Snow Photographs
January ~ March 29, 2018
Homage to Harry Callahan
and
All My Teachers
Homage to Harry Callahan
and
All My Teachers
Introduction
This collection of snow photographs was made in Canandaigua, New York between early January, 2018 and March 29. Though the work is presented as an Homage to Harry Callahan, it has also served as a way for me to continue and extend the contemplations initiated in my previous project The Rising Sun ~ Prelude To An Exhibition which consists of twelve symmetrical photographs of snow.
The 45 straight photographs in this project suggested the possibility for a follow-up project of symmetrical variations. In May, 2018 I published the third project in the series of four related projects: Symmetrical Snow Photographs : Homage to A Stieglitz, M White and V Silvestrov.
The forth and final project in the series, Postlude To An Exhibition, provides full documentation of the mini-retrospective exhibition presented at the Alice Wilds gallery in Milwaukee during March and April, 2018. In mid-January 2020 I added an Afterword which puts this four-part series of projects in context to several important events that occurred in 2019.
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All the pictures in this Homage to Harry Callahan were made either in our back yard--which extends out to a meadow area with two ponds and a tapering woods in the background, or in our front yard and in the driveway. I often made photographs in the morning when I went out it shovel the driveway or fill the bird feeders in our back yard.
This project exists as a visual unity primarily because of the subject matter (snow), the time frame in which they were made (Winter, 2018), the constancy of place in which I photographed, my experience on New Years Day and the Rising Sun project that emerged from that experience, and the ever persistent yearning to be working, making photographs and experiencing being in alignment with the flow of grace within my Creative Process.
Also, most of the images in this project share in an overarching atmosphere of intimacy, of looking both closely and inwardly. I have included a few distant views which provide some contextual sense of the place in which I've been photographing, but in general the "place" I am most interested in is internal or Imaginal. In that regard I would say these photographs are in the great tradition of what Alfred Stieglitz called the Equivalent, that is to say an image that functions as a "mirror" which reflects internal psychic structures and states of being. This is quite appropriate for a project striving to pay Homage to Harry Callahan because there are things I feel and know about Callahan that can only be expressed in images, and because Callahan's best work--especially his early photographs--often function for me as equivalents.
I have sequenced the photographs in this project with care--that is to say, with an eye on the transitions from one image to the next as you scroll downward. The visual flow of the imagery is in itself a kind homage to the high winds we experience here in Western New York--especially in the winter--winds which transform (and "inspire") everything they touch, particularly the snow.
As you view the photographs I encourage you to keep an eye on the space between the images and those images which precede and follow that space. You will inevitably encounter there an Imaginal world, a world of imagery manifested by your own personal responses to the sequential flow of the snow photographs. It's quite probable that those subtle, intuitive images (which have bubbled up spontaneously from within you) may be the images most worthy of your attention and contemplations.
If you have already seen my project The Rising Sun ~ Prelude To An Exhibition you might recognize some of the straight photographs included below which were used to construct the the Rising Sun symmetrical images. And in the next project to follow, the third in a series of four related projects, Symmetrical Snow Photographs : Homage to A Stieglitz, M White and V Silvestrov you will notice that many of the symmetrical images were constructed with images in this project.
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I have divided this collection of photographs into two sets: those made after New Years Day, 2018 through March 16; and those made on March 28 and March 29. I have given the second set its own title, After the First Rain of Spring, and its own introductory text. After the presentation of the last ten photographs you will find my commentary in which I pay Homage to Harry Callahan. I thought of Callahan as one of my teachers, even though I never met him in person. As I was writing the text it surprisingly, spontaneously turned into a more extended meditation on teaching and teachers in which I pay Homage not only to Callahan but to All my teachers as well. ~ Welcome to the project.
Snow Photographs
Made between New Years Day and March 16, 2018
Homage to Harry Callahan
Homage to Harry Callahan
#1 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#2 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#3 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#4 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#5 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#6 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan The South Pond
#7 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#8 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#10 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#11 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#12 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#13 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan Birds eating sunflower seeds
#14 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#15 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan The North Pond
#16 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#17 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#18 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#19 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#20 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#21 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#22 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan Frozen Bird Bath
#23 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#24 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#25 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#26 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#27 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan Ice Patch on the Driveway
#28 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan Snow and Ice on the Driveway
#29 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan Snow on the Air Conditioner
#30 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#31 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#32 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#33 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#34 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#35 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan Green Grass and Snow (in the shape of a flying bird)
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After The First Rain of Spring
The Last Snow Photographs of 2018
Made on March 28 & March 29
The second set of snow photographs, below, were made over two consecutive days following a heavy, windy rain that fell during the night of March 27th. It was the first night (in a long time) we in Western New York had experienced above-melting temperatures. The rain continued throughout most of the following day (March 28) though gradually it transitioned into a gentle mist.
I was amazed to see how much snowmelt occurred by the time I had gotten out to photograph late in the afternoon of the 28th. The light was "heavy," and indeed everything was heavy and dark with moisture from the rain and the melting snow. Many of the remaining snow forms looked like dying animals to me. Their barely conscious eyes seemed to be looking out toward me as if to say they too were aware of their inevitable dissolution into the spring's warmer temperatures. Some of the snow forms looked as if they were gasping for their last breath.
(It had been a winter of unseasonably warm periods early on, followed by unseasonably cold periods late into the season. It was also the year of the very long and slow dying cough. Everyone seems to have had the virus before me. I coughed throughout the last two weeks of March, and into the second week of April as I worked on this project. I was most grateful to have had this project to focus on, for it distracted me from my own gasping for breaths--those deep desperate kinds of breaths one takes in hope of short-circuiting yet another round of out-of-control coughing.)
On the morning of March 29 I found that the things I photographed the day before had disappeared. The mist had cleared; things were dryer; the light was more open. Only a very few snow shapes remained.
Since the ten images in this second set would be the last snow pictures of this winter season, and because they have a different look and feel in relation to the first set of photographs, I decided they needed to have their own title and introduction. As I was preparing the images and sequencing them, it did feel to me as if I were saying "good bye" to an old friend. Indeed the last ten images are pervaded by a feeling of melancholy.
I often feel a sense of loss with the transitions of the seasons, especially in the autumn--with the failing of the light, and then of course in the spring--with the dissolving of the snow. Such is life; everything is continually coming and going . . . and in between, changing. (See my project Creation - Dissolution of A World.)
Interacting photographically with the world as it changes is a privilege and an opportunity; it's a way of affirming life and witnessing the changing ways of the world and the changing ways of my own self; and it's a way of having a deep-hearted silent dialogue with something greater than my self, that is to say, a realm of being that transcends my sense of being a person, a realm of being that transcends language, time and space. After thirty years of practicing Siddha Yoga Meditation, I now know there is something that never changes, that is timeless, that is greater than the small self, or ego. The yogic saints tell us that everything in the outer world is nothing but a reflection of one's own inner divine Self. As I get older I sense the truth of this all the more clearly. Alfred Stieglitz, one of my most important teachers, based his philosophy of the equivalent photograph on this truth. He famously once said: "All true things are equal to each other."
Ten Snow Photographs
After the First Rain of Spring
Made on March 28 and March 29
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#36 After the First Rain of Spring -- Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#37 After the First Rain of Spring -- Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#38 After the First Rain of Spring -- Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#39 After the First Rain of Spring -- Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#40 After the First Rain of Spring -- Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#41 After the First Rain of Spring -- Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#42 After the First Rain of Spring -- Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#43 After the First Rain of Spring -- Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#44 After the First Rain of Spring -- Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
#45 After the First Rain of Spring -- Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
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Homage to Harry Callahan
As I was making the photographs for this project I began thinking about the gallery talk I'd be giving in Milwaukee on April 21 at The Alice Wilds gallery. I was thinking of myself as "the teacher" and all the wonderful students I had worked with over the 33 years of my tenure at UW-Milwaukee. And then that got me thinking about myself as "the student" and all the influential photography teachers I had studied with, and all that I had received from them. And then, because I had been making nothing but snow photographs for this project, I thought about Harry Callahan and his snow photographs. It occurred to me that many if not all of the snow photographs in this project, and perhaps every snow photograph I had ever made, was probably haunted by the remembrance of Callahan's early snow photographs that I had studied devotedly as a student, over and over again, in a book that became most precious to me:
1964
I never actually met Harry Callahan; his photographs in this book were my "teacher." I learned so much just from looking at his images. The resources to me as a student in Rochester, NY in 1964-67 were astounding. I was studying photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and each week I would walk or bus to the George Eastman House to hear Beaumont Newhall lecture on the History of Photography.
I loved Eastman House. Going there was a pilgrimage. I would study and re-study the prints on permanent display that provided an overview of the history of photography to the present day (1964). I stopped by and paid Homage to my favorite images--by Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston, Minor White and Ansel Adams. I made appointments to see prints upstairs in the archived collections. I went multiple times to each new exhibition on display in the large galleries. Nathan Lyons was director of exhibitions when I was a student in Rochester; he mounted (and traveled) for the George Eastman House some of the most important contemporary photography shows ever assembled in the 1960's. While I was in Rochester I saw one-man exhibitions of photographs by Aaron Siskind, Mario Giacomelli and Gary Winogrand.
I remember with great fondness getting to Eastman House early each week, before Beaumont Newhall's class began, and perusing all of the recently published photography books that were displayed in a large rack by the side entrance to the House. The one book I returned to over and over again was Photographs : Harry Callahan, published in 1964 by El Mochuelo Gallery, Santa Barbara. (The book went out of print very quickly; it was an expensive book for a poor student like myself back then, and now it is impossible to get a good used copy for less than a thousand dollars!)
The Callahan book is a masterpiece of publishing in every respect. And I particularly remember the snow photographs (see two examples below). They were reproduced quite small on the page surrounded by lots of white space; and many of the snow images were rendered as pure paper white, with just a few lines or shapes creating beautiful, oftentimes simple structures or dynamic visual movements within the "frame." The "frame" sometimes consisted of embossed edges that cast a subtle tonal presence around the pure white images. I loved the way the embossment separated the picture's edge from the surrounding white space of page. In my rendering of Callahan's images I used a light gray line to indicated where the embossed edges had been placed to define the picture's frame.
Harry Callahan, 1948 Chicago, Lincoln Park
Harry Callahan, 1943 Detroit, Weeds in Snow
This photograph, Weeds in Snow, was made by Callahan in his place of birth, Detroit, two years before I was born! It and others like it (Lincoln Park, above) taught me that small photographs could be intimate in feeling and yet at the same time powerful visual statements. They taught me that simplicity has its own particular voice and qualitative meaning; and that white spaces in photographs need not have tone and texture in them.
Regarding a Small Morandi Drawing
The snow photographs in the Callahan book also taught me to see and appreciate drawings in a new way. I love Morandi's still life paintings. (Indeed, I have recently created a huge project in Homage to Morandi.) When my wife Gloria and I visited Bologna during our dream tour of Italy in 2007 I had a two hour opportunity to wander off on my own to find and visit the Morandi Museum. In the museum, in a hidden away corridor, I discovered a small odd shaped 4x6" pencil drawing on white paper. It was for me a magical image that invoked an immense Imaginal landscape with but a few simple lines placed in just the right relationships to each other within the space and shape of that small piece of paper. I absolutely fell in love with the drawing; I wanted to photograph it so I could "take it home with me" --but I resisted doing that because of the museum's rules. Now, I believe the remembrance of my experience of that image must surly be even more precious to me then if I had made a photograph of the drawing itself. Indeed, that experience is still Imaginally alive within me, just as my experience of the snow images I saw in the Callahan book have remained alive within me. These kinds of deeply meaningful memories, interior images, are also teachers--teachers in the sense that they function as both revelations and "sign posts" for an emerging Self. (See Part 9, The Morandi Homage project, and The Negative Print Series.)
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Callahan's early work is (for me) alive with the excitement of falling in love with photography; it pulsates with the joy of discovering seeing and picture-making. It's also direct, inventive, fresh and unburdened by conceptualism. Indeed it's free of past influences because photography was very young in the mid 1930's when Callahan began making photographs as a hobby in Detroit. He took great pleasure in experimenting with the medium, trying new things, discovering visual worlds that existed only within the medium itself. It seems his photographs just came out of a deep place of longing within himself. Callahan was an intuitive, instinctual artist. (Callahan never studied art formally in school.) However he was a very hard, even obsessive worker; he took refuge in working, making more and more pictures, no matter how confused or lost he was in his Creative Process. The works I love best seem honest, open and intimate in feeling, and I certainly sense all this in his early snow photographs.
I love the way snow transforms the world; I love the way photography can transform the world; I love the way the medium can manifest endlessly new visual worlds, Imaginal worlds that had never been visible to us before the photographs were created. I think Callahan and I shared many of the same loves. His early work especially--which I first saw as a student in Rochester in the mid 1960's--helped awaken and unfold those loves within me.
Homage To All My Teachers
Teachers (and their teachings) have oftentimes come to me through a variety of intermediaries. Though I never met Callahan, I was a student of Aaron Siskind, a teaching colleague of Callahan's, at the Institute of Design in Chicago in 1967 and 1968 . Later, I was also a student of Ray Metzker at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque (1971-72). Metzker had been a student of Callahan and Siskind at the Institute of Design (1956-59).
I taught with John McWilliams at Georgia State University, Atlanta (1972-75). John was a student of Callahan at the Rhode Island School of Design where in 1961 Callahan was hired to start up a new photography program. And I was friends with Joe Jachna, who studied with Callahan and Siskind at the Institute of Design and then went on to teach at the University of Illinois at the Chicago Circle Campus.
All of these photographers-teachers-friends reflected and extended Callahan's influence through the photographs they made and the things they said about photography. I certainly learned a lot about Callahan from these individuals, and perhaps most of all from the photographs of Ray Metzker. It was his photographs (and of course, Callahan's photographs) which energized my Creative Process and gave me permission to continually explore new visual and conceptual territories rather than getting stuck or overly identified with a particular style, subject matter, technique or fads current in the ever-changing art world and its marketplace.
Though I enjoyed studying with Aaron Siskind, our time together was cut short by a travel grant he had received in 1968, so he was away from the Institute of Design for much of the second year I was in Chicago. Fortunately Wynn Bullock was invited to take his position for a year. Bullock was a great photographer, and a fascinating teacher; he was full of ideas and he was particularly interested in the interface of the creative process in art with theoretical science and the philosophy of science.
In Rochester, NY (between 1964-67) I studied with Minor White as well as Beaumont Newhall when I was studying at the Rochester Institute of Technology. And then I studied two years with Nathan Lyons at his home workshops in Rochester (1965-67) when he was director of Exhibitions at George Eastman House.
In Albuquerque, New Mexico (1969-72) I studied with Van Deren Coke, Ray Metzker and once again with Beaumont Newhall (who had been given the honorary status of Professor Emeritus at the University of New Mexico; he served as one of my MFA thesis advisors).
In Atlanta (1972-75) I enjoyed the privilege of spending several days talking with Fredrick Sommer (philosopher & photographer) while he stayed with me and Gloria at our house during his visit to Atlanta (in the spring of 1973). It was like a private seminar; we talked extensively about his recently published manifesto: The Poetic Logic of Art and Aesthetics. I was fascinated by his line: "Our fundamental empathy is to the structure that content reveals." We talked at length about that line.
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Other photographers that have influenced my work include: Edward Weston, Alfred Stieglitz, Mario Giacomelli, W. Eugene Smith, Dave Heath, Gary Winogrand, Eugene Atget, Robert Adams, and Lewis Baltz.
W. Eugene Smith was probably my first really important mentor. I discovered his work in the book The Family of Man. The mention of his name invokes the remembrance of my senior year of High School, in Portland, Indiana, and my English teacher, Mr. Cottner, who was at the time working on his PhD in creative writing at nearby Ball State University. He required an end of the year (1963) final project--a substantial term paper on a subject of our choice. I asked him if I could instead do a photography project based on the book The Family of Man which I had been studying devotedly for throughout my senior year. Mr. Cottner agreed, and we decided I could present an exhibition of my own photographs on the back wall of his classroom along with texts that were used in the book. It was by all accounts a huge success with everyone, and I learned from that experience that I could use photography in a way that was not only fulfilling for me but could touch others as well.
From the depth of my heart I want to express my gratitude to every one of my photography teachers, those noted above and those who have gone unnamed. In the remaining sections of the project below I will present a more expansive view of the idea of teacher.
* * *
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
- Rumi -
The most important thing I have come to understand about those teachers who were most meaningful to me is that they served as mirrors of what it was that I needed to become (or what I needed to avoid becoming). Each in their own way modeled for me and facilitated the unfolding process of my emergence as a person; they helped me become aware of what it was that was latent within me and which needed to open out into the world of being.
It has since become clear to me that everything that I have ever experienced--every place I have ever lived, all the people and things I have become intensely involved with . . . all these things have had something to teach me, to awaken in me, those various aspects of myself which were hidden away, waiting for the "rain" of grace.
Of course some things and some people have held more significance for me than others. However, I've learned that whatever it is I resonate to (a parent, a step-father, a friend or neighbor; a place, thing or event; a photograph, drawing, piece of music or book; a landscape, a constellation of weeds, or a snow-form) . . . whatever it is that invokes a resonance in me is an indicator of an internal recognition that is taking place of some previously unconscious part of my Self--a part that was calling out, wanting my attention, needing to be listened to, understood and integrated.
It is challenging, exhausting work to stay awake and pay attention to all of the meaningful experiences that are coming at me unrelentingly from all directions--and perhaps, most importantly, coming from the inside-out. Essentially what I am talking about here is what Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung termed synchronicity. Photography has always been for me, and continues to be, a path of inner revelation, a path of Self-discovery.
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Before I discovered Carl Jung's research and writings about the Self and the ego, the Collective Unconscious and the personal unconscious, the archetypes and medieval alchemy, the symbol and synchronicity, it was Alfred Stieglitz's photographs and his theory of the equivalent which attracted me most strongly as a young student. When I studied with Minor White one semester at RIT (in my sophomore year, just before he left to teach at MIT), he helped me begin to understand and appreciate Stieglitz's ideas. Minor White's teaching--in a very personal and self-reflexive way--was essentially about extending and clarifying Stieglitz's tradition of the equivalent. (See Minor White's essay Equivalence: The Perennial Trend.)
Nathan Lyons also taught about equivalence, but he spoke of it in terms of the theory correspondence in his Home Workshops. Though I didn't fully understand these ideas of equivalence and correspondence I felt exhilarated by what I was hearing from these two great teachers (and Alfred Stieglitz), and I was exhilarated by what was happening to me internally, at a very intuitive level in those earliest of my years as a student of photography. I would leave Nathan's home after a workshop session shivering with excitement and not knowing for sure what it was that was stimulating me so intensely.
Most importantly, however, I did understand that I could use photography as a way of getting inner feelings out into visual form so that the feelings did not overwhelm me. I was filled with so much sadness and anger and anxiety when I was finally able to leave home (Portland Indiana, and a very difficult family situation) and study photography at RIT. Those confusing, anxious, lonely feelings were transformed by my love of photography and the growing, passionate fire of my Creative Process. My early student years at RIT and the two years of Nathan Lyons workshops was a time of great excitement and a flowering of tremendous creative energy. I knew something great was happening to me, and I could sense that more was on the horizon. I felt guided. In retrospect, I believe it was the grace of my Creative Process that was orchestrating everything that I was experiencing and learning.
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I left Rochester in 1966 after Minor White left for MIT, and after I had completed my second year of study with Nathan Lyons in his home workshop. I moved to Chicago to study with Aaron Siskind at the Institute of Design to complete my Bachelor's degree. While in Chicago I met Gloria and we began to grow close. In 1968 I moved to York City to be near Gloria, who was living in Brooklyn and studying art at Pratt University. I worked for a commercial photographer in New York City and hated it. I began looking for ways to get out of the City. In 1969 I applied for and was offered a full fellowship to the MFA program in photography at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. The degree would enable me to teach at the University level. Indeed, I wanted to be a teacher! and the fellowship actually would pay me to teach two photo classes each semester. It was a tremendous gift from the Universe! I asked Gloria to marry me and go to New Mexico with me . . . and she accepted.
A year after I arrived in New Mexico, in 1970 I met a new graduate student named Dick Knapp. We became friends and he introduced me to Carl Jung's ideas which then motivated me to take a Graduate level Mythology class that was taught from the Jungian (archetypal) perspective. That course turned out to be a major boon for me at the time. Indeed my teacher would later become one of my thesis committee members.
I had been terrified about the written thesis required of all MFA students at the University of New Mexico; I had no idea what to write about or how to write that kind of paper. I remember Beaumont Newhall told me something like "All writers face the dark waters of the unknown." That actually helped me somehow. And it was Jung's ideas that opened up a huge window of opportunity for me. As I studied Jung's world of ideas I saw the relationship between Stieglitz's Equivalent and Jung's idea of Synchronicity. That relationship became not only the thematic focus of my thesis, it also provided me revelatory insights into my own personal Creative Process in photography.
By the time I had graduated with my MFA degree (1972), I had been offered a teaching job at Georgia State University, Atlanta with John McWilliams, and I was prepared to carry into the classroom all that I had learned from the many teachers I had studied with, and all those fresh ideas I had written about regarding my Creative Process in photography and its relation to Stieglitz's Equivalent and Jung's ideas of symbol, alchemy, archetypes and synchronicity. Those ideas continue to be alive and meaningful for me today. (To learn more about my written MFA thesis click here.)
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The True Teacher, Yoga and The Creative Process
My teaching career which began in the early 1970's went very well. But in the early 1980's I underwent some major changes internally and I began recognizing that something was missing
in my life, in my creative process, in me.
In 1987 I met Gurumayi Chidilasananda. Meeting her, experiencing her grace, and beginning my practice of Siddha Yoga Meditation gave me amazing personal insights and tremendous creative energy, and it was the beginning of experiencing glimpses of an inner contentment I had never felt before. Through my relationship to Gurumayi and my practice of Siddha Yoga I was at last discovering what it was I had been longing for.
However, the anticipation of meeting with Gurumayi the first time was pervaded by distrust and reluctance, as I have explained in full detail in my multi-chaptered 2015 project Photography and Yoga. Jung had (mistakenly, in my experience) warned Westerners against treading on Eastern spiritual grounds, and I was not only a Westerner, I was a "Jungian."
Gloria's sister had been practicing Siddha Yoga for several years and wanted us to meet Gurumayi and see what Siddha Yoga was like. She invited us to take (at her expense) a two-day meditation "intensive" with Gurumayi at her ashram in New York State. Gloria and I felt that we had to honor her sister's invitation and gift for at least two reasons: out of respect to Gloria's sister, but on the other had we needed to see for ourselves if Gloria's sister had gotten involved with some kind of dangerous Cult. (There were so many stories circulating in the 1970's and 80's about false gurus and cults.)
My experiences with Gurumayi in that two-day "meditation intensive" took me by total surprise. I experienced her divine energy (her shakti, her grace) with such palpable intensity it nearly knocked my socks off. Being with Gurumayi was a profoundly authentic, transforming experience, an encounter like no other I had experienced with other teachers. Gloria and I immediately began studying and practicing Siddha Yoga Meditation, and we have continued our practices, together, for over thirty years now. (Indeed, see my first project in this series of four, The Rising Sun ~ Prelude To An Exhibition, in which I write about and make photographs about a meditation experience I had on New Year's Day, 2018 with Gurumayi.)
Students of Siddha Yoga are encouraged to "test the Guru" (test the teacher); to ask questions, and really find out what Siddha Yoga is about from one's own inner experiences. After thirty years of practicing, testing and watching carefully, I feel certain, based on my own personal experiences, that Siddha Yoga is a True path and that Gurumayi is indeed a sadguru, a True Teacher, a saint--one who lives in an uninterrupted state of conscious union with the divine Self. Through Gurumayi's shakti--which is said to be the Creative Power of the Universe--I have experienced multiple glimpses of a state of unitary reality that I had been unconsciously longing to know and attain ever since I began studying Jung's writings. Indeed, Jung's use of the word Self is very close to how the word Self is used in the Yoga traditions I have been studying.
After I met Gurumayi my entire life changed for the better, and today it is quite clear that my practice of Siddha Yoga Meditation has merged with my Creative Process in photography, and for this I am truly grateful.
Siddha Yoga, though it is a path open to everyone, is of course not necessarily the right path for everyone. I do believe, however, that when one is truly ready, the teacher/s will appear in whatever form is necessary for the student. It's a matter of time, self-effort, and heartfelt desire or longing. It is true, I believe, that anything of great value must be earned: you get from something what you put into it. One doesn't become a great photographer by only reading or thinking about photography. It is also a matter of working, testing limits, and getting out of the way so that the Creative Process can do what It needs to do.
I believe the teachers we experience are those we have been destined to learn from. I have been blessed with many great teachers, in photography, in yoga, and in my daily life as well. Certainly my wife Gloria has been one of my most patient and challenging teachers for me, and for that I am deeply grateful. And my children and grandchildren have been and continue to be my teachers. The yogic sages say that we choose the family we are born into based on karmic past events. I certainly have the feeling that my family-life experiences are not merely a matter of chance. I do know that grace transforms everything; I know that things are not as they appear; I feel certain that some things, some experiences, cannot be avoided or denied.
I also know that I cannot and should not try to impose any idea or spiritual path on others. Everyone must find their own way. But I believe it is essential to share one's experiences and ideas. Indeed, it's an artist's duty to share their work. This project, all the work I have posted on my blog, the exhibitions I have had, the books I have read, the teachers I have learned from . . . all is worthy not only of contemplation but also of sharing with others. The grace of the Creative Process knows what It must do, where It must go . . . we just have to be open and listen; an inner dialogue is constantly going on between one's Self and one's Creative Process.
In this regard, I am always trying to be mindful, vigilant, and careful to not get too identified with being "the artist," the "doer," the "maker." I believe it is a most crucial part of any one's Creative Process to step back and see where truly meaningful art comes from. Self-effort surly is necessary, but then the grace of one's Creative Process must be constantly acknowledged and embraced as the true Origin, the most pure source of meaningful, inspired work. One's True Teacher is the Self of all, one's own Creative Process.
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I will close this section on True Teachers with a brief Homage to one of my most recently discovered teachers: Henry Corbin. I discovered his work while I was doing research for my project "An Imaginary Book" which I started working on immediately after Gloria and I returned from a tour of Turkey, in 2011. While there I experienced a series of remarkable encounters with various forms of Islamic Sacred Art. When I got back home and began studying about the Sacred Art of Islam, and the mystical aspect of Islam--that is to say, Sufism, I would frequently run across Corbin's name, often in association with the writings of Tom Cheetham who had written a series of four books that beautifully, gracefully introduced me to Corbin's writings and ideas. After reading Cheetham's books and studying his blog devoted to Corbin I then felt prepared and courageous enough to read Corbin's works directly.
Henry Corbin is a truly great scholar of Islamic Traditions, and he has done very deep research into specific Sufic teachers. He was also, I believe, a mystic himself, and very importantly to me, he was also a colleague of Carl Jung's. Thus Corbin's work has helped bridge the gaps for me between Jung, Islam, and my practice of Siddha Yoga. Gurumayi (and her guru, Swami Muktananda) often quoted and spoke lovingly and respectfully about the Sufi poet-saints such as Rumi, Hafiz and Kabir. Indeed, the poetry of all the true saints (from all the Traditions) are the purest teachings, teachings which have poured forth directly from the divine Heart. (See my project Illuminations.)
My experiences in Turkey, the writings of Cheetham and Corbin, and the grace-filled teachings of Siddha Yoga have become for me a great interwoven circle of grace-filled Traditional teachings which have deeply inspired and energized my Creative Process in photography. After creating "An Imaginary Book" in 2013 I continued my personal contemplations on Sacred Art with a series of other projects that are now collected together under the broad title: The Sacred Art Photography Projects. I invite you to check some of them out.
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Thank you for visiting this, the second part of a four part series of related projects.
1 The Rising Sun : Prelude To An Exhibition
2 Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan and All My Teachers
3 Symmetrical Snow Photographs : Homage to A Stieglitz, M White and V Silvestrov
4 Postlude To An Exhibition
This project was posted on my Welcome Page
on April 11, 2018.
Other Related Projects:
Snapshots : Stories of My Life In Photography & Teaching
A Personal History of Photography
Snow Photographs: A Collection of Projects
The Homage Photography Projects
Sacred Art Photography Projects
The Symbolic Photograph
The Photograph as Icon
Please visit my Welcome Page which contains a complete listing of my online photography projects, my resume, contact information, gallery affiliation, recently added projects and much more.
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