Steven D. Foster ~ Photographs : The Departing Landscape website

Welcome to The Departing Landscape website
Steven D. Foster
updated 2-16-2013

Visual Poem for the Departing Landscape

Click on images once, twice to enlarge
Click on titles under the images to see more images

Latest website additions (2-16-13)
click here    "An Imaginary Book" The Complete Collection of Islamic sacred art inspired projects
click here   Book Project, 1966, made for Nathan Lyons Home Workshop, revised & gifted
click here   The Green Light of Sufi Travel  Chapter IX of "An Imaginary Book"
click here    Out of Bounds Radio interview with Tish Pearlman Feb 2012 (search archive: Foster)
click here Exhibition, Spectrum Gallery, Rochester, NY January- Feb, 2012
click here   Poetry Video by David Travis: using my Triadic Poems (swan) you may have to sign in to Tumbler
click here   Music video "I'm Not Thinking About You" ( images from Triadic Memories project)


Welcome to The Departing Landscape website which is dedicated to my creative process in photography. I have provided below a list of hyperlinked titles of photography projects I've completed dating back to the 1960's, and other related materials. Each project webpage contains images and texts, links to related projects, reference materials, etc.

This link Steven D. Foster  provides contact information, my resume, biographical articles, interviews, gallery representation, and more. If you are interested in the purchase of images you see on this website, contact Spectrum Gallery, Bill Edwards, Director.

This link A Personal History of Photography offers a personal chronological narrative, including a visual sampling, of most of photography projects. It begins with my childhood photography epiphany and continues into the present. Throughout the 45 year history of work presented in this website, it will become apparent that I have not been the type of artist who has early established a stylistic mode of working and spent a lifetime embellishing the theme with gradual variations! Rather, I have followed the lead of my intuitions and impulses and explored a full range of ideas and techniques. But two themes have persisted: the influence of music upon my work; and the pursuit of what I call the Symbolic Photograph.

Music Inspired Projects
Many of my photography projects, beginning as far back as the late 1960's, have been influenced by music. Since 1999 I have produced three large projects in response to the music of American composer Morton Feldman (1926-1987), who taught and composed in Buffalo, NY the last 17 years of his life. Please visit The Departing Landscape Project & The Triadic Memories Project (both are collections of separate but related thematic projects, each with their own dedicated webpage). The Garage Series was my first Feldman inspired project. The three images directly below are from each of these projects. To learn about Morton Feldman and his music, and to hear excerpts of a late Feldman composition for solo piano click on this link: Morton Feldman.

The Departing Landscape

The Triadic Memories Project

Garage Series

A Feldman-inspired Cross-Disciplinary Proposal

Writer Clark Lunberry, and concert pianist Louie Goldstein are joining me in a collaborative cross-disciplinary triadic offering consisting of an exhibition of my Feldman-inspired photographs, a world-class piano concert of Feldman's piano music by Goldstein, and an insightful lecture by Lunberry about my Feldman-inspired photographs, Feldman’s music and the relationships between them. To learn more visit Images ~Music ~Text.

Other Music Inspired Projects
Other composers and musicians have inspired or influenced my work, such as Charles Ives, William Bolcom, Frederic Chopin, Steve Lacy and Thelonious Monk. Please visit: Other Music Inspired Projects.

Most Recent Work: Four-fold Symmetrical Photographs

In May, 2011 my wife Gloria and I traveled to Turkey. In part the trip was initiated by my desire to understand better how the music of Morton Feldman was inspired by the Turkish rugs he had collected. Though I am not an Islamist I was deeply moved by the Islamic Sacred Art I saw in the mosques, museums and a shrine we visited, and I was deeply moved by the haunting sounds of the Islamic Call to Prayer which I often heard several times each day, and the concert of sacred music and dance we experienced in Turkey. My experiences and my study of Islamic sacred art which followed the trip, have inspired a series of nine core projects, a Preface and a webpage dedicated to selected text excerpts by Islamic Scholars. I have collected all these projects under this one linked title: "An Imaginary Book."

Symmetrical Photograph from Celestial Gardens

Protecting the Natural World

In the summer of 2011, thanks to the insistent encouragement of my wife Gloria, I suddenly became aware that the part of New York State we are living in, known as the Finger Lakes area, was on the brink of becoming an industrial wasteland. Gov. Cuomo and the State's DEC seemed determined to rush into New York State and suck up the natural gas that lies buried deep in our Marcellus and Utica Shale. Accessing the gas would require an explosively violent, toxic, environmentally devastating extraction process called hydraulic fracturing. On the morning of October 14, 2011, after seeing a rainbow hovering over the beautiful meadow behind our property in the Finger Lakes area, I decided to begin creating a website NoToHydrofracking.blogspot.com/ which would contain essays, environmental websites, senate testimonies, newspaper articles . . . any important information that would help myself and others to understand the dangers of hydrofracking to our environment, our health, our fresh water supplies, the value of our personal property, our growing tourism, wine making and organic farming industries. . . our entire way of life. As an artist I had in the past consciously stayed away from making political statements in my art. But creating the hydrofracking website inspired me to make several photography projects which have become part of that website. Visit The Hydrofraking Suite, a collection of four related projects. Hydrofracking is occurring throughout the United States; it impacts in horrible ways entire communities, whole environments, and because it destroys the earth's ozone layers, is adding to the growing problems associated with climate change or global warming. Hydrofracking is yet another symptom of our alienation from and disregard for the natural world, thus I've decided to include the hydrofracking website and the Suite of photography projects to my earlier project that poetically addresses the desacralization of the natural world: please visit The Departing Landscape.

The Hydrofracking Suit: Symmetrical Photographs

List of Hyperlinked Project Titles:

"An Imaginary Book" Spring 2011 - Winter 2013

The Complete Collection of Projects

inspired by Islamic Sacred Art & Knowledge

Preface

The Nine Core Projects:

Prayer Stones

Celestial Gardens

Abstract Symmetrical Photographs

Crystalline Paradise: Moorish Spain

The Tree of Life

Infinite Beauty: Images of never-ending continuity . . .

Ta'wil : Unveiling the "Hidden Treasure"

The Light of Creation

The Green Light of Sufi Mystical Travel

The Five Peripheral Projects

Peripheral Projects

Also

Sacred Art, Sacred Knowledge A collection of text excerpts by Islamic scholars

The Hydrofacking Suite 2011-12

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The Departing Landscape Project 2007-12
An Introduction

    Thematic Subgroups for the Departing Landscape Project:
Welcome-Introduction page
    Faint Photographs
    Portraits, Faces & Figures
    Windswept Landscapes and Memorials
    Visual Poems for the Departing Landscape
    Combines (Departing Landscape)
    In The Woods
    The Persephone Series
    The Abstract Photographs
    Poetry for The Departing Landscape
   The Hydrofracking Suite Four related sets of photographs


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Triadic Memories Project 2003-07
An Introduction

    Thematic Subgroups for the Triadic Memories Project:
Welcome, Introduction page
    Repetition Triads ~ Continuums ~ Vertical Thoughts
    Chromatic Fields
    Gridline Photographs
    Abstract Photographs: Objects & Interiors
    Triangulated Photographs
    Circled Photographs
    Visual Poems / Triadic Memories
    Combines (Triadic Memories)

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The Garage Series 1999-2001 / 2006

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Other Music Inspired Projects

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Costa Rica 2010

The Hudson River Valley 2010

Windswept Landscapes and Memorials 2008-10

The Meadow 2008

Italy 2oo7

Thing Centered Photographs 2003-07 / 1992-93

The Garage Series 2006 / 1999-2000

Studies 1994 - 2000

Monk's Quirky Music (2011 - selected images from Studies)