Steven D. Foster ~ Photographs : The Departing Landscape website: Symmetrical Studies

Four-Fold Symmetrical Studies

& Thing-Centered Photographs

These symmetrical photographs were constructed from images I had made from three earlier projects:

Studies
Monk's Quirky Music  (a project consisting of Studies photographs)
Thing Centered Photographs

I encourage you to visit these projects, see the original single images which were used in the construction of the Four-fold symmetrical photographs, and read the introductory texts. Also visit: The Complete Collection  of symmetrical photograph projects.

It's important to know, I think, that the original prints for the Studies and Monk's Quirky Music projects were miniature gelatin silver prints, 3.5 inch square in size, in other words associated through size with the snap-shot tradition. The Thing-Centered Photographs on the other hand are large inkjet prints, 18x18". The symmetrical photographs are inkjet prints, 13 x 16.5"

Regarding the Four-Fold Symmetrical Studies

It seems to me the imaginative space in the symmetrical photographs is much larger than one would expect from four duplicated, miniature sized images. There's a surprising transformation, an expansion of space that moves from the center point outwards in the symmetrical images.

However I often feel I'm being pulled into the center space of these symmetrical images by something like a gravitational force. This is not unrelated to my experience of photographing for the original miniature Studies. That is, when I was photographing, I would imaginatively inhabit the space inside the thing.

Each Study was an exercise in spontaneity, involving an intuitive leap inwards and a heartfelt willingness to let go and allow the picture possibility to emerge. Only after the exposure was made, the film developed, and the print was finished could I see what gifts had been given me through the process, what message the thing photographed was wanting to communicate to me.

My experience of making and seeing the Four-fold symmetrical studies photographs is very similar to the exuberant freedom I felt when making the miniature Studies photographs. The transformations that happen in the Four-fold process feel spontaneous, and natural; the process yields unpredictably magical, surprising results!

When I look at the symmetrical photographs I'm no longer seeing the thing or place photographed (a puddle in a parking lot; thrown straw cutting through a shaft of sunlight inside a barn, etc.) but rather, the Four-fold transformation takes me into yet another, new interior world, perhaps related to what Rumi, the great Sufi poet-saint, was referring to when he wrote:

The Real Gardens and Flowers are within;

they are within man’s heart, not outside.

Regarding the Four-Fold Symmetrical Thing-Centered Photographs

I had used many of the miniature Studies images in the later series of larger 18x18" inkjet print images entitled Thing Centered Photographs. The Thing-Centered Photographs are noticeably different from the Studies photographs: of course the are larger in size, but more importantly for me, is the way the things are isolated and suspended in black space. The black space is a metaphor for silence, and timelessness. It's a very serious body of work. The new, symmetrical transformations of the thing-centered images are, on the other hand much more energetic and playful - though at times they are also mysterious.

Click on the images to enlarge them

I invite you to click on the images to enlarge them so you can get closer to the images and perhaps enter more deeply into the picture's space - at least to the extent this technology will allow . . . To go even deeper, you can use your imagination.

Click on the images to enlarge

Four-Fold Symmetrical Studies