lacking method and is beating around the bush instead of trying to figure out what's in it.</p>

<p>If this thread is about sharing knowledge, it can do a better job about it.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Laurentiu, What is your excuse "for not attempting to explain what they mean to *you* in a way that others can understand your point of view"? What's in the bush of your own photograph so that we don't have to beat all around it? How might you better share knowledge, to show us how to do a better job of it? Because in my bush beating Julie has become grumpy, and together we must own our effect on her and take the thread forward.</p>

<p>It surprised me that he didn't include commentary with the posting of his own picture. How read his intent for so doing other than as just another example of his offering criticisms of his fellow contributors? Beats me.</p>

<p> </p>