Steven D. Foster ~ Photographs : The Departing Landscape website: Part III - Still Life 10: The House Remodeled

Still Life Chapter 10

Walkabout Part III The House Remodeled

Studies IV April, 2014

Photographs Inspired by Giorgio Morandi

Fig.#1 Morandi inspired photograph, Still Life, Chapter 10, Walkabout Part III

For an Introduction to the Still Life project and the links to all of its chapters visit: Still Life

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Walkabout Part I
Walkabout Part II Journey to Memphis

Introduction

The photographs for this third part of my Walkabout Still Life project were made in an old house which is in the process of being remodeled. I have visited the house twice and published those images here in April, 2014. Images were added May 8, 2014. I hope to be adding more images later. ~ If you have not read the introductory text to Part I of the Walkabout project I encourage you to do that.

It has been tempting to make pictures that would document the process of transformation that the old house has been undergoing. Before and after pictures are interesting; seeing things change over time is interesting; the power of the photographic medium to describe and report is very seductive. But I have resisted these approaches for another pictorial ideal, for something more.

To remodel is to make over, reconstruct, transform. When we transform the house we live in we are also transforming ourselves. To make over implies a searching for something more; transformation implies a journey of the spirit. A Journey implies a narrative line, but my photographs to not provide a narrative in time. My picture making goals have much less to do with the house and more to do with Morandi's aesthetic ideals.

Architecture was important to Morandi and inspired him in many ways; I have written about this in my introduction to Part I. However his work was never about architecture. Morandi was seeking another higher order of visual invention and revelation. In the same way that architecture served Morandi as a point of departure for a more transcendent kind of meaning, the old house I have been photographing has served me as a point of departure for pictures striving to be in alignment with Morandi's inspiring ideals.

My intention is to make photographs that function as symbols, images that unveil essence, that are imbued with presence. Symbols have the power to transform us, take us on a journey into the deepest abodes of our own Self.

As in all the other chapters of my Still Life project, I have taken liberties in the way that I use Morandi's work as inspiration for my photographs. There is a secret visual language being spoken through Morandi's images that I am studying and learning how to apply to my own photogrphic vision. I am trying to articulate a highly concentrated formal reduction of content in my photographs, while at the same time allowing the mystery of light to have it's presence. And I am exploring the spatial relationships between things, and generating visual structures within my images that have been inspired by what I have seen in Morandi's work.

An image that functions as a symbol initiates a silent conversation within one's Self. It's an ineffable experience akin to looking into a mirror and recognizing a hidden part of one's self. In that moment of recognition there is an awakening, a new sense of aliveness; something like an internal celebration is initiated because that which we have been seeking in the enormous space outside of ourselves has been discovered, through the symbolic image, within one's own Heart.

Our "house" - our Self - is enormous, and yet it is filled with intimate things and spaces. The best art makes this intimate immensity a palpable presence which gives us a taste or glimpse of the the Unity of Being. Images that attract us, that feel meaningful, that surprise us in unknown ways require of us simply to become quiet and listen as we look deeply into the image. To listen is to open the Heart, that enormous space within us which is the source of all that is, all that we are seeking.

Welcome to Walkabout Part III: The House Remodeled. I invite you to come back and visit again some day to see any new images that may have been added to the project.

Part III

Morandi inspired Still Life Photographs

Walkabout

Chapter 10

The House Remodeled