yeffe

<p>"I don't know about Jung re wolves etc, but I do know that human beings derive great pleasure both from causing pain in others and from self-righteousness. I suspect wolves don't have those particular joys, and perhaps it's no accident that they don't go to church."<br>

I suspect the life of the (actual) wolf is grim and difficult. But the wolf as a human archetype of greed, selfishness and unconcern is not the wolf of the wild. The sublimated psychic wolf may be a serial marriage wrecker, a betraying business partner, a schoolyard bully. It's the entity that would lead us into social ostricisation for hitting on one's daughter in law, or jail for things like DUI.<br>

"just a story made up to account for random synaptic triggering."<br>

Like when I seem to be dreaming for hours about waterfalls only to slowly realize I've got to pee.</p>

<p>"I don't know about Jung re wolves etc, but I do know that human beings derive great pleasure both from causing pain in others and from self-righteousness. I suspect wolves don't have those particular joys, and perhaps it's no accident that they don't go to church."<br>

I suspect the life of the (actual) wolf is grim and difficult. But the wolf as a human archetype of greed, selfishness and unconcern is not the wolf of the wild. The sublimated psychic wolf may be a serial marriage wrecker, a betraying business partner, a schoolyard bully. It's the entity that would lead us into social ostricisation for hitting on one's daughter in law, or jail for things like DUI.<br>

"just a story made up to account for random synaptic triggering."<br>

Like when I seem to be dreaming for hours about waterfalls only to slowly realize I've got to pee.</p>

<p>I'd like to amplify my remarks about wretchedness. That is that suffering, and more important, the voluntary release or confession of self-pity about one's suffering, is often seen as the WAY. Jung said he was particularly impressed with Catholicism with its plethora of garish and masochistic numinastic symbols. Ralph Hattersley, of Discover Yourself Through Photography paints a grim picture of self-discovery. It's about causing 'the wolf' to suffer. The wolf being our selfish needs to see ourselves as much better than we are. Of course we suffer when shown the mirror.</p>

<p>"I'm not sure about the existence of a "child within" or the "helpless" experience of children. Interesting ideas, nonetheless."<br>

All of my comments are necessarily biased A. because I'm no expert and B. I pick my metaphoric flowers where they seem most applicable.<br>

I have been intensely involved with the development of four grandchildren over the past eight years and I've noticed that when adults 'lose it' they act like two-year-olds. Seriously, Jung said of the opposite poles of Anima and Animus, that a man behaving at his worst will resemble nothing so much as a nasty woman and that a woman's worst behavior seemed to him a wretched display of masculine caricature. I think Jung felt that underdeveloped areas of the psyche, like anima in a man and animus in a woman, express themselves frequently in a juvenile and petulant (underdeveloped) manner.<br>

" Generosity implies the deliberate abandonment of "leather skin" ...and I think "primative urges" is too theatric .."<br>

How did I miss the virtues of openness, generosity and loving vision? Thanks for the reminder. It's difficult in my experience to be any kind of serious explorer, artistic or otherwise. Interesting quote from the rabbi. I have only the highest respect for the freighted film clips I sometimes experience in dreams or in musings. It's also valid for me to say that one lesson I learned is 'as above so below' Wretchedness is one extreme on the ever-turning wheel.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>My dreams (and by extension anyone's dreams) have sometimes been more stage-directed, art-directed and accurate down to the smallest detail than any visual or written art I've experienced can ever be. If the word 'soul' is too grandiose (and I believe it is) then consider these brief insights the call of a powerfully creative entity within the human psyche that cannot express its self directly. That's because (IMHO) this component of the psyche is working on the same assumptions as that of a two-year-old. That child within us experiences life in the raw and frightening form it did when we were helpless. It takes a hardy and leather-skinned ego to recognize and take primitive creative urges to the point of communicating with other people. <br>

That's how art works in my view. If you believe otherwise, I'd like to hear your theory.</p>

 

<p>Since my college years I've felt strongly that Jung's map of the human soul is closest a Westerner has got to utilizing the Eastern models of thought that go back thousands of years. Ralph Hattersley wrote a particularly unpleasant book in the '70s titled Discover Yourself Through Photography. It is unpleasant because the principal discovery he'd have us make is that of the prevalence in our personalities of what he calls the Wolf and Jung calls the Shadow. You've got to suffer if you want to sing the blues. Hesse's Steppenwolf is an even better reference to applied Jungianism. </p>

<p>Seven Gs sounds like a lot. But look at the start-up costs of even the smallest business venture like a small restaurant and you're talking $50 to 100 thousand. In other words, if you're using your Leica as a business tool you're not really investing that much. But who's using Leicas for business aside from a few professional photojournalists?<br>

Most of us Leica lovers are conducting an expensive private pursuit of photographic excellence and panache. Let's not forget that many of the most memorable photos of the past hundred years or so were made with what would now be considered substandard equipment. Do you really think that Robert Frank's The Americans would have been that much better if he had used a Noctilux or an aspherical lens perched on an M9?</p>

<p>I've got some Leica M stuff I just love. I also have a backlog of undeveloped b/w film and unscanned negatives. If I know I've got to see it before next Summer, I'll use my D60. The rest will probably end up for my heirs to chuck or curate as they wish.<br>

Bottom line is that when the experience of photography is paramount I'll use a film camera. If the picture is paramount, I'll use whatever fits my purpose, probably my DSLR.</p>

<p>Find, if you can, Ralph Hattersley's Discover Yourself Through Photography.<br>

His exercises are spiritual in outlook. You don't make pictures so much for their intrinsic value as for what insights they, and the experience of making them suggest. Hattersley's approach is Jungian almost to a fault (Jerry Uelesmann is a heavy contributor of images).<br>

Out of print.</p>

<p>"an absence of such wonderful innocent photos"<br>

Excepting photos of the poor and developing-world people there is no innocence left in our public media. The 'innocence' of the simpler time I grew up in was wallpaper only, covering up all kinds of social ills. In those times, judges often kicked spousal abuse cases out of court, deeming it a private family matter. Pedophilia was more likely to be swept under the rug (often with the excuse that 'putting the child on the stand will damage him further'). The absence of real or troubled or minority figures in mass media ensured that we privileged whites could keep on believing in the goodness and fairness of society because that's the one scene depicted on the wall.</p>

<p>"Sure there are excesses and the media happily pick up on that but in my experience most people/parents use their intellect and common sense."<br>

Though the guys that get caught in those well-publicized decoy cases seem really stupid and bereft of common sense, it would do everyone else well to abandon common sense as well and embrace paranoia. It amounts to a 'chilling effect,' not out-and-out censorship but an understanding that to jail but for the grace of G-d go I. But who's going to be the first to raise his hand to protect 'innocent' photographers? </p>

<p>"Also, don't go into playgrounds or areas with kids by yourself and a camera- its asking for trouble- and I mean a black eye. I don't even like the occasional loner just sitting in the playground- its creepy."</p>

<p>Creepy it is. One of the benefits of grandparenting is having a good, clean, and sober reason for being in the playground and actively enjoying having the children around. But it is also agreed upon by law enforcement officials that most pedophilia takes place with a trusted family member or close friend. Another instance where perception trumps reality.</p>

<p>We have indeed witnessed the demise of the ability to photograph children, no matter how tastefully, without hassle. I've had first-hand experience with this when a nasty piece of work, an investigator for the local DA's office, had me investigated by the state attorney general for taking a picture of my nude and sleeping grandson at a party. The reporting investigator literally lost every friend she had in a large group containing only child protective workers over this. Shows how outrageous her actions were. Worse yet, this person had only two weeks earlier volunteered very intimate details of her private life to me over drinks. <br>

The investigating detectives said you wouldn't believe how large this problem of pedophilia and computerized child porn is. I have to take their word on it as I couldn't (and wouldn't) be able to find such a web site if my life depended on it.<br>

The world of child porn enforcers, and this may be shared with officers who investigate other crimes as well, feel that every human being is eminently corruptible. As if drinking a lot of Coca-Cola as a child could lead to adult alcoholism. It's a grim view of human nature, but it rings true in cases of political and business corruption. I'd be very disturbed if I found this to be true in a person known to me. What about the cops themselves? How many showers must they take before having dinner with their own kids?</p>

<p>If you can find a copy of Ralph Hattersley's 'Discover Yourself Through Photography,' you might find it interesting. He condenses his classroom exercises into chapters that, even if you don't carry them out, have a lot of value to impart. This is a book that could equally apply to almost any other art form. The focus is gathering self-awareness as one expresses herself.</p>

<p>" I got someone to take a Polaroid of me in front of a photo of Neil<br /> Armstrong planting the flag on the surface."</p>

<p>And thus began all the wacky conspiracy theories maintiaining the whole NASA program was dummied-up behind the locked doors of a Hollywood sound stage. (-;</p>

<p>Here's my contribution. The end of the roll light strike helped create this portrait. It works for me as the darkness poses questions: 'Is death rolling in on the subject as he smokes a toxic cigarette?' 'Does the smoking matter at all given the onslaught of blackness?'</p>

<p>Others might see it as a flawed attempt but I accept it as an accidentally-conceived image charged with more meaning as a result ofthe accident<br>

Also see:<br>

.<a href="http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/trotsky.html">http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/trotsky.html</a></p>

<p>This photo has suffered the ravages of time, yet the scrapes in the emulsion enhance the overall message of Trotsky's intensity.</p>

<div></div>

<p>Check out the NY Times' op-ed page today, In it Oliver Martin, Chief news and features editor for the journal Nature, goes beyond the cliché 'little blue bubble in space' to meditate on the meaning of this famous and culture-shifting image.</p>

Egglestons's work has long been superceded by the photo-realist painters. Their large canvases are much more lifelike, albiet cleaned up, than Eggleston's simple statements of fact. he was shooting color at a time before museums and galleries had established a market among collectors for them.

I'd like to have been a fly on the wall during discussions in that era about what color photography is and represents. Mostly, we still don't know.

" It seems as though the activity of taking the photograph is more important than the actual image, just to know there is

a record of an event is enough."

 

This has been true ever since the democratization of photography by the Kodak #1. Only after being introduced to the

experience of: 'You Take The Picture...We Do The Rest' could the above behavior have flourished. It's a fascinating

psycho-social question that I agree can use some statistical analysis I can think of some survey questions I'd like to get

some answers on:

 

When you're in a group do you feel impelled to frame the event either mentally, or with a camera device? Do you feel a

tension between observing/chronicling and taking part in the event? Do you spend time with the photos?

"Question: What percent of humanity even saw Smith's work or that of Riis?"

 

What percentage of humanity know that The Wizard of Oz was an allegory concerning monetary policy?

 

Doesn't matter: We have child labor laws among other human welfare improvements and a dollar backed by the full faith

and credit of....our creditors.

Last one for now<div></div>

one more<div></div>

Another from the same series<div></div>

One of a few recent preliminary scans of HP5+ developed in Thornton's.<div></div>

She's not exactly an artist, though her photos did make a wide impact.

 

She's more like a minor participant in which the taking of pictures was one of a number of humiliations inflicted on the subjects. The real impetus in bringing the photos to light was the cell-phone/digital communications revolution, a social revolution that slipped between Cheney and Rumsfeld's sticky fingers. No wonder, when high officials have to give up email and Blackberry (as will Obama). There's got to be a way around that.

 

Harman, seeking rehabilitation, is trying to get in front of it with a sub-variety of: "I was conducting my own investigation."