Images of Eden
1983-84
Photographs made in Milwaukee Parks
Note: the Images of Eden blog project before you now is a revised
version of the original 2010-11 blog project. In August 2021 I re-
wrote the Introduction, added images #14-17 and an Epilogue.
This project is part one of a two-part project that was influenced by and is offered in hommage to the great photographer, Eugene Atget (1857-1927), who between 1901 and 1927 photographed the things and places in Paris and its surrounding region with the intention of creating a visual archive that would help future generations appreciate the history and artifacts of the great city and the Ancien Regime.
I began work on this project in 1983 just after the Museum of Modern Art had published its third book (in a series of four) devoted to Atget’s life work. Volume three, entitled The Ancien Regime, is dedicated to the photographs Atget made of Parks and Gardens and their monuments, structures, water systems, trees, etc. I especially love the photographs Atget made in the gardens of Versailles, Saint-Cloud, and Seaux.
The first two volumes in MoMA's series were focused on the themes Old France and The Art of Old Paris (the forth and final volume was entitled Modern Times). I had always been drawn to the old industrial buildings and places in Milwaukee, and after seeing MoMA's series of publications that explored the major thematic aspects of Atget's work I felt inspired to create a follow-up project to Images of Eden with a series of photographs of "Old Milwaukee" entitled City Places.
from the project "City Places"
The two projects were an attempt to explore Atget's style of picture making and at the same time create a poetic document of the things and Places in Milwaukee that especially attracted me as a photographer.
You will notice that I will be using the term Place frequently in my writing about the projects I created between 1977 and 1989. I invite you to visit my blog link Makom : the "Milwaukee Place" Photography Projects which will explain how I discovered the word Makom, what it means, and a list of the projects that were made in which this concept of Place was a dominant theme in my creative process. It should also help to clarify what I mean by the term "poetic document."
Regarding Eden, Public Parks & Gardens
Eden is God's eternal creation, Heaven on Earth; a divine Place, a Terrestrial Paradise; a Place of timeless beauty, love and joy. Public Parks and Gardens, on the other hand, are calculated attempts by designers and landscape architects to create a three dimensional picturesque illusion of Heaven on Earth constructed with trees, bushes, stones, ponds, streams, bridges, paths, etc. using conventions of composition based usually in 19th century painting and drawing. If you were to stand in just the right place in a well designed park you might see a picture-perfect scene that perhaps would invoke within you a feeling (or remembrance) of Adam and Eve's Paradise.
Atget’s photographs of the parks and gardens in and around Paris were not so conceptually made; his picture-making stance or "style" was almost consistently straight forward, unaffected, descriptive. His intention, I believe, was to create a visual record or document of his subject matter for future study and use. Although Atget clearly possessed a refined visual intelligence, and an exceptional intuitive ability to distill the essence of the things or places he photographed, the majority of his photographs look like the product of a rather naive person.
Some of Atget's pictures, on the other hand, might appear to be intentionally romantic. The lens on his old view camera (which would cause flare and wide angle distortions), and the old films he used (which created halation) would sometimes produce an optical drama in his photographs or a mystical glow in the highlight areas of his pictures that created an image of dramatic pictorial effect--an effect which he may not have intended or wanted. Certainly the things he photographed had their own inherent extraordinary beauty, romance and historical aura. So it's not surprising why Atget's images made a century ago continue to fascinate us today.
Indeed, there were remarkable moments in Atget's process of documenting Old Paris and its surrounding regions in which his direct kind of seeing, the things he photographed and the equipment and materials he used would conjoin in such a magical way that his photographs unveiled something more than just objective information. Many sophisticated viewers of his photographs have spoken eloquently about a haunting spiritual or ghost-like presence they experienced in certain of his images; or an atmosphere of meaning that was invoked in their contemplations of a particular photograph that approached a kind of poetic transcendence. Enough of these kinds of photographs do exist in the visual archive he left behind after his death that makes one pause, and wonder if in fact Atget had intended to make these kinds of poetic images at times.
Atget's park and garden photographs inspired me to look more carefully, more consciously as I wandered through Milwaukee's Public Parks. In the process of moving through so many wonderful and different park spaces I would at times encounter the landscape designer's manufactured "perfect views;" and at other times I experienced moments of personal revelation of Place: the genius or spirit or essence of a space that--it seemed to me--could only be attributed to grace.
As I progressed in my process of making photographs in the Milwaukee Parks, I came to the understanding that I wanted to make photographs that honored both the natural and the manufactured picturesque beauty of the parks. And, at the same time, I also wanted to make images that invoked a palpable presence of that which I had experienced, seen and felt in a particular Park Place. In other words, I wanted to make images aligned with the concept of Makom, photographs that unveiled the essential Truth that belies a park's cultivated-pictorial facade. To say it in yet another way, I wanted to make images that functioned for me as True, living Symbols.
Eden, truly speaking, in its most essential aspect, exists in everything in this world . . . if only we could see with the eye of the Heart. Though the best of parks may symbolize Eden and its corresponding mythic, literary, religious, spiritual-philosophical constructs, I wanted to make photographs in the parks that, among other things, unveiled the numinous Unitary reality that belies any and all outer-world appearances. It is an expansive intention that I had set for myself in a thesis paper I wrote ten years earlier as a graduate student.
I wondered if my intentions for my Park project had become too grand. Would it be possible to honor the wonderful parks in Milwaukee as the beautiful places they were in themselves, and at the same time honor the transcendent Place that parks symbolize by making images that functioned for me as True, living symbols . . . even as I self-consciously attempted to explore and apply nineteenth century picturesque conventions to my photographs used by the early park designers?
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When I showed my Images of Eden photographs to friends some thought I was trying to make ironic statements about the Picturesque. But that didn't seem right to me. After having read several books and articles about nineteenth century park and garden design, and the religious, mythic and literary themes associated Eden or Paradise in relation to parks and gardens, I had been able to recognize that my experience of photographing for this project consisted of a rather complicated psychological-imaginative act in which I would become "transported" to multiple and quite different Imaginal "places" simultaneously.
I was not photographing with my intellect alone; I do not consider my Images of Eden photographs as conceptual works of art. When I was experiencing those magical moments of seeing within the Parks, moments in which I was experiencing the "Place," I would be transported to "Atget's world," the parks and gardens of the Ancien Regime in and around Paris; and, at the same time, I would be transported to a much deeper interior reality--that most sacred Place of all--which exists deep within the Heart of every human being.
I had unquestionably become enchanted by Atget's photographs, and the things and places he photographed, and enchantment is one of the intended pleasures that the best gardens and parks promise enthusiastic visitors. As one slowly walked through a beautiful, picturesque park one would (hopefully) "fall" under a spell, become transformed by the magical delight of an ideally beautiful place.
However, the enchantment of a park's picturesque facade--a thinly calculated veil of artifice that might become quickly dispelled if one looked too closely, too deeply--holds but a frail promise compared to something profoundly Real, essentially True. I wanted my photographs to unveil "the Place."
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Of course many different kinds of people visit parks, for many different reasons. The experience of beauty or meaning in a public park must necessarily remain in the eyes, minds and hearts of each and every visitor, and in their particular personal needs, expectations and momentary desires. Indeed, Visitors are temporary inhabitants of a place. When I was photographing Milwaukee's Public Parks I did not feel like a visitor, just the opposite, for I entered a heightened state of awareness, similar to a meditative state, that made it possible to more consciously sense the presence of a "timeless" Truth, that Eternal Eden which exists in a numinous realm beyond the brief, illusionary escape from the temporal problems we humans face every day in the apparent world of space-time dualistic reality.
To summarize, I came to understood that my intention wasn't to photograph the parks themselves, or the landscape architect's pictorial illusions. Most of the images you will be seeing here represent moments of feeling and seeing--through the medium of photography--in which nature, culture and grace conjoined to manifest an Imaginal unveiling of the essence or spirit of that Place which existed simultaneously in the things I photographed and deep within myself.
After all is said and done . . . after the Fall . . . it is one's experience of seeing with the Eye of the Heart that makes it possible to recognize and understand the difference between Truth and illusion.
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Note: Several other photography projects I created between 1975 and 1989 contain images made in Milwaukee Parks. In the Epilogue that follows my presentation of the Images of Eden photographs I will write more about how the Milwaukee Parks influenced or became a presence in my creative process.
The Photographs
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1 Images of Eden, Island 10x10" gelatin silver print
2 Images of Eden, Flowering Tree 10x10" gelatin silver print
3 Images of Eden, Bridge to Paradise 10x10" gelatin silver print
4 Images of Eden 10x10" gelatin silver print
5 Images of Eden, Adam and Eve 10x10" gelatin silver print
6 Images of Eden, Young Boy Looking Closely 10x10" gelatin silver print
7 Images of Eden, Dark Tree Cross 10x10" gelatin silver print
8 Images of Eden, White Tree, Dark Forest and Moon 10x10" gelatin silver print
9 Images of Eden, Pond and Waterfall 110x10" gelatin silver print
10 Images of Eden, Eden Meadow, arching tree 10x10" gelatin silver print
11 Images of Eden, White Pole, Stormy sky 10x10" gelatin silver print
12 Images of Eden, Luminous Fog 10x10" gelatin silver print
13 Images of Eden, Emerging Landscape 10x10" gelatin silver print
14 Images of Eden, Winter: Ice skating pond, two benches, snow, fog 10x10" gelatin print
15 Images of Eden, Winter: Leaning Light Pole in snow and fog 10x10" gelatin silver print
16 Images of Eden, Winter: Limbless tree in snow and fog 10x10" gelatin silver print
17 Images of Eden, Winter: Tree with remaining leaves in snow and fog 10x10" gelatin silver print
Epilogue
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The Milwaukee Parks
Their Presence in other Photography Projects
(Note: in August, 2021 I was asked to write about the impact Milwaukee Parks had on me and my photography. In response to the question, I have re-written my Introduction (above) and added this Epilogue.)
I came to Milwaukee in 1975, with my wife Gloria and our two young children Shaun and Jessica, to create a Photography Submajor in the Art Department at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. We lived the next 33 years in an old victorian house near Locust Avenue, just three blocks from the University and only seven blocks from Lake Park and Lake Michigan.
When I was being interviewed for the teaching position at UW-Milwaukee I had an important experience as I stood on a park bluff looking into the deep space over Lake Michigan. I wrote about that experience in my Introduction to the 1981-82 project The Lake Series. Every photograph in the project was made from the shores or bluffs of Milwaukee Parks.
The Lake project is part of a series of seven major projects I've identified as The "Milwaukee Place" Photography Projects.
The concept Makom was at the very heart of these seven projects. For a more detailed account of the concept, how I discovered the concept, and more, visit this link Makom and the "Milwaukee Place" Projects.
Besides The Lake Series and the Images of Eden project, the Milwaukee Parks were a major influence on the River Songs project (1988-89), my very first color photography project. All of the photographs were made along the Milwaukee River which was just a few blocks from our house. The River, between North Avenue and East Silver Spring Drive, was quite a magical and very secluded place in 1988-89, when I was working on the project. Most of the River Song photographs were made along the shores of Estabrook Park and Riverside Park. In recent years Riverside Park has become a very active and highly visible (nationally recognized) place in Milwaukee thanks to the wonderful and important renewal programs initiated and facilitated by Milwaukee's very special Urban Ecology Center.
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I made many important photographs in the Milwaukee Parks during the years 1975-89 that were included in projects not directly related to the "Milwaukee Place" series. For example, Gloria and I loved taking our kids to the parks in those first years we lived in Milwaukee when the kids were young. When I was working on my first major photography project after our 1975 arrival in Milwaukee, The Persephone Series (1975-76), several of its key images which were made during our family visits to Milwaukee Parks.
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I photographed people for the 1982 project, Dream Portraits, which followed the Lake Series and preceded the Images of Eden project. Several of the Dream Portraits were made in Milwaukee Parks, especially those which are most frequented by lots of people, such as Milwaukee's Lake Shore Parks, Summerfest Park, and Whitnall Park.
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I feel profoundly grateful for the 33 years I lived and taught and photographed in Milwaukee. The Parks and the Lake were a constant and intimate part of my family life experience and my creative process in photography and they remain today inseparable, essential aspects of Milwaukee, the Place.
Gloria and I now live in Canandaigua, NY. When we visit Milwaukee to spend time with friends and family we always spend time in the parks with our grandson, River, and we always drive by the Lake every chance we get. The Lake and its bordering parks became like True friends to me when I was working on the Lake and Eden projects, and that feeling has never waned.
Related Projects:
Makom and the "Milwaukee Place" projects
Makom and the "Milwaukee Place" projects
Symbol
Welcome Page to The Departing Landscape website which includes the complete hyperlinked listing of my online photography projects dating back to the 1960's, my resume, contact information, and more.
Note: The Images of Eden project, completed in 1984, consists of black and white silver gelatin prints, image size 10x10" on 11x14 paper. In 2010-11 I created a digital version of the project for my blog TheDepartingLandscape.blogspot.com The first digital version of Images of Eden included only13 images, and an Introduction.
This second version of the blog project Images of Eden was revised in mid August, 2021. The revision includes four additional images (#14-17), the Epilogue, and the original 2010-11 blog Introduction has undergone a major re-writing.
(The most recent revision was made August 19, 2021)
