The Rising Sun
A Sequence of Blue & Gold
Symmetrical Snow Photographs
Prelude To An Exhibition
Introduction
The Alice Wilds, a contemporary art
gallery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin presented an exhibition of my photographs between March 17 and April 28, 2018. Forty years of work was represented by a carefully selected and beautifully displayed sampling of my vintage silver gelatin prints and more recently made digital inkjet prints from a broad range of projects. I attended the
Gallery Night Opening on Friday, April 20, and gave a public
Gallery Talk on Saturday afternoon, April 21. Immediately following this Introductory section I will write more about the exhibit and how . . . through an invocation regarding the mysteries of
karma, and the brilliance of the sun . . . it came into being.
The Rising Sun is the title of a sequence of nine symmetrical snow photographs that represent my intuitive response to a live streamed video talk I heard on New Year's morning, 2018 by my Siddha Yoga Meditation Master, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda. In this blog project, which is the first of four related projects, I will explain the chain of events that led up to the mini retrospective exhibition at the Alice Wilds gallery in Milwaukee; I will introduce some of my ideas about Sacred Art and how that relates to my Creative Process; then I will present the sequence of photographs, share with you some of the yogic teachings which inspired the project, then I'll present brief written commentaries on each of the nine images.
In section XII of this project which consists of fifteen titled sections I have written a commentary on the synchronous relationships I see between the title of my new project The Rising Sun and the two Lake Series photographs that the Alice Wilds decided to us for the exhibition's announcements. Then I explain the meaning of the exhibition's title, The Space Between.
I encourage you to see all four of the related projects below.
1 The Rising Sun : Prelude To An Exhibition March 8, 2018
2 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan and All My Teachers April 11, 2018
3 Symmetrical Snow Photographs : Homage to Stieglitz, White and Silvestrov May 21, 2018 / Jan. 2020
4 Postlude To An Exhibition May 21, 2018 / January 2020
In January, 2020 I revised each of the projects. When I first published them in 2018, the third and fourth projects were included together under a single title. The present revised Postlude project now includes an important Afterword which attempts to briefly place the four projects in the context of some important events that occurred in the spring and fall of 2019.
Welcome to The Rising Sun ~ Prelude To An Exhibition.
I. About the Alice Wilds Exhibition
I taught photography as a fine art between 1975 and 2007 at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, mostly in the Art Department, however in the last few years leading up to my retirement I also taught still photography in the Film Department.
Gloria and I moved to Canandaigua, NY in 2008, and two years later I created this blog TheDepartingLandscape.blogspot.com. After an exhibition of my work in a Rochester, NY gallery in
January, 2012 I decided I would devote all my creative energies to creating and publishing my photography projects online. I felt I no longer needed or wanted to show in galleries. I had fallen in love with online publishing, and that seemed perfect for me. (I had become even more creatively prolific after retirement, and found it increasingly difficult to show my work in the area in which we had relocated. The blog was, surprisingly, and importantly, liberating for me and my Creative Process.)
Five years later, however, in January, 2017 John Sobczak, one of my UW-Milwaukee photo students from the late 1970's, sent me an email explaining that he and Tina Schinabeck were planning on opening a new contemporary art gallery in Milwaukee, The Alice Wilds. He wrote: "The consensus here is that you have been away far too long. We simply must do a show. I hope this request is met with the brilliantly sunny optimism with which it is being sent . . . "
I hadn't seen John for many many years. In his email he also mentioned that he had become friends with Jon Horvath, who was one of my graduate students at the time I retired in 2007. It turns out the two of them had joined forces to invite me to show my work in Milwaukee once again--at The Alice Wilds. John concluded his email: "This [request] is totally in the realm of the karmic, the good kind, ebb and flow, wax and wane . . . "
* * *
I met with John and Jon in April 2017 while Gloria and I were visiting our daughter and her family in Milwaukee. I expressed to them my reservations about exhibiting, how blogging had become so satisfying to me as a way of making my work available to a much larger audience, etc. But finally I simply could not say "no" to them. They were (and continue to be) so earnest, and so full of enthusiasm; I really enjoyed being with them both again. It became quite clear to me that there was indeed good karma associated with their conjoined request, and of course I accepted their invitation.
I have always held the conviction that it is the
duty (
dharma) of artists to make their work available to the public at large and especially to their immediate communities. When I was living and teaching at Georgia State University--Atlanta (1972-75) I helped create the photography co-operative gallery named
Nexus; and when I moved to Milwaukee, in 1975, I was a founding member of a similar artist-run gallery named
Perihelion. In those days it was difficult to find galleries that would show photographs; these co-operative venues provided me and many other fellow artists a public space in which we could see and exhibit each other's work regularly and make it accessible to our immediate communities.
In the late 1970's and early 1980's I was fortunate in being able to have a series of exhibitions at some galleries in Chicago, and then a solo show at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1982. After that I was able to exhibit my work regularly in commercial galleries in Milwaukee and Chicago. By the time I retired I felt I had paid my dues as an exhibiting artist to my Milwaukee and Chicago communities. After moving to Canandaigua, NY I felt content to just make new work and publish it on my blog in relative obscurity, peace and quiet.
* * *
On a very hot evening in July, 2017 John and Jon drove 12 straight hours to Canandaigua, NY from Milwaukee to look over my personal archive of vintage silver gelatin and digital-inkjet prints. They spent two full days choosing prints to take back with them to the Alice Wilds gallery in Milwaukee. It was a fast and furious intensely concentrated and enjoyable two-day visit devoted to looking at photographs and catching up with each others' lives from the many years that had passed between us.
They also asked me to make prints of several images they saw and liked from my blog projects. (After 2012 I had stopped printing the images published in my blog.) I made the prints they asked for and sent them off to The Alice Wilds via US Post. John now holds a large collection of my works spanning my entire career as a picture-maker.
The exhibition at The Alice Wilds simultaneously reflected my broad-ranging career as a picture-maker, and John and Jon's vision of my work. I could not imagine (nor could I face the daunting task of) trying to sort out 40 years of work and come up with some kind of cohesive exhibition in an unfamiliar exhibition space. On the other hand I looked forward to seeing how John and Jon would accomplish such a challenging task. I knew they would do an excellent job of it; they are incredibly savoy about photography, my work, and installation design. When I finally was able to experience the exhibition, the catalogue and everything that happened associated with the exhibition, I could see that it all was the fruit of their "brilliantly sunny" enthusiasm. Indeed, I felt overjoyed with feelings of gratitude for their tireless, dedicated loving efforts.
from the "Prelude" to "An Imaginary Book" Click on the image to enlarge
II. Sacred Art Seventh Year Anniversary
The timing of the Milwaukee exhibition coincided exactly with a major turning point in my Creative Process seven years ago. In the spring (April) of 2011 Gloria and I traveled to Turkey where I encountered a series of
numinous experiences associated with Islamic Sacred Art. We visited amazing mosques and shrines; we saw wonderful exhibits of illuminated
Qur'ans and prayer rugs; almost every day I heard repeatedly the haunting
Call to Prayer; and we were blessed with the opportunity to see the sacred (whirling) Dancing of the Sufis accompanied by their sacred music. (For a detailed account of these experiences, see my project
Prayer Stones.) I knew nothing about Islamic Sacred Art before we traveled to Turkey.
After we returned home, and I had a chance to contemplate my experiences in Turkey, I became completely absorbed in the following questions: What exactly is Sacred Art? and Is it possible to create Sacred Art within a contemporary art practice such as my own? My experiences in Turkey and the questions they invoked opened a floodgate of creative energy within me. I started doing a tremendous amount of reading and research on the subject of Sacred Art focusing especially on Sufism, the esoteric tradition of Islam. My contemplations at first took the form of note-taking and some writing, then it extended into the visual realm of photographic picture-making.
I began a blog page about our travels in Turkey; but, to my utter amazement the "travelog" transformed into a large two-year multi-chaptered photography project entitled
"An Imaginary Book." It was while working on the
"Book" that I began experimenting with the construction of images which I now refer to as the
four-fold symmetrical photographs.
After I completed
"An Imaginary Book" (2011-2013)
I found that I needed to continue making and publishing
Sacred Art photography projects in my blog. Since 2013 I have made over 30 additional online projects (!) that have been focused in one way or another on themes related to Sacred Art
. I invite you to take a look at my complete collection of hyperlinked Sacred Art project titles. Visit:
The Sacred Art Photography Projects.
I will try to summarize below what I mean by Sacred Art and what that means in relation to my Creative Process in photography. I encourage you to check out my
Preface to
"An Imaginary Book" along with the the
Book's first chapter,
Prayer Stones; and I invite you to check out my project
Photography and Yoga (2015) which
was another important turning point in my Creative Process and its relation to Sacred Art.
"Light in the Cave" from "The Rising Sun" project
The very fact that you are a seeker means you want to know the Power behind
the universe. . . The path is as important as the goal. The process of
sadhana [spiritual practice, meditation] is as significant as the
goal. . . What a seeker is looking for is beyond the reach of
the senses, yet he must master his senses to attain the
Truth. Isn't this a paradox? What you want to
know--the Truth, the light--is beyond the
senses. In fact all the scriptures say it
is beyond the mind, the intellect,
beyond the five senses of
perception, beyond
everything.
Nevertheless, you must use all your senses
to know the Truth. It is a paradox.
Gurumayi Chidvilasananda
The Discipline of Yoga
III. The Creative Process, Yoga & Grace
When Gloria and I met
Gurumayi Chidvilasananda for the first time in 1987 (in her New York State ashram) I had a very powerful life-changing experience of her initiating
grace. Through my continued practices of Siddha Yoga Meditation over the past thirty years I have been able to stay connected with Gurumayi and her
grace, and this has impacted my Creative Process in photography in profoundly important ways. In Siddha Yoga,
grace (
shakti) is understood to be the Creative Power of the Universe.
As I was working on the
Photography and Yoga project (2015) I came to the realization that my practice of
Siddha Yoga Mediation, and my Creative Process in Photography had essentially merged into each other. Making photographs had become for me a spiritual practice, a form of meditation, a way of staying in touch with
grace, and a way of contemplating the teachings of Siddha Yoga. My yogic practices and my practice of photography were being guided and inspired by Gurumayi's teachings, her
grace, and the
grace of the entire Siddha Yoga Lineage (which includes Swami Muktananda, founder of the
Siddha Yoga Path, and Bhagawan Nityananda, Muktananda's Guru.)
Whenever I speak of grace--the grace of my Meditation Master, the grace of my Creative Process--it must be understood that I am speaking about a transcendent Creative Power. The words Grace, Shakti, and the Sufi term Barakah . . . are but different words pointing toward the same One ineffable divine power, the transcendent-impersonal power of the Supreme Inner Self. In the teachings of Siddha Yoga it is understood that the terms Self, God and Guru are referring to that same One Creative Power. The Siddha Yoga teachings say there is nothing that is not the Creation of the divine inner Self. Everything in this world is a form of God, Kundalini Shakti, Shiva, Lord Hari . . .
Swami Muktananda said the following about
Kundalini Shakti and
Lord Hari --two names of the same One God, which in
Kashmir Shavism (the philosophical tradition which Muktananda loved most of all) is also named
Lord Shiva:
Kundalini encompasses infinite energies. She is the supreme Shakti. . . . The entire universe is just a part of Her infinite being. She is the cosmic fire that can consume the whole universe in a moment. This is what the yogic seers say. Though She appears to be within you, the truth is that you are within Her. All different thoughts, feelings, and objects . . . arise from Her.
The Lord, Hari, has become the entire universe. Hari has become all forms of life, ranging from the highest to the lowest. Hari has become the virtuous and the sinful. The Lord has become the devotee and the deity and the articles of worship. In that way the Lord worships Himself. (from Satsang with Baba: Questions and Answers with Swami Muktananda, Vol. 5)
* * *
The relationship of my photography to
Sacred Art is centered around images which function for me as
Symbols or
Icons, that is to say, images which are alive and radiant with
grace, with
Kundalini Shakti. I have tried to write about this in just about every one of my
Sacred Art Photography Projects, and I never tire of writing about it. (Indeed just thinking about
grace can be transforming.) Suffice it to say, for now, that the mode of being I strive to attain in my Creative Process as a photographer is no different from the mode of being I strive to attain in my practices of Siddha Yoga. When I am photographing, or when I am transforming my photographs on the computer, and when I am contemplating images that function for me as
Symbols or
Icons, I strive to quiet my mind so that I can become aligned with
grace, the very same
grace that I experience in Siddha Yoga Meditation.
When I am photographing, I am "seeing inwardly outward things," that is to say, I am seeing with the "eyes of the Heart," with the eyes of intuition, with the eyes of a stilled mind. This helps me align my practice of photography with the flow of
grace I experience in Siddha Yoga Meditation. When I am photographing
with grace the photographs are more pure and resonate with the
presence of
the Sacred. When I make photographs
out of the flow of grace,
the images become too much about my ego, my mind, my intellect (which I find to be much less interesting and relatively unacceptable as content in art objects).
Surrendering and opening to
grace is a creative process in itself. It involves quieting my mind, opening my Heart, and "listening" inwardly. It is a matter of getting myself (my ego, my identity as a person) "out of the picture" so that
grace can manifest the images
necessary to help me progress in my
sadhana (my spiritual practices) and my Creative Process.
Photographs that function as
symbols give visual form to the divine
Unitary Reality that we live in, that we are part of, but which is mostly unknown and invisible to us. As one poet-saint said it: "we are like fish swimming in the Sea . . . searching for water."
Symmetrical photograph from "The Rising Sun" project
IV. Vision of the Saints
I love the visionary poetry of the saints of all traditions, but I am particularly fond of the poetry of
Hafiz and
Rumi, two of the
truly great poet-saints of Sufism. Through their enlightened words we can experience their
grace, and through that g
race we can learn something of how they see the world. (Visit my project
Illuminations in which I place my photographs in relation to the words of Hafiz, Rumi and many other poet-saints
.)
Someone once asked Swami Muktananda how he and other saints see the world. Here is how he replied:
The world is as you see it. It doesn't have any independent existence. . . When one reaches a certain state in meditation by the grace of the Guru one does not perceive different objects any longer. He perceives only the same Self, his own Self, pervading everywhere. The universe is nothing but God; God Himself is the material cause of the universe.
This world is not the world. This world is, in fact supreme Brahman, the highest Lord. This world is His expansion, this world is nothing but the light of the Self, this world is nothing but the supreme Being.
A saint composed a verse embodying his understanding of the inner reality, and what he says is entirely true: "I have seen that all creatures, high and low, gods and human beings, animals, birds, and aquatic creatures are all one. My sense of differences has dissolved completely, and I see only the supreme being everywhere in everything and everyone."
The world is as you see it. What you see outside is a creation of your own vision. If your vision became divine, the world would not appear to you as it appeared before. That is why Shaivite philosophy says you should repeat "I am Shiva. I am nothing but Shiva." Though things may appear different from you, you should consider them to be one with you. You should consider them to be Shiva.
There is no multiplicity. Names and forms do not exist apart from Shiva; they exist only in Shiva, and they exist as Shiva. . . The truth is that this universe . . . is a play of the infinite Being. (from Satsang with Baba: Questions and Answers with Swami Muktananda, Vol. 5)
"Bowl" a symmetrical photograph from the project "Illuminations" Click on the image to enlarge
He gave me a bowl, and I saw
The soul has this shape.
You that teach us, Shams of Tabriz,
and actual sunlight,
help me now,
being in the middle of being
partly in myself, and partly outside.
Jalaludin Rumi (1207-1273)
RUMI: THE BIG RED BOOk
trans: Coleman Barks
V. Rumi and His Sacred Poetry
Rumi was from the land that is now called Konya, Turkey. He wrote often about his teacher, a great and mysterious Sufi Master named
Shams, which means "sun." Baba Muktananda and Gurumayi have often quoted and discussed Rumi's poetry in their talks and writings.
When Gloria and I traveled to Turkey in 2011 we were able to visit Rumi's Shrine in Konya. The feeling of
barakah (
grace) in that holy place was amazingly palpable. People fell silent when they entered the shrine; tears would swell in the eyes of visitors from all over the world--tears of love and gratitude, tears of opened hearts. The feeling of divine
Presence in the shrine was for me very similar to the experience I have when I read Rumi's poetry.
The poetry of any saint is of course a form of
Sacred Art. Rumi's poetry--even in translation--is overflowing with divine Beauty, with the
Truth, the
grace of his enlightened state, his union with God.
The Creative Power of the Universe flows out from the center of his words as an
inner radiance of ineffable meaning
. When I contemplate his words I feel that energy, that
light enter me and illuminate my entire sense of being.
I like the way the Islamic scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasar writes about Rumi's vision of the world and his poetry:
The whole of Rumi's message can be interpreted through the key, which he provides, in the distinction he makes between form
and meaning.
According to Rumi everything in the world of manifestation has a form
and a meaning,
which is another way of describing the two aspects of exterior
and interior,
so characteristic of the esoteric teachings of Islam [Sufism]
. No reality is exhausted by its appearance. Appearance is a manifestation of something, of an essence which is its meaning.
Nothing can ever be understood if one remains on the level of form [appearance].
Nasr continues:
Rumi made use of form
not as a thing in itself but as a symbol which leads to meaning.
For Rumi, as for all contemplatives and gnostics, nothing is just itself except the Divine Self. Everything else is a symbol of the states that lie above it in the chain of being. For Rumi all things are symbols revealing the spiritual worlds above; all forms are symbols which in his eyes, as in the eyes of all gnostics, become transparent, revealing the meaning
beyond.
Rumi was one of those rare beings who possessed a kind of 'sensual awareness' of spiritual beauty, a person for whom things appeared as transparent forms reflecting the eternal essences. For him the very existence of beauty was the most direct proof of the existence of God. . . Rumi bathed in beauty like an eagle soaring in the light of the sun, and he left in his poetry as well as in the spiritual music and dance of the Mawlawi Order something of this beauty for posterity.
Complimentary to Rumi's sensitivity to beauty is his awareness of the sacred in all things. Rumi was able to sanctify all of life. . . He was able to express the fullness and diversity of human existence in such a way as to reveal the fact that behind every possible kind of experience there lies a door towards the Invisible. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islamic Art and Spirituality
VI. The Symbolic Photograph
Symbolic photographs are: images alive with divine
Presence, unsayable
Essence . . . They are images radiant with their own
Internal light and spiritual
Beauty . . . Symbolic photographs transcend the medium's optical-mechanical rendering of surface appearances . . . The pictorial space in symbolic photographs has become sanctified by
grace, the Creative Power of the Universe
. Photographs that function as
Symbols (or
Icons) are
Sacred Images, "doors" that open into the "Invisible."
Symbolic photographs are: images of Unitary Reality. They are images which gracefully merge the outer-earthly-sensible forms (appearances) with their corresponding interior, celestial-archetypal counterparts. The two mirroring images (inner and outer, physical and spiritual) become transparent in each other as they become conjoined in their transformed other-worldly Imaginal luminous Beauty. Symbolic images soar "like an eagle" into the light of the "rising sun," the Light of Consciousness, the light the divine inner Self.
Symmetrical Photograph : "The Rising Sun"
VII. Beauty and Sacred Knowledge
Beauty is a word traditionally associated with God, Love, and Purity of Heart. In Islam, for example, Beauty is one of the names of God. The Prophet said: God is Beautiful, and God loves Beauty. The True nature of all earthly things is Beauty since everything comes from God, is a form of God.
Sacred Art releases or unveils the grace of divine Beauty which pervades all created things. Sacred Art makes the subtle Light of Divine Consciousness within all things palpably present as a feeling of Essence or numinous meaning.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr writes in his excellent book Knowledge and The Sacred: "One cannot speak of reality in the metaphysical sense without the splendor and radiance which surrounds it like a halo and which constitute Beauty itself. . ." ~ "A work of sacred art melts the hard shell of the human ego and leaves an indelible mark upon the soul." ~ "Beauty is able to communicate something of the formless Essence in forms. In this sense Beauty not only transmits knowledge but is inseparable from knowledge of the sacred and sacred knowledge."
VIII. Contemplation, Remembrance
The primary goal of any spiritual practice (such as meditation or the making and contemplation of Sacred Art) is to recognize and
remember our
Gott-nature. As creations of God we already are and have always been forms of "Sacred Art." But, says Nasr, we have forgotten this sacred knowledge.
Sacred Art, its grace, has the power to purify the mind and awaken the remembrance (and awareness) of grace within the Heart of each contemplator. In Siddha Yoga the basic teaching is "God dwells within you as you."
Contemplation is a process of absorbing one's self in an image that is functioning (for the contemplator) as a Symbol or Icon. It is a process, first, of bringing that image of grace into the center of one's Being, one's Heart. Then the contemplator surrenders to the grace radiant in the image, allowing that grace to absorb the contemplator. In this state of contemplative absorption one not only "remembers" but actually experiences--in full conscious recognition--one's own inner Truth, one's divinity, that most precious form of sacred knowledge and meaning.
In his book Knowledge and The Sacred Nasr writes that what we consider to be the Unknown is "not out there beyond the present boundary of knowledge but at the center of man's being here and now where it has always been. It is only unknown because of our forgetfulness of its presence." It is, he says, "the sun that has not ceased to shine simply because our blindness has made us impervious to light." Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Knowledge and the Sacred
from "The Rising Sun" project
IX. The Rising Sun project
The sequence of nine symmetrical Rising Sun photographs presented here below are for me radiant with "interior" light. The images came spontaneously, as a response to a yogic teaching I received on New Year's Day, 2018 from my Siddha Yoga Meditation Master, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda. The nine images constitute an intuitive visual contemplation of that experience.
Since 1991, on every New Year's Day Gurumayi has given a teaching to her community of Siddha Yoga Seekers throughout the world which is then contemplated during the entire year. The theme of her 2018 New Year's Message consisted of only one word: Satsang. The world essentially means: "being in the company of one's own inner Truth."
The nine Rising Sun photographs are, for me, visual symbols which contain the grace of my own "inner Truth," the light of my own divine Self. The sequence of images can be read as an unfolding journey set in motion by the grace of my Siddha Yoga Master, Gurumayi, and the grace of her teachings.
After the presentation of the photographs below I will share with you some additional information about Gurumayi's New Year's talk, my own personal commentary on each of the images, and some esoteric textual teachings from the yogic and sufic perspectives regarding Sacred Light, Sacred Knowledge and Sacred Art.
X. The Rising Sun Photographs with brief commentaries
It occurred to me recently that snow is crystallized light, and that my online snow images are pixelated light. This online sequence of symmetrical snow images is Light upon Light.
The sequence reads narratively, from darkness to light, from blue to gold; however the meaning of the individual works and the sequence as a whole is not narrative in the usual sense of the word. We are dealing here with archetypal imagery, images that function as symbols, and thus the images have their own autonomy in terms of meaning. Symbols are open-ended in meaning; each contemplator will access different potential meanings from within themselves as their contemplation of a given image continues over time.
My commentaries, presented under each of the images, are not the
meanings of the photographs. It is important to understand that
commentary is not at all the same thing as the process of
Contemplation. Commentary often consists of descriptions of what is being "seen" within the image itself, and then the intellectual and emotional associations and memories invoked by the image. When I write commentaries I try to remember to make them "I statements" and I try to keep them focused and aligned with the over-all theme of the project in which the image appears, and in direct association with the particular image at hand. I try to avoid allowing my associations to veer away from the actual image. If I loose the connection with the image I am no longer commenting on the image.
Contemplation, on the other hand, is a
silent, internal conversation or dialogue with one's own inner Self
through an image that is alive and radiant with
grace, an image that functions as a symbol. Contemplation is a process of absorbing the image and then allowing the
grace of that image to absorb the contemplator. Contemplative meanings usually transcend the limits of language.
Each of the nine images are
four-fold symmetrical photographs, image constructions, and in each case the source image for the constructions were photographs of snow.
The Rising Sun
A Sequence of
Nine Symmetrical
Photographs
__________________________________
______________________
____________
The Rising Sun project, Image #1 "Light in the cave"
Image #1. I feel as if I am inside the earth, perhaps in a cave that "secretes" its own internal light. This numinous image suggests the potential birth of something, something unknown and of timeless origins.
The Rising Sun project, Image #2
Image #2 I am "looking up" into a "night sky" and seeing bluish colored lines, perhaps the lines of a star chart that is trying to give Imaginal form to the space between the little bursts of light, self-luminous "stars" that have been born from the light within the darkness of the "sky."
The Rising Sun project, Image #3
Image #3 The blue light becomes all-pervasive and more concentrated in another very numinous image alive with essential (divine or angelic) presence. Strong horizontal and vertical forms intersect at the center of the image where I meet two glowing eyes--eyes which are looking at me.
The Rising Sun project, Image #4
Image #4 There is a looming animated primordial bird-like presence, with wings spread open, that provides us with our first glimpse of golden light in the sequence. At the center of the image I see what appears to me to be a deep pool of blue water with widening symmetrical ripples on its surface. The ripples then continue on into the earth like substance around it.
The Rising Sun project, Image #5
Image #5 The golden light of dawn makes its initial gentle entrance in this image. A blue globe--perhaps it's a planet, or a close-up view of a small seed--seems pregnant with potentiality. The blue form is surrounded above and below by a soft halo of golden light which appears to extend over and into the image below it. The image reminds me of several Total Solar Eclipse photographs I have seen in which the dark circular form of the moon is surrounded by what is known as the sun's corona.
The Rising Sun project, Image #6
Image #6 Golden light is flooding this image, and skimming across rounded mounds of Earth or Snow protruding up from the earth's surface. This image announces the emergence of an Imaginal sun which has just risen above some infinite horizon. The golden color dominates the photograph but the shadows are blue, reflecting back the blue sky above. At the center of the image there are strange ritual-like markings etched on the surface of an interior light. The configuration of forms reminds me of Stonehenge seen from high above.
The Rising Sun project, Image #7
Image #7 This extremely strange, mysterious and yet threatening image reminds me of an open mouth with long skinny teeth; a forested that has been destroyed by an unnameable force. Am I inside looking out" or outside looking in? Am I looking down from above? The gold color here is warmer, more red, more earthy. The shadows are very dark blue, reminding me of images I've seen of the moon's surface.
The Rising Sun project, Image #8
Image #8 This image seems to be many things at once. It' an organic living thing, vulnerable, trying to protect or cover itself with its own arms and hands (or are they claws?). But I am also seeing two flowing streams of fiery-red hot-luminous molten lava which are about to merge into each other. ~ Or . . . are the hands (or claws) pulling away from each other, in a gesture of surrender, a willingness to open and expose its tender interior just behind the arrow-shaped flowers at its center
"The Golden Rising Sun" Image #9 from The Rising Sun project
Image #9 This is The Golden Rising Sun; the Risen Sun in its zenith. This image of interior golden light brings the sequence full circle from the cave-like Earthen darkness (of Image #1) to a brilliantly luminous Celestial Epiphany. I am standing directly before this ball or "Face" of light, a light so blindingly bright, so pure in its Golden Perfection that it's impossible to write about. This image is a symbol of the "Unknowable" Light of the divine Self . . . the invisible, formless Light of Consciousness. It is the most sacred of archetypal images; it contains and radiates timeless Sacred Knowledge; it is an image of Unitary Reality, the goal of Yoga, Sufism; its the "Philosopher's Stone" of Alchemy, the "Resurrected Light of Christ" . . .
XI. More about Gurumayi's New Year's Talk
During Gurumay's talk on the theme of Satsang she led us through a dharana, a visualization process which compassionately and poetically guided us into meditation. The interior space and light I experienced in that meditation was vast and luminous and, at the same time, profoundly intimate.
I was on top of a mountain witnessing the rising of the sun over an endless horizon of blue water. As the light grew more intensely golden and expansive I experienced a deep sense of inner peace and silence; I had become deeply absorbed in the golden light that was everywhere around me, and at the same time within me. I could feel Gurumayi's divine Presence in the light. I felt that she and I were experiencing the same inner Light; that we were within that light together.
Through the grace of her teachings and her dharana, Gurumayi had given me a profoundly deep and palpable experience of her New Year's Message: "being in the company of one's own inner Truth." I had been given a glimpse of Gurumyi's divine state, which was also my own inner Truth. For what seemed like a suspended period of time the distinction between Inner and Outer, she and I . . . had dissolved: I had become the visualized imagery of her dharana, the sun --its golden light-- rising over the blue horizon.
The "Rising Sun" photographs are my visual-Imaginal manifestation of Guru's grace, that which I had experienced on New Year's Day.
* * *
I had been feeling a strong urge to make snow photographs again. For the previous several winters I had made many photographs of snow that were then used in several of my
Sacred Art Photography Projects. I was hoping to add new images again this year to that growing collection of snow photographs. (Visit my collection of online
Snow Photograph Projects.)
Re-vision
It has been a long standing practice of mine to re-visit and revise past photographs, to transmute older images in order to see and experience them in new ways, in new forms with new meanings. Most of the Rising Sun photographs are indeed re-visions of earlier symmetrical snow photographs. Several are tonal inversions of their original image state. To "inverse" an image is something like turning it inside-out: light tones become dark tones, and dark tones (shadows, for example) become light tones which often appear to be internal sources of light emerging from within their darker tonal surroundings. (See the #1 and #2 images of The Rising Sun project.)
The impulse to create and transform is generated from within my Creative Process. I try as best I can to follow Its impulse. I experiment with variations to see what might happen; if I feel that grace has become present in a new revised-transformed image I will eventually find a way to include that image in a project. The project in which it is eventually placed will depend upon how it works visually in relationship to the other images in that project.
XII. The Midnight Sun Henry Corbin
Henry Corbin's fascinating book entitled
The Man of Light In Iranian Sufism contains several passages about
The Midnight Sun which I have found quite interesting in the ways that they relate to my
Rising Sun project. For example the first two images of the sequence, one image which "secretes its own light from within its earthen darkness, the other which "secretes" its own light from the darkness of the "sky" embody a recurring theme in Corbin's writings about
The Midnight Sun.
It seems to me the symbolism of Golden light in the Rising Sun sequence is pretty clear, but what about the blue light in many of the images? Corbin has a lot to say about interior light, the Man of Light and the Midnight Sun; and Swami Muktananda has a lot to say about Blue Light, the light of the Blue Pearl and the Blue Person. ~ Lets begin with Henry Corbin.
Midnight Sun
Corbin explains how the Midnight Sun is an "initiatic light," a light that "bursts into flame at the approach of the summit" of an upward spiritual journey, an ascent which begins "in the darkness of night," an "ascent that leads to Perfect Nature."
The light of The Midnight Sun is, he says, a light born of the Divine Cloud of Unknowing. It is a "primordial Image of inner light that figured prominently in the rituals of the mystery religions . . . [for example] the light carried by Hermes into the heart of an underground chamber."
The light that Corbin writes about in The Man of Light is always the light of the inner world, the light of the soul, the light of Consciousness. It is, says Corbin, a light born of an Imaginal world that "secretes its own other-worldly [Imaginal] light." (I will write more about the Imaginal World in Part XV below.)
"The Midnight Sun is the illuminatio matutina, the brilliance of dawn rising in the [Cosmic North] the Orient-origin of the soul . . ."
Click on the images to enlarge
Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Commentary:
I find Corbin's
Midnight Sun material quite relevant to the two
Lake Series Photographs used in the announcements for my exhibition at
The Alice Wilds gallery.
(see above, Fig. 1 & Fig. 4) The first image is quite dark in feeling; it is the early light of dawn just beginning to emerge from under the Lake's horizon line. A few rays of light are beginning to gently touch the clouds in the "
Cosmic Northern" sky. The Lake below is but a dark primordial
presence awaiting yet another birth of the rising sun.
The second Lake image (Fig. 4) shows the sun suspended directly over the head of a fisherman standing in the Lake. It is still early morning; only a few hours have passed since the first photograph was made. The sun is emerging from behind a diaphanous veil of morning mist that has remained hovering over the water. The sun is in the early stages of its ascent toward its zenith--what Corbin has termed the Cosmic North, "the Northern Light, the Orient-origin of the soul." ~ The fisherman's head is "touching" the horizon line--a most auspicious "meeting place" between the infinite space of the sky and the infinite expanse of the water. ~ As the photographer, I have entered this image, its timeless moment, in the way that I have created (by where I have chosen to stand) the vertical alignment between the fisherman and the rising sun. The image essentially represents my alignment to the rising sun through an identification with the fisherman and the sun. ~ The fisherman is Corbin's Man of Light though he doesn't yet know it. He is searching or waiting for something that is both unknown and invisible to him. The fish he longs to "catch" signifies the man's longing for "spirit," soul, the Christ, the divine inner Self. The sea in which the fisherman is standing is the Creative Unconscious, the Source or Origin of all created things and all things yet to be created. The sun is the "sun of the spirit," that which is illuminating both the fisherman's inner and outer worlds. ~ Photographers are like fishermen; they are always searching for images. The formal relationships they create in a photograph represent where a photographer stands, both literally and figuratively. I have "caught" a great "fish" here: this image is alive with presence, humming with archetypal meaning. It is, in a way, a Self portrait. ~ And the same could be said of the first Lake image. In part XV below I will write about the space between the two images.
A friend told me that the sun in the photograph looks like a moon. Corbin will tells us, when it comes to the Midnight Sun it is no longer a question of day or night.
End of Commentary.
Corbin writes:
Let us consider what a light can signify, that which is neither eastern nor western, the northern light . . . the midnight sun . . . It is no longer a question of day succeeding night, or night, day. Daylight breaks in the middle of the night and turns into day a night which is still there but which is a Night of light. . . the Dark Noontide . . . the Black Light . . . (click here to see The Light & Colors of Sufism)
Corbin also writes about the light of the Manichean faith, a light whose particles reascend from the infernum to the Earth of Light, the Terra Lucida, which is situated in the Cosmic North.
In every instance here we are dealing with profoundly animated, living, eternal-archetypal imagery from the Imaginal world, a "world," explains Corbin, that exists between spirit and matter; a world in which matter becomes spiritualized and spirit becomes materialized:
These archetype-Images, which precede all empirical data, are the organs of meditation, of the active Imagination; they effect the transmutation of data by giving them their meaning. ~ The Midnight Sun may be the divine Night of superconsciousness irradiating the field of light of consciousness, and it may be the light of consciousness overcoming the Darkness of the subconscious, of the unconsciousness which was hemming it in. In both cases a burst of light rends the tissue of ready-made answers: the fictions of causal relationships, of linear evolutions, of continuous currents, everything that bolsters what people have agreed to call the "sense of history."
Corbin's "man of light" has been given many names, all reminiscent, he says, of the "midnight sun." For example he quotes the great Iranian Sufi mystic Najm Kobra who in his writings referred to a "Guide of light," and "the Sun of the Heart," and "the Sun of Knowledge."
I will close this section on Corbin's Man of Light and the Midnight Sun with the words of Najm Kobra. The quote, taken from Corbin's book, is an account of Najm Kobra's own personal experience of a "Face of Light" and a sun becoming visible from "behind its diaphanous veil":
When the Circle of the face has become pure it effuses lights as a spring pours forth its water, so that the mystic has a sensory perception that these lights are gushing forth to irradiate his face. This outpouring takes place between the two eyes and between the eyebrows. Finally it spreads to cover the whole face. At that moment, before you, before your face, there is another Face also of light, irradiating lights; while behind its diaphanous veil a sun becomes visible, seemingly animated by a movement to and fro. In reality this Face is your face and this sun is the sun of the Spirit . . . Henry Corbin from his book The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism.
The Rising Sun project, Image #4
XIII. The Blue Pearl Swami Muktananda
In Siddha Yoga, blue is a most auspicious color because of Swami Muktananda's remarkable meditation experiences which he writes about in his spiritual autobiography
Play of Consciousness. See my photography project
The Blue Pearl which includes several excerpts from his detailed account of his journey to Union with the
Supreme Inner Self.
Having been a student of Siddha Yoga for over thirty years, now, I could not help but associate the blue tonalities in the Rising Sun photographs to Muktananda's writings about the Blue Pearl. Here below are a few excerpts from my Blue Pearl project, many of which have been taken from Muktananda's autobiography.
* * *
The Blue Pearl, wrote Muktananda, "is the heart seed . . . the Self, the soul." The experience of the Blue Pearl, he says, is the "fulfillment of yoga," an experience of one's "innermost reality."
Muktananda saw in his meditation experiences that the radiance of the Blue Light "pervaded everywhere in the form of the universe." He called the Blue Light the "Light of the Self" and the "Light of Consciousness." He wrote: "I saw the earth being born and expanding from the Light of Consciousness, just as one can see smoke rising from a fire."
Regarding his vision of The Blue Person, Muktananda wrote that He is "also known as the sphere of unmanifest light." The Blue Person "contains the entire world within Himself."
"The way I see things" wrote Muktananda, "demonstrates the truth of the versus of Tukuram [a great yogic saint who wrote]: 'My eyes have been bathed with the lotion of the blue light, and I have been granted divine vision.'"
As I gazed at the tiny Blue Pearl [the size of a sesame seed] I saw it expand, spreading its radiance in all directions, so that the whole sky and earth were illuminated by it. It was now no longer a Pearl, but had become shining, blazing, infinite Light--the Light that the writers of the scriptures and those who have realized the Truth have called the divine Light of Chiti--the divine Light of Consciousness. Swami Muktananda, from his autobiography Play of Consciousness
XIV. Synchronicity
I have written frequently about how, at the heart of the
symbolic photograph there is an experience of
synchronicity, the
acausal "falling together" in time and space of two events perceived and experienced in a deeply personal
intuitive way as inexplicably meaningful. The experience of synchronicity is often accompanied by feelings of surprise and
numinosity.
I sense the play of synchronicity in the relationship between the spontaneous emergence of my twelve symmetrical photographs and my experience of Gurumayi's 2018
New Year Message talk.
I see synchronicity at play in the connection between the
Rising Sun symmetrical photographs and the mini retrospective exhibition of my work held in Milwaukee at the
Alice Wilds. For example, despite the claims I have made on my blog of no longer needing or desiring to show my work in a gallery context, I could sense that with John and Jon's invitation to exhibit my work again in Milwaukee I was coming face-to-face with an aspect of my own destiny. The title of my new project "The Rising Sun" and its images symbolize and synchronistically anticipate my
re-emergence from the quiet "cave" of my studio (where I had worked in peace and relative obscurity on my blog projects over the previous eight years) into the full light and public view of a Milwaukee community with which I thought I had lost contact. My new 2018 Rumi calendar had the following quotation on it for the month of March that constitutes for me yet another example of synchronicity:
There is a community of spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street
and being the noise.
--Rumi--
John Sobczak wrote "
We simply must do a show. I hope this request is met with the brilliantly sunny optimism with which it is being sent . . . " Need I point out the direct synchronistic link in the words he has used here to the imagery Gurumayi used in her (2018 New Years) guided meditation? and the title I used for my new sequence of photographs? and the image of the sun over the Lake used by the Alice Wilds gallery in its announcement for my exhibition?
XV. The Space Between
John had asked me several weeks before the exhibition for some possible titles he could use for the exhibition. After Gloria and I thought about this for some time we eventually came up with a list of seven suggestions which I sent to John. One of our suggestions, The Space Between was chosen to be used on the two announcements. I didn't know John had decided on that title, and I didn't know he had chosen the two Lake photographs for the announcements until I saw the announcements. When I finally recognized the meaningful coincidences that existed between these things and their relationship to the Rising Sun photography project (I had been working on at the time) I experienced the familiar numinous sensations of synchronicity.
The Space Between certainly relates to the expanse of time that exists between the earliest (1977) and most recent (2017) photographs to be included in the exhibition. And it relates to the the passing of time which separates the two Lake Series images used in the e-announcements. And it relates to the space between the two curators of the Alice Wilds exhibition, both of them students of photography I was privileged to have been able to work with at both the beginning and the ending of my teaching career at UW-Milwaukee: John, who was one of my photography students in the late 1970's; and Jon, who was one of my graduate students in photography at the time I retired from teaching in 2007.
As I already explained above, in my commentary, the space between the head of the fisherman, the horizon line, and the sun is quite auspicious for me in multiple ways.
There is also an acausal synchronistic relationship "between" the two Lake announcement photographs and the first and last images of my Rising Sun sequence. (see Figs. 1-4 above)
The Space Between has been an important concept for me dating back to the mid 1960's when I studied with Nathan Lyons and Minor White. They both stressed the importance of careful, intentional and yet intuitive-visual juxtapositions of images within a series or sequence of photographs displayed in a book for example, or on an exhibition wall.
Whenever two or more pictures are placed in relation to each other, a silent visual dialogue is indeed sparked between those images. When a viewer contemplates the images, he or she is invited to enter into that space between the images, to listen and even to join in the "conversation." In this space between, illuminating insights, new important meanings, and revelations of the inner Self can become unveiled.
I looked forward to seeing what images John and Jon had picked for the show and how they had installed the photographs on the walls. They are masters at this kind of thing and I expected their vision of my work would help me to see and learn new things about the photographs and myself.
The Space Between the Breaths (between the in-breath and the out-breath; and between the out-breath and the in-breath) is a traditional yoga meditation technique in which one focuses on that "meeting place" or "point" where the in-breath meets the out-breath. This is "the place of perfect stillness within," the place where one can experience one's own divine inner Self, the One God that exists within each and every human Heart.
Robert Bly quotes in his book News of the Universe an aphorism by the German mystic Novalis which says: The seat of the soul is where the inner world and the outer world meet. Where they overlap, it is in every point of the overlap.
In the Tibetan world view, there is a "place" called the
bardo. This is
the "intermediary space
between" a soul's death and its re-birth on earth.
(See The Tibetan Book of the Living and Dying.)
The Sufis speak of the Barzakah, "the world in-between." They also use a very similar word Barakah when they speak of grace. This close spelling between the two words suggests a close relationship between grace and "the world in-between."
The Imaginal World
Henry Corbin writes quite beautifully and at length in several of his books about the Sufic "intermediary world," the Barzakah, though he prefers to use the term Imaginal World (alam al-mithal). The Imaginal World is an invisible, timeless, spaceless "place" that exists, says Corbin, between the spiritual and physical worlds. The Imaginal World is the "meeting place" where the spiritual turns (transmutes) into the physical, and where the physical turns into the spiritual. The Imaginal Intermediary World is where "the world of pure Ideas in their intelligible substantiality meets with the world of objects perceived by sense perception." Corbin says the Imaginal World is the place of Origin of True Symbols and Sacred Art.
We live in a dual world; our egos break everything in two. Symbolic photographs put the separated parts back together again, merge them into an Imaginal Unitary Reality. It is grace which makes this possible. Without grace there can be no synchronicity. Without grace there can be no symbolic images. My Creative Process is not just a matter of aesthetics, philosophy or theosophy; it's a matter of life (union) or death (separation). My deep internal longing to live in an unbroken state of wholeness is why Gurumayi, her grace, Siddha Yoga Meditation, and the making of Symbolic Photographs are so very, very important to me.
* * *
Gratitude
How can one thank their teacher? I am grateful beyond words, from the depths of my Heart, to Gurumayi for her
grace, her teachings, her living example, and the timeless tradition of the
Siddha Yoga Path.
I am grateful to my beloved wife Gloria, for our nearly fifty years of being together; for her fighting spirit and her compassion; for her patience and support on all levels to me, our two children, and the "family" of the world. Gloria and I met Gurumayi in 1987 and we have been traveling on the Siddha Yoga Path together for the last thirty years. What great good fortune! to be able to share this remarkable life journey--not only together, but together with the
grace, the
presence and guidance of a living saint!
And I want to thank again and again John Sobczak and Jon Horvath for inviting me to exhibit my work in Milwaukee, at
The Alice Wilds, for reaching out and connecting with me after so many years, and for all their hard work and big-hearted dedication to making
their idea of an exhibition of
Steven Foster Photographs become a reality. The entire endeavor has been radiant with the
to and fro flowing of
grace between us--the
grace of love, respect and gratitude.
Finally, thank
you for visiting this online project. Your presence and participation as a viewer adds to the
grace of all that is being offered here.
Afterword
After completion of this project three other related projects followed. Ideally all four projects would be viewed in sequence as a whole visual entity. I have listed the four linked project titles immediately below.
When I first published what is now the forth and final project,
Postlude To An Exhibition, it contained the images and text which is now the third of the four projects,
Symmetrical Snow Photographs : Homage to Stieglitz, White and Silvestrov. In January, 2020 I decided to separate the contents of the original
Postlude project into two completely separate projects as indicated below. I have kept the publication dates the same for both the third and fourth projects, though in January, 2020 I did alter and add some new text in both of the projects.
The Four Related Projects:
1 The Rising Sun : Prelude To An Exhibition March 8, 2018
2 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan and All My Teachers April 11, 2018
3 Symmetrical Snow Photographs : Homage to A. Stieglitz, M. White and V. Silvestrov May 21, 2018 / January 2020
4 Postlude To An Exhibition May 21, 2018 / January 2020
This project was posted on my Welcome Page
on March 9, 2018
and revised April 3, 2024
Other Related Projects:
The Blue Pearl
The Alice Wilds
"An Imaginary Book"
Illuminations
Lake Series Photographs
The Sacred Art Photography Projects
The Symbolic Photograph
The Photograph as Icon
The Rising Sun 12x12" Inject Print PROJECT April, 2024 (coming soon)
Please visit my
Welcome Page which contains a complete listing of my online photography projects, my resume, contact information, gallery affiliation, and much more.
