Postlude To An Exhibition
Part III of a series of projects created in response
to and in remembrance of my exhibition at The
Alice Wilds, an art gallery in Milwaukee,
and my meditation experience
on New Year's Day, 2018
&
Homage to Minor White
Alfred Stieglitz & Valentine Silvestrov
Postlude to an Exhibition ~ Image #21 "The Golden Rising Sun"
(Click on all images to enlarge them)
to and in remembrance of my exhibition at The
Alice Wilds, an art gallery in Milwaukee,
and my meditation experience
on New Year's Day, 2018
&
Homage to Minor White
Alfred Stieglitz & Valentine Silvestrov
Postlude to an Exhibition ~ Image #21 "The Golden Rising Sun"
(Click on all images to enlarge them)
Introduction
This is the concluding project in a series of three related projects that have been inspired by the coincidence of two events in my life which constitutes for me yet another example of what C.G. Jung termed synchronicity, an essential aspect of my Creative Process. I have described in detail, in the first of the three projects The Rising Sun-Prelude To An Exhibition, how an invitation to exhibit my photographs in Milwaukee, and a New Year's Day (2018) meditation experience initiated the triadic series of projects.
I am publishing this project on the one month anniversary date of my visit to Milwaukee (between April 19 - 22, 2018 to see the mini retrospective exhibition of my work at The Alice Wilds, attend the Gallery Night Opening, give some gallery talks, and attend a gracious "Home Coming" party with friends.
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The second project in the series, Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan and All My Teachers was created in the time that the exhibition was being displayed at the gallery and I was making plans to travel to Milwaukee to see it. Because I had agreed to give two gallery talks during my visit to Milwaukee in late April, one of which would be with students from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, I began thinking about my own experiences as a student of photography, and the teachers who had been so important to me in those early, formative years (1963-1975). I mentioned Minor White and Alfred Stieglitz as important influences to me as a young photography student, but after publishing the project it occurred to me that they deserved a much more deeply considered acknowledgement, for both were worthy of much more than a mere mention. In this, the concluding project in the series, entitled Postlude To An Exhibition, I have honored them more appropriately,
My choice of the word "Postlude" in the title of this project is a form of acknowledgement of yet another important influence in my life, one of my favorite modern composers, Valentin Silvestrov. He has written some of the most powerful and beautiful music I have ever heard. Like Callahan (and myself as well) Silvestrov's career as an artist has encompassed a broad spectrum of styles and forms. I feel identified with Silvestrov in many ways and I have been wanting to pay Homage to him for some time. His music has inspired me--my creative process--in untold ways and yet I have never known how to properly define his influence. I noted his music in my earlier project The Photograph as ICON, but the present project seems like a more suitable context in which to talk about his music in relation to my photography. Music has been an important influence upon my work throughout my career, beginning with a book of photographs I created in 1968 for a senior thesis project at the Institute of Design in Chicago. The structure of the book, entitled Kraus and which includes recurring imagery, was inspired by Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle and his use of leitmotiv. (To see my music inspired projects Click here .)
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I've begun this project with a discussion of the installation of my work at the Alice Wilds, and the publications associated with the exhibition, the gallery talks, the opening, the party, etc., then I've presented my newest work, symmetrical snow photographs which were constructed using the straight snow photographs I had published in the previous, second project in the three-part series. The new work visually echos, extends and returns back to the symmetrical photographs I presented in the initiating project The Rising Sun~Prelude To An Exhibition. I have included some commentary on the new work intermingled with my discussions of Minor White, Alfred Stieglitz, and the Equivalent photograph, then I conclude the project with a discussion of Valentin Silvestrov and his Postludial and Metaphoric music. ~ Welcome to the project.
About "The Space-Between" Exhibition
Gloria and I arrived in Milwaukee the evening of Wednesday, April 18 after a fourteen hour drive from Canandaigua, NY. The drive takes us past Rochester, NY through Buffalo, Cleveland, past South Bend and through Gary, and then finally through Chicago. We were quite familiar with the drive for we had done it on an average of twice a year for the 33 years we lived in Milwaukee. Gloria was born and raised in Rochester, NY. (which is a forty minute drive north and west of Canandaigua.) We would typically drive to Rochester for the Christmas and Summer holidays with our two children to visit Gloria's parents, her brother and her two sisters and their families.
During our recent drive to Milwaukee we nearly got run over by a truck changing lanes on us, and we ran into a quirky snow storm just as we hit Chicago. The snow created even longer delays in Chicago that evening, and a slower drive from Chicago to Milwaukee.
I'm not complaining about the snow, however, for if you know my recent work, snow has been a continuing subject for my photography during the winter months for the past several years (click here to see my collection of snow projects). I love the way snow transforms the world and makes space palpably alive and visible. The unexpected snowfall in Milwaukee was remarkably beautiful; it turned the place we had lived in for over 33 years into a magical wonderland; the transformation felt to me like a miraculous Welcoming.
In Siddha Yoga, which Gloria and I have been practicing since 1987, we often speak of "the rain of grace," and for me that idea extends perfectly to snow--which is, after all, cyrstallized light--yet another form of grace. I had been feeling anxious about showing my work again in Milwaukee, and meeting old friends and students and colleagues I hadn't seen in a long time; but the magical quality of the snowfall seemed to be saying to me: "Remember: it's all grace. Whatever happens will be perfect."
Remembrance is a yogic practice. And I consider the three projects in this series--and each of the photographs within them--as a reminder that indeed everything is grace and an integral part of a much larger Creative Process that constitutes my unfolding awareness of the One divine Self that exists in everyone and everything. It has taken me most of the thirty years I've been practicing Siddha Yoga to "get" this simple truth, but, after all, the process of fully integrating this Truth is indeed what life is all about.
About the Installation
The Alice Wilds exhibition, entitled Steven D. Foster : The Space Between ~ Selected Works from 1977 - 2017 consisted of fifty-three framed photographs representing eleven projects made over a forty year period. The show was beautifully selected and installed by John Sobczak, Director of The Alice Wilds gallery. He was careful not to overcrowd the space and at the same time he put together elegant looking and insightfully sequenced constellations of images that encompassed multiple thematic categories of my work made over forty years. You can see excellent installation photographs of the exhibition (by Tyler Jones and Daniel McCullough) and close-up views of selected images that were exhibited at this link: The Alice Wilds Archive.
The exhibition, which was presented in chronological order, began with six silver gelatin prints from the 1977 project, The Steve Lacy Series (photographs of Milwaukee neighborhood places that give visual form to my response to the jazz music of Steve Lacy); then followed seven silver gelatin prints from the 1981-82 Lake Series (photographs of Lake Michigan made from Milwaukee shorelines); then there were four silver gelatin prints from the 1983-84 project Images of Eden (photographs made within the Milwaukee County Park System); and then John created a large grouping of 12 framed small (3.5" sq.) silver gelatin prints from the 1999-2000 Garage Series project. Next to the small garage images he placed a grouping of four larger (18" sq.) digital prints from the 2006 digital version of the Garage Series.
(I think of the small garage photographs as "character portraits" and the larger digital versions as "sound images" suspended in black space--a visual metaphor for silence. The Garage Series photographs were the first in a collection of three large projects made in Homage to American composer Morton Feldman.) All of the projects mentioned thus far constitute something like a "portrait" or poetic document of Milwaukee.
The gallery wall leading back to the office area contained five Chromatic Field images from my multi-chaptered 2003-06 project Triadic Memories, another of the three large projects in Homage to the music of Morton Feldman.
Then further down the wall past the Chromatic Fields there were five large symmetrical photographs from the Crystalline Paradise project (photographs made in Moorish Spain in 2012). Behind the office desk was one symmetrical photograph from the 2015 project Yoga and Photography, and further down the wall from the desk there was another single symmetrical photograph from the 2016 project Center of Being.
The exhibit concluded in the back part of the gallery. Seven beautifully displayed selections from my three recent Broad Brook projects (2016 & 2017). Five of the seven images were straight Broad Brook photographs, and other two were Symmetrical Broad Brook photographs from my project entitled Death : A Meditation.
Before I first entered the gallery I passed by a window through which I could see the title of the show on the wall. Then just inside the door and down a short hallway there was a framed color photograph from my 2006-13 Studies III Color Photographs project, an image entitled Butterflies and Oranges. This rather small photograph, within which there appears to be a rather large "eye," seemed to serve the dual purpose of "Welcoming" visitors to the exhibition" and then "Thanking" them for coming.
Butterflies and Oranges from the Color Studies project
The Studies Projects are particularly dear to my heart; I'm glad John included at least this one Studies print in the exhibition. It has occurred to me, however, that the small silver gelatin Garage Series prints were originally made as part of a late 1990's Studies project. As the garage images began to dominate my creative process I realized that the growing collection of garage images needed to be identified as its own separate project. Then, when I realized that the series was being influenced by the music and ideas of Morton Feldman, an American composer I had just discovered and was becoming fascinated by at that time, I decided to designate The Garage Series as the first of three large projects made in response to and in Homage to Morton Feldman and his music.
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When I met with John Sobczak and Jon Horvath in April of 2017 and we talked about an exhibition of my work at The Alice Wilds, I insisted that they choose the pictures and design the installation of the exhibition. I preferred to see how John and Jon saw my work, and how they would respond to the challenge of exhibiting it. After all, I have been in the process of posting the entire history of my work on my blog since November, 2010; choosing images from over seventy projects--images that would look good together and make some kind of sense together within a limited space I had never seen--was something I did not want to take on.
John and Jon worked together a long time on the selection process, but, as I understand it, they finally decided that John would take charge of the exhibition and present the images in a chronological sequence, and Jon would select and edit the catalogue, using a non-linear, poetic-interpretive approach to presenting selections of my work from a broader range of projects.
I am exceedingly grateful to them both for their untiring efforts and willingness to take on the responsibilities of curating and designing the show and catalogue. It all worked out beautifully. And their commitment to doing that work allowed me to focus all my attention and energies on making new photographs--namely the Prelude To An Exhibition, the Homage to All my Teachers, and this concluding project, Postlude To An Exhibition.
Reviews, the Catalogue, and a Blog Article
Several things were published in relation to my exhibition at The Alice Wilds gallery. The gallery's two email posters created for the exhibition can be seen together a the very top of my Rising Sun project page.
Mary Lousie Schumacher, award winning Art Critic for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, wrote twice about the exhibition on her weekly blog named Art City. The following mention of my exhibition at The Alice Wilds gallery was published on Friday, April 13, 2018, one of her first blog entries after returning to Milwaukee after a year 's leave on a Neiman Foundation Fellowship at Harvard University:
If you want a tip about what to give your culture -seeking attention to, I have two words: Steven Foster. Steve is one of the most inspired artists to have ever (and I don't use that word lightly) worked in Milwaukee, an artist whose work is in many ways too quiet, too subtle, too out of time, for our internet era. All the more reason to unplug and get over there.
On the following Friday, April 20, 2018, she elaborated on some of these themes. Here is an excerpt from May Louise's illustrated article:
As an art critic there are artist who haunt you, whose work is so clearly special in that one-in-a-generation way, but for whom the process of creating words to place alongside that work seems beyond one's capacities.
from the project Images of Eden
click here to see the project
click on image to enlarge
Then a decade ago Steven left. An inspired artist and teacher, a student of Minor White, he slipped away from Milwaukee and relocated in upstate New York.
Now The Alice Wilds gallery has placed a corrective on its walls. The've brought Steven and his work back to Milwaukee. A small retrospective spanning 40 years of his sensitive, philosophic art remains on view for a little more than a week. It has been lovingly created with the help of one of his last students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Jon Horvath.
I saw it last evening, involuntarily shaking my head again and again in disbelief at the inexplicable, subtle beauty. As I've said before, Foster is one of the most inspired artists to have ever produced work here, an artist who is in many ways too quiet, too spiritual, too out of time for our era of inattention . . .
Mary Louise mentioned the names of Minor White and Jon Horvath in her article; I will write about Minor White later. But next I will quote from Jon Horvath's written statement that comes at the end of a 74 page catalogue created for the Alice Wilds gallery in conjunction with the exhibition. The catalogue, titled Steven D. Foster : The Space Between, 1977 - 2017 was conceived, edited and designed by Jon and co-designer Daniel Chung. It includes photographs from 23 of the over seventy projects posted on my blog.
Click on the images to enlarge
Jon Horvath wrote: . . . after persisting through his labyrinthian online project "The Departing Landscape" it becomes unmistakably clear the significance Steven Foster places in spontaneous moments of revelation within his own life and practice. It was within one such moment at the age of 10, a first introduction to drugstore snapshots by a family member, just weeks before he'd lose his father, that Steven understood his life's pursuit would be with the medium of photography. More recently it was a moment within a museum of Turkish and Islamic art, where the pages of an illuminated Qur'an appeared to come to life, and set him feverishly on path toward a deeper understanding of sacred art. Much of Steven's proclivity towards such phenomena is well documented in his own writing, where he credits the concept of synchronicity, moments of meaningful coincidence when the internal psyche recognizes itself manifest in the external world, as influencing the underlying thesis for decades of prolific work. It is the idea of unexpected moments of coming together, spiritual, psychic, and otherwise, that binds Steven Foster's full oeuvre, ranging from works about family, music, poetry, spirituality, and the self. It is that which allows Steven to bend and reshape his own imagery by repeatedly reworking his visuals time and time again. And it is within that spirit that the pages of this catalog have taken shape, providing for a non-chronological poetic reinterpretation of Steven's work that strives to unearth moments of meaningful connection, sympathetic imagery, and new relationships that were never intended to be, but point at something of greater depth that has persisted since Steven first picked up a camera.
Jon concludes: I've never quite known how to put into language the symbiotic relationship I feel with Steven through his imagery. As I inch closer to some word or phrase that feels right, it quickly slips away and leaves me feeling foolish for even trying. So, instead I choose to be absorbed fully by the intoxicatingly significant breadth of his remarkable career . . .
I want to reiterate here that the new symmetrical photographs I've made for this project are transformations (Re-Visions) of the straight snow photographs which were included in the Homage to Harry Callahan project--a perfect example of my propensity "to bend and reshape my imagery repeatedly, reworking . . . [my images] time and time again."
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Finally, Daniel McCullough published an article about me and my work for the well-known photography blog Lenscratch.com on April 21, 2018. Daniel was one of Jon Horvath's graduating seniors this past spring semester (2018) at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. Daniel first worked with John Sobczak as an intern at the Dean Jensen Gallery in Milwaukee in 2016, then continued as an intern at The Alice Wilds after Dean retired his gallery and John and Tina Schinabeck opened the Alice Wilds gallery in the fall of 2017. I met Daniel while I was in Milwaukee. He is an outstanding photographer; he is smart, articulate and self-effacing. He did an excellent job in choosing images and introducing my work in his article.
Click on the images to enlarge
Daniel's introduction includes a detailed account--excerpted from my blog writings--about the death of my father (when I was nearly eleven years old) and my sense of the destined role photography has played in my life. The article includes a broad sampling of my work from a variety of projects, and some installation shots of the exhibition space at The Alice Wilds. Thank you Daniel! (Click on this link Lenscratch/Foster to view Daniel's article Steven D. Foster : The Space Between.)
Two Gallery Talks & the Gallery Night Opening
John Sobczak sincerely cares about the students who come to the gallery--they represent, of course, the future artists of Milwaukee. Indeed John has become a mentor for many local students and some of them have voluntarily helped with the running of the gallery. John has had many years experience as a professional gallerist, and knows and loves photography quite intimately. He and the The Alice Wilds has a lot to offer young, committed, hardworking artists.
I met with around 25 students from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design at the Alice Wilds gallery on Thursday afternoon, April 19 to speak with them. Most, I believe, were Jon Horvath's students. They were a wonderful, engaged group of young artists. They listened intensely as I introduced each of the projects represented in the exhibition, talked about aspects of my creative process and answered questions.
Gallery Talk with MIAD students Thursday afternoon Photo by Tyler Jones
I noticed that the students huddled around me closely as I talked, which was quite enjoyable; and it was also quite different compared to the way the audience interacted with me at my Public Gallery Talk on Saturday afternoon, April 21. (See the pictures above and below, taken during the two gallery talks.)
A panoramic view by Kevin Miyazaki of the main gallery space during my public
Gallery Talk on Saturday, April 21, 2018 at the Alice Wilds Gallery
Milwaukee holds four Gallery Night and Day Openings each year. The Gallery Night Opening for my show was Friday, April 20, and there was a continuous flow of people coming and going throughout the evening. Many past students and friends and colleagues came to greet me and welcome me back. It was wonderful to catch up with those I had not spoken with for perhaps as many as 12-25 years! And Tina Schinabeck, co-owner of The Alice Wilds, contributed this beautiful work of art for all to enjoy:
After I gave the Public Gallery Talk on Saturday afternoon, one of my very first students at UW-Milwaukee (1975) threw a private party for me. It was an intimate gathering of friends and artists and colleagues in which I was able to talk with everyone in a very relaxed, comfortable and nurturing atmosphere.
Gloria's dear friend Paula and her husband John took great care of us during our visit, and they came (amidst their very busy schedules) to both the Friday night Opening and the Public Gallery Talk on Saturday. Thank you! Paula and John.
Gallery Night Opening: Tina's Beautiful Offering of food and drink at The Alice Wilds
(click on the image to enlarge; and don't forget the cookies--upper left)
Gloria's dear friend Paula and her husband John took great care of us during our visit, and they came (amidst their very busy schedules) to both the Friday night Opening and the Public Gallery Talk on Saturday. Thank you! Paula and John.
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The Space Between
I was fortunate in being able to exhibit my work regularly in Milwaukee and Chicago between 1975 and 2004. I have always felt it was my duty to share my creative process with my immediate communities. However I almost always found it a personal challenge interfacing with gallery personal and the viewing public. I never felt at home in galleries and museums; I felt fearful, and "on display," thus I would withdraw into an interior space which separated myself from others. I think this tendency was based on my being too personally identified with my photographs.
My yogic studies and practices have helped me with this issue. It is now my understanding that "I" am not the one who is doing the work. Instead I see myself as something like a servant, one who facilitates the process but tries to stay (as best I can) out of the way so that something greater than myself can make the images--images that function for me as symbols. I call that "something greater" than myself, the Creative Process; in many Hindu traditions it is called Shakti, the "Creative Power of the Universe," the transcendent power of the divine Self. I also like to call it grace.
Working with John and Jon on this show was a refreshingly new experience for me. I felt there was a basic understanding and respect that we shared with each other. That same feeling extended for me into my experience of the Gallery Night Opening. In general the space between me and everyone else felt full with love, respect and gratitude. It was really good reconnecting with those I had known from my Milwaukee past, I equally enjoyed meeting new students and gallery visitors, and it was a pleasure to see my work placed upon the walls of the gallery (and on the pages of the catalogue) with so much care and insight and elegance.
The experience continues to unfold and expand as I work on this project and contemplate my memories and share them with you here. The entire process has been something like a Return Home for me--an inward journey.
My yogic studies and practices have helped me with this issue. It is now my understanding that "I" am not the one who is doing the work. Instead I see myself as something like a servant, one who facilitates the process but tries to stay (as best I can) out of the way so that something greater than myself can make the images--images that function for me as symbols. I call that "something greater" than myself, the Creative Process; in many Hindu traditions it is called Shakti, the "Creative Power of the Universe," the transcendent power of the divine Self. I also like to call it grace.
Working with John and Jon on this show was a refreshingly new experience for me. I felt there was a basic understanding and respect that we shared with each other. That same feeling extended for me into my experience of the Gallery Night Opening. In general the space between me and everyone else felt full with love, respect and gratitude. It was really good reconnecting with those I had known from my Milwaukee past, I equally enjoyed meeting new students and gallery visitors, and it was a pleasure to see my work placed upon the walls of the gallery (and on the pages of the catalogue) with so much care and insight and elegance.
The experience continues to unfold and expand as I work on this project and contemplate my memories and share them with you here. The entire process has been something like a Return Home for me--an inward journey.
Gratitude
Thank You! Everyone in Milwaukee!! who came to the gallery and welcomed me and Gloria with your palpable kindness. Thank you, Gloria, for the extraordinary support you have given me and my creative process over the past fifty years. And a very special heartfelt expression of gratitude to John, and Jon and Tina; and Ken, Kevin and Marilu; Paula and John; Daniel and Mary Louise; and our daughter Jessica, her partner Paul, and our grandson River! (with whom I played several times during our visit . . . until I finally wore him out--Not!).
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Introduction to the Symmetrical Photographs
This project, Postlude To An Exhibition : Homage To Minor White, Alfred Stieglitz and Valentine Silvestrov completes an unusual cycle of projects that was initiated by two particular events: an invitation to come back to Milwaukee and exhibit my work once again, and a yogic meditation experience that occurred on New Year's Day, 2018.
The symmetrical photographs you will see in this last of the three related projects consists of transformed snow images, images which were published in the preceding project: Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan and All My Teachers. Several of the symmetrical photographs you will see below exist in two variations, the second versions of which involved a process I call inversion which essentially turns an image "inside-out."
After the presentation of the photographs, I will write about Minor White, Alfred Stieglitz, their ideas about the photograph as equivalent, and then I will conclude the project with an introduction to the music of composer Valentin Silvestrov and his ideas regarding the Postlude and Meta-Music (Metaphorical Music).
Symmetrical Snow Photographs
Re-Visions of images published in my previous project:
"Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan
and All My Teachers"
Postlude to an Exhibition ~ Symmetrical Snow Photograph ~ Image #1
Postlude to an Exhibition ~ Symmetrical Snow Photograph ~ Image #2
Postlude to an Exhibition ~ Symmetrical Snow Photograph ~ Image #3
Postlude to an Exhibition ~ Symmetrical Snow Photograph ~ Image #4
Postlude to an Exhibition ~ Symmetrical Snow Photograph ~ Image #5
Postlude to an Exhibition ~ Symmetrical Snow Photograph ~ Image #6
Postlude to an Exhibition ~ Symmetrical Snow Photograph ~ Image #7
Postlude to an Exhibition ~ Symmetrical Snow Photograph ~ Image #8
Postlude to an Exhibition ~ Symmetrical Snow Photograph ~ Image #9
Postlude to an Exhibition ~ Symmetrical Snow Photograph ~ Image #10
Postlude to an Exhibition ~ Symmetrical Snow Photograph ~ Image #11
Postlude to an Exhibition ~ Symmetrical Snow Photograph ~ Image #12
Postlude to an Exhibition ~ Symmetrical Snow Photograph ~ Image #13
Postlude to an Exhibition ~ Symmetrical Snow Photograph ~ Image #14 "Blue Pearl"
Postlude to an Exhibition ~ Symmetrical Snow Photograph ~ Inversion, Image #15
Postlude to an Exhibition ~ Symmetrical Snow Photograph ~ Inversion, Image #16
Postlude to an Exhibition ~ Symmetrical Snow Photograph ~ Inversion, Image #17
Postlude to an Exhibition ~ Symmetrical Snow Photograph ~ Inversion, Image #18
Postlude to an Exhibition ~ Symmetrical Snow Photograph ~ Inversion, Image #19
Postlude to an Exhibition ~ Symmetrical Snow Photograph ~ Inversion, Image #20
Postlude to an Exhibition ~ Symmetrical Snow Photograph ~ Inversion, Image #21
Postlude to an Exhibition ~ Symmetrical Snow Photograph ~ Inversion: Image #22 "The Golden Rising Sun"
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The
Equivalent
and the
Postlude
_________________
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Homage to
Minor White
Alfred Stieglitz
Valentin Silvestrov
Mary Lousie Schumacher, Art Critic for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, stated in her Art City blog entry for Friday, April 21, 2018 that I was a "student of Minor White." Someone asked me about that during one of the gallery talks I gave at The Alice Wilds, so I want to elaborate on that point here.
Minor White
I studied with Minor White one semester only (in 1965) at the Rochester Institute of Technology, just before he left Rochester to set up a photography program at MIT. I was a sophomore at the time, and Minor's course (I think it was titled "Visual Communications") was required for the "fine arts"/ Illustration sub-major of RIT's photography program.
Well before taking Minor's class I had discovered Aperture, the fine arts photography quarterly at the RIT bookstore. Minor was one of the founding members of the quarterly and its editor. I had met some serious photography students at RIT who had studied with Minor, and we talked together quite a lot about Minor, his work and teaching. By the time I could finally take his course I was very excited to do so; Minor had achieved legendary status before he left Rochester, and was one of the new "Masters of Photography," at least in the world of "creative photography."
One of the first issues of Aperture I purchased (in 1963) after becoming a Freshman Photography Major at RIT was devoted entirely to Alfred Stieglitz. That special issue (8:1, 1960) and Minor White's essay Equivalence: The Perennial Trend were important influences on me as a budding young artist, even before I attended Minor's class.
Minor projected a lot of charisma as a teacher; indeed he seemed to want to be perceived as a kind of guru. He took on private students who lived with him at 72 N. Union St., above a hardware store, and assisted him in various house-keeping, publishing and photographic chores. He also held "print sessions" at his home on some Friday nights--by invitation only. It was an honor to be invited, and when I heard that one of my friends was invited to a print session I was hugely disappointed that I hadn't been invited as well. I asked my friend if ever he was invited again, would he please ask permission to bring me along to the session? My friend agreed, and later I was allowed to attend a print session.
That turned out to be a very disappointing experience for me, however. As the evening progressed (people in attendance would take turns sharing their perceptions, feelings, ideas, etc. about selected photographs on display for that purpose) Minor continued to drink more and more alcohol . . . until he became noticeably intoxicated. His talking became blurred, and at one point he became quite sad and teary-eyed.
It was obvious to me that Minor was a suffering soul. But seeing him in this way made me lose trust in him as a teacher. It brought up in me painful memories of my stepfather who often drank and gambled on Friday nights after work, often not coming home first or even calling my mother to let her know where he was.
I now have more understanding and compassion for what Minor must have been going through then, and certainly I acknowledge and appreciate Minor's contribution to photography as a fine art medium. He had a true and very intense commitment to the medium, and to photographic education; he made some very powerful images that resonate for me even today; and his Aperture publications are an enormously important contribution to the history of what he called "creative photography" or camera work (after the "Photographic Quarterly" of the same name which Alfred Stieglitz published from 1903-1917). Though Minor spoke often about "spirit" and transcendence in relation to photographic practice, I have often found that too much of his work was overly preoccupied with his own personal sufferings and struggle. I was looking for a True teacher (though I didn't realize it until 1987), and because of the loss of my father and the problems I endured with my step father, I tested everyone, including Minor . . . and everyone pretty much failed my tests.
At last, in 1987 Gloria and I met Gurumayi Chivilasananda. Gurumayi is a yogic saint, a True guru, or Satguru. Gloria and I have studied Siddha Yoga Meditation with Gurumayi for over thirty years now. Her grace, her teachings and the Siddha Yoga practices--all have been deeply meaningful and transformative for both of us. We have found Siddha Yoga to be a True Path, and I am grateful to Minor White for the role he played in my search for a True Guru.
Alfred Stieglitz, the Equivalent and the Symbolic Photograph
I am also grateful to Minor White for introducing me to Alfred Stieglitz and the idea of the Equivalent photograph. For Stieglitz, Truth and equality were of the utmost essence, and the key to a photograph that functioned as an equivalent:
All true art is a picture to me--an equivalent
of a supreme order.
Where there is no equality of respect,
there can be no true relationship.
All true things are equal to one another.
The 1960 Aperture issue entitled Alfred Stieglitz - Introduction to an American Seer (number 8:1) was I believe largely responsible for setting me on a very clear and dedicated path to becoming an artist-photographer. The issue was written and compiled by Dorothy Norman, who met Stieglitz in 1927 and thereafter began making notes of her impressions of him and everything he said whenever they were together. The Stieglitz photographs and direct quotations she included in her Aperture monograph definitely awakened something deep inside me which has continued to grow and evolve over the past fifty plus years. Here are some of my favorite quotes attributed to Stieglitz by Dorothy Norman:
There seemed to be something closely related to my deepest feelings
in what I saw, and I decided to photograph what was within me.
If one believes in something sufficiently, one will find
a form through which to create what one must . . .
Photography brings what is not visible to the surface.
Beauty is the Universal seen.
I wanted to photograph clouds to find out
what I had learned in 40 years about photography.
Through clouds to put down my philosophy of life--to show
that my photographs were not due to subject matter--
not to special trees, or faces, or interiors, to
special privileges--clouds were there
for everyone--no tax as yet
on them--free.
Alfred Stieglitz 1931 Equivalent
I feel the duality of world forces forever at work.
But it is when conflict hovers about a point
--a focal point--and light is in the
ascendancy, that
I am moved.
It is not the mere hitting of the target that interests me.
But rather the hitting of the center of the center
of the bull's eye. And then the point
even beyond that.
If one cannot lose oneself to something beyond one,
one is bound to be disappointed.
If what one makes is not created with a sense of sacredness,
a sense of wonder; if it is not a form of love-making
. . . it has no right to be called
a work of art.
All art is but a picture of certain basic relationships;
an equivalent of the artist's most profound experiences of life.
All true art is a picture to me--an equivalent
of a supreme order.
Where there is no equality of respect,
there can be no true relationship.
All true things are equal to one another.
When an artist finds his own truth, he will find that it fits in with
traditional truths, for traditional truths are but truths that
have endured over a long period of time. . . . as each
speaks his own truth from the depths of his own
experience, it must automatically be in the
great tradition of truth . . . It is this that
I mean in spirit when I say all true
things are equal to each other.
I refuse to identify seeing with knowing. Seeing
signifies awareness resulting from inner experience.
To see, means to know that one does not know, yet not be ignorant.
And then to act in the light of one's knowledge. To learn
signifies nothing unless what one claims to have
learned is transformed into act.
For me, all lived moments are equally true, equally important.
Thus, only in being true to all moments can one be true to any.
When I am no longer thinking, but simply am,
then I may be said to be truly affirming life.
Not to know, but to let exist what is,
that alone, perhaps,
is truly to know.
All quotes attributed to Alfred Stieglitz in Aperture 8:1, 1960 by D. Norman
The concept of the equivalent was essential to my development of the idea of the photograph that functions as a symbol. The symbolic photograph is an image which conjoins coinciding inner and outer images into a transcendent image of the Imaginal world, that is to say an image of Unitary Reality. Stieglitz said: To see means to know that one does not know, yet not be ignorant. / Seeing signifies awareness resulting from inner experience. These statements relate directly to yogic teachings I have studied and my idea of the symbol. For me a symbol is an image that invokes meaning of an order that transcends mere intellectual knowledge. (Indeed Jung himself said that a symbol was "the best possible expression for something unknown.") For me, symbols give visual form to an ineffable realm of being, a realm of meaning which transcends form, language, the known.
This transcendent realm of being and meaning, though nameless, un-seeable, and unknowable, nonetheless has many Names: it has been called God, Shiva, Guru, the Tao, the divine Self. Jung wrote in great depth about the Self, which for him was the goal of the psychotherapeutic process he developed, and the Self was also synonymous with goal of the ancient alchemical processes he studied and wrote about in depth, a psycho-physical process which was symbolized by the transformation of base metals into gold.
The goal of the yogic practices is a direct and sustained identity or immersion in the divine Self, the Absolute, that which--according to the Guru Gita, is said to be beyond understanding, beyond form, and yet paradoxically it is that which takes the form of this entire universe. True Yogic Saints and Sadgurus live in the constant and conscious awareness of their union or Oneness with the Creative Power of the Universe, the divine Self.
Some of of Stieglitz's comments suggests an awareness of this kind of transcendence. For example:
It is not the mere hitting of the target that interests me.
But rather the hitting of the center of the center
of the bull's eye. And then the point
even beyond that.
This statement resonates with the philosophical ideas of Sufism, the mystical aspect of Islam, and with the infinitely beautiful Traditions of Sacred Geometry which is at the very heart of Islamic Sacred Art which I first became aware of in 2011 when Gloria and I traveled to Turkey. I experienced a series of epiphanies in Turkey which initiated the making of "An Imaginary Book," the first of an ongoing series of Sacred Art Photography Projects. The following three paragraphs are taken from my Preface to "An Imaginary Book."
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The four-fold [symmetrical photographs] are quite literally a visualization of the primary Islamic doctrine, Oneness; the Unity of Being. At the pure center, or true heart of the symmetrical image where the four mirroring images have crystallized into one, there is the imaginary Point, that primordial mystery, the Origin from which all created things emerge.
The circle is the archetypal governing basis for all the geometric shapes that unfold within it . . . reflecting the unity of its original source, the point, the simple, self-evident origin of geometry and a subject grounded in mystery. The circle has always been regarded as a symbol of eternity, without beginning and without end, just being.
Keith Critchlow: Islamic Patterns
The Heart corresponds to the centre of the [Islamic] Garden, the point where grows the Tree of Life and where flows the Fountain of Life. The Heart is in fact nothing other than this Fountain. . . The extreme significance of this penultimate degree in the hierarchy of centers is that it marks the threshold of the Beyond, the point at which the natural ends and the supernatural or transcendent begins. The Heart is the 'isthmus' which is so often mentioned in the Qur'an as separating 'the two seas' which represent Heaven and earth. . . Moses says: 'I will not cease until I reach the meeting-place of the two seas.' He is formulating the initial vow that every mystic must make, implicitly if not explicitly, to reach the lost Centre which alone gives access to transcendent knowledge. In the Sufi's turning away from the world in the direction of the Heart . . . there lies a powerful discipline of consecration.
Martin Lings, What is Sufism?
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"Perceive the One that Exists in All"
After I completed the above section on Alfred Stieglitz and the Equivalent Gloria and I participated in a wonderful audio program at the Rochester (N.Y.) Siddha Yoga Meditation Center entitled "Perceive the One that Exists in All." It was a program that explored the yogic teachings regarding Equal Vision. Shortly after the program began it struck me that I was being graced with yet another occurrence of synchronicity, for Stieglitz's idea of the Equivalent photograph and the yogic teachings regarding Equal Vision are essentially One and the same. As Stieglitz said "All true things are equal to one another."
Similarly the concept of Equality Awareness is summed up in these brief statements: "Shiva alone dwells equally within everything, and within each and every person." "Shiva exists within us, as us." "Nothing exists that is not Shiva."
When, with the help of grace, we transcend the separateness and limitedness of ego perception, when we "see beyond the center of the center of the bulls eye and the point even beyond that" we then are seeing the world through "Shiva's eyes," through the eyes of our own Divinity, through the eyes of our own Heart, our own inner Self. In this state of Equal Vision we experience the Oneness of God's Creation, and our union with all that is, and all that is not.
Each word the Swami spoke in the program "Perceive the One that Exists in All" seemed an affirmation of everything that I had come to understand about the relationship between my Creative Process in photography and my practice of Siddha Yoga Meditation. Gurumayi once said:
So many things happen on this inner journey. If you're courageous
you go through them . . . Then, finally, you come
face to face. You see the image of love,
of the Truth, of God. It's there,
it's really there. And
it's everywhere.
Gurumay Chidvilasananda
Published Talk, Darshan #105
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If what one makes is not created with a sense of sacredness,
a sense of wonder; if it is not a form of love-making
. . . it has no right to be called
a work of art.
Alfred Stieglitz
Valentin Silvestrov and his Postludial Music
It's time now to introduce you to Valentin Silvestrov and his hauntingly mysterious, nostalgic and yet transcendently beautiful Postludial and Metaphorical music.
Silvestrov, a Ukrainian composer, born in Kiev in 1937, once famously stated: "I do not write new music. My music is a response to and an echo of what already exists." Writers who try to explain Silvestrov's music almost always resort to metaphor, because Silvestrov's music, like Stieglitz's equivalent photographs, is about what is beyond language, what is not-sayable. For example, in an essay (click here) published on ECM's website, the writer Paul Griffiths defines Silvestrov's Postludial music as a "black lake" of time. In his liner notes for the ECM recording of Silvestrov's Rquiem for Larissa (Silvestrov's wife, who died early in life) Griffiths wrote:
The water barely moves; the past refuses to slide away; and the slow, irregular stirrings of an oar remain in place. Nothing is lost here. A melody, which will rarely extend through more than five or six notes, will have each of those notes sounding on, sustained by other voices or instruments, creating a lasting aura. Elements of style, hovering free of their own original contexts, can reappear from Webern, from Bruckner, from Mozart, from folksong. But yet everything is lost. Every melody, immediately becomes an echo, sounds like the reverberation of something that has already gone. Every feature of style speaks of things long over. Silvestrov's creative destiny for many years has been the postlude: his works revive past music . . . in the very act of lamenting its disappearance."
Tatjana Rexroth wrote in the same essay:
It is as if Silvestrov's mind were constantly withdrawing into an interior space in order to find room for remembered images sheltered by music and uttered with its breath.
Memory, interior space and "suspended time" are at the very core of Silvestrov's music. I identify strongly with Silvestrov's music and ideas; I think of my photography in very similar terms. Indeed we there are many things we share within our Creative Processes. For example, Silvestrov has been a prolific composer, and he has worked with "small forms" and "pure" melodies. He has written over 260 cycles for piano solo in such forms as waltzes, lullabies, postludes, nocturnes, barcaroles, pastorals, serenades. He describes his short pieces as bagatelles "in the center of which" he tries to "seize" and "halt the melodic moment," "intonations, calls and motifs . . . " (from an essay in Schott Music).
When I read these things I couldn't help but think of my miniature Studies photographs, my Thing Centered Photographs and my Garage Series photographs--sound images suspended, timelessly, in black space--a metaphor for silence.
Silvestrov's most recent works are stunningly beautiful choral compositions entitled Sacred Songs, music which (he says) is not intended for liturgical use. Interestingly, Stieglitz's first series of cloud equivalent photographs in the early 1920's were entitled Songs of the Sky; and Silvestrov once stated that music "is a song the world sings about itself; it is the musical testimony to life."
After my trip to Turkey in 2011 I began thinking of my photography--my Creative Process--as an "exploration of the possibility of creating Sacred Art within a contemporary art practice . . ." See my Sacred Art Photography Projects.
Much of Silvestrov's music involves fragments of melodic tunes from familiar compositions by well know composers, which appear and then quickly dissolve into silence as if "flickers of memory and dialogues with the past." Paul Conway, liner notes from Naxos recording "Moment of Memory II"
My Lake Series collages, and the collages I made for my Dream Portraits project consist of image fragments ("flickers of memories") intermingled within a larger image context.
Related to the Postlude is Silvestrov's concept of Meta-music, or Metaphorical Music, a music which "hovers around, above, and especially after all other musics" . . . "like an atmosphere encircling a post-apocalyptic globe." (Schott Music)
I created a large multi-chaptered project, in Homage to Morton Feldman, entitled The Departing Landscape. This phrase was Feldman's way of writing about the way sound exists in our hearing, the way sound emerges from silence, becomes suspended in space for a time, then "departs" us, or leaves us, as it dissolves back into silence.
I like the way Paul Conway has written about Silverstrov's music in his liner notes for the Naxos CD Recording Moments of Memory II. Here is a collection of excerpts from his notes:
"Metaphoric Music . . . is acutely sensitive to other musics and acts as a kind of postlude to them." / "The Farewell Serenade for string orchestra (2003) . . . has the air of a sorrowful reminiscence." / "Silent Music, consisting of three movements . . . represents 'still metaphors of silence' because 'the melody is a symbol of something that cannot be expressed . . . '" / "In Two Dialogues with Postscript (2002), Silvestrov engages with two composers from an earlier age [Schubert and Wagner] as he refashions and elaborates upon their material." / "The Messenger (1996) is scored for piano, string orchestra and a synthesizer. This last instrument . . . represents the gentle sighing of the wind that marks both the arrival and the departure of the eponymous emissary. The work is dedicated to Silvestrov's wife Larissa [and] the title is taken from the writings of the existential philosopher Yakov Druskin. . . Druskin's 'messenger' is a fictional character who represents a link between this world and the world beyond. This figure is portrayed in the score by a series of honeyed, remote-sounding, Mozartian phrases, marked "as if enveloped in mist.' . . . The sustaining pedal [of the piano] is used specifically so that 'the preceding sonority reverberates', creating the illusion of an echo permanently enveloping the music." / "Moments of Memory II (2003) is a collection of evocative miniatures for piano and string orchestra. They all suggest a yearning for an unreachable past . . . a Chopinesque idea, half-remembered . . . Postludium conjures up a delicate postcript to a bygone event . . . " Paul Conway, liner notes from Naxos recording "Moment of Memory II"
Silvestrov's music has been compared to the music of Gustave Mahler and Morton Feldman. And again I cannot help but think of my Feldman inspired Garage Series photographs, and my Chromatic Field photographs. The images relate to what Silvestrov once wrote regarding coda and epilogue in his music: "a place" in which there is "a gathering of resonances," a musical space in which the music can "linger for a very long time."
Chromatic Field Photograph (Road Salt)
~click on the image to see finer detail~
Garage Series Photograph Digital Version
Just as musical memory has been a large part of Silvestrov's compositional process, visual images have functioned in various ways in my photography as a form of remembrance. The Garage Series photographs in particular invoke memories of my childhood:
I remember playing pitch and catch with my dad in the ally just behind our garage. / When I played "hide and seek" with my neighborhood friends at dusk, I would often hide in the rhubarb patch next to my neighbor's old garage; I would close my eyes and imaginatively merge into the space such that no one could find me. / When working on various projects in Milwaukee I loved walking up and down the alleys between the infinite rows of garages on either side, particularly in the twilight of evening. / In the digital versions of of the garage photographs (see the image immediately above) I like how the garage seems to have emerged from the black space (a metaphor for silence) and then, like a sound hovering timelessly in space (or a memory lingering in the mind) the garage appears to be on the threshold of dissolving back into silence:
It is as if Silvestrov's mind were constantly withdrawing
into an interior space in order to find room
for remembered images sheltered by
music and uttered with its breath.
Tatjana Rexroth,ECM records
And this project Postlude To An Exhibition has become for me a space in which I am suspending and sustaining those memories of my recent Home Coming exhibition in Milwaukee, sheltering the memories of that entire experience from fading into silence. (And yet . . . I hear a silent voice inside me, reminding me to bring my focus back to the awareness of more transcendent, ineffable things: the One Truth, the Unitary Reality, the divine Self . . . those invisible, un-sayable things that only symbolic photographs can address through visual form enlivened by the breath of grace.)
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Recurrence of Imagery & Memory
As Jon Horvath pointed out in the catalogue that accompanied the Alice Wilds exhibition, I use images over and over again, in various ways, often in the same one project, but also across multiple projects, or variations on one subject (see The Meadow Series). I am constantly Re-Visioning and transforming old familiar (remembered) images, and in this way Visual Memory plays a vital role in my work. The subtle remembrance of a recurring image can invoke in a viewer or contemplator a feeling tone of meaningful presence, an echo of something once seen, something recognized and experienced as meaningful in a new, changed visual form, or perhaps in a new visual or conceptual context (see my Visual Poems).
Images remembered sparkle with their own unique interior light. Even when there is no conscious recognition, such images nonetheless are radiant and overflowing with the grace of the Creative Process; they are functioning perhaps metaphorically or poetically, perhaps as a felt presence or an intuitive awareness that can't be placed in a "known" or precisely remembered contextual framework.
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Below are two variations of one symmetrical image from this project, Postlude To An Exhibition. The symmetrical images were constructed with the straight snow photographs included in the preceding project, Snow Photographs: Homage to Harry Callahan and All My Teachers:
Straight photograph of snow from the "Homage to Harry Callahan" project
from the project "Postlude To An Exhibition" Image #14
"Blue Pearl"
from the project "Postlude To An Exhibition" Inversion--Image #22
"The Golden Rising Sun"
The middle Blue Pearl symmetrical image served as the source image for the "Golden Rising Sun" variation below it. The transformation included a process known as image inversion, which essentially turned the blue image "inside-out."
The Golden Rising Sun image brings us full circle back to the first of the three projects, The Rising Sun : Prelude to An Exhibition, and it's concluding image, reproduced below. The two images, in their echoings of each other, announce with golden brilliance some archetypal occurrence from within the Imaginal world, such as a Re-birth or Resurrection.
"The Golden Sun" from the project "The Rising Sun" Image #12
"The Golden Rising Sun" from the project "Postlude To An Exhibition"
Inversion--Image #22
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The three related projects created in association with, and perhaps in response to the exhibition in Milwaukee at The Alice Wilds, has indeed been an inward journey for me, something akin to a Coming Home on multiple, subtle levels. The invitation to exhibit, and then the exhibition itself, and the catalogue, and the interactions with students, friends, colleagues, and the public--all of it was a gift of grace, I believe, and undoubtedly a necessary part of my destiny, my Creative Process, that needed to be manifested and experienced both inwardly and outwardly.
The Golden Rising Sun, an image (immediately above) which unfolded spontaneously from within the Blue Pearl image, is a beautiful metaphor for all that has come to pass. Little did I consciously know what was coming forth when I agreed to participate in the exhibition, and then later when I experienced those interior images on New Years Day, 2018. The two dramas (inward and outward) echo each other, are equivalents of each other, and as such are indeed about love and gratitude, and the "point beyond the center of the center":
If one cannot lose oneself to something beyond one,
one is bound to be disappointed.
Alfred Stieglitz
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Epilogue
It has become something of a tradition for me to conclude especially multi-chaptered photography projects with an Epilogue that functions as a blessing for the entirety of the project. Since this is the concluding project in a series of three related projects, an Epilogue feels most appropriate here to me.
The words of a poet-saint, a Sadguru, one who lives in the constant, conscious state of union with the Absolute, are overflowing with blessings of grace. Thus I offer these grace-filled words of Gurumayi as a blessing upon the series of three projects, their corresponding "outward" events which initiated the making of the projects, and you the viewer who has shared this inward journey with me.
Note: the following text excerpt is taken from the conclusion of a talk by Gurumayi Chidvilasananda published in issue #20 of Darshan (a Siddha Yoga publication) entitled "Aloneness." Gurumayi quotes a verse from the Upanishads, then she comments on the verse:
The Kaivalya Upanishad says:
I am subtler than the subtlest
And greater than the greatest.
I am this manifold universe.
I am that ancient being, the Lord of golden hue,
I am Shiva.
"I am" is the sound Om; Om is "I am." This sound resonates in being and in non-being. This sound is ancient, timeless. "I am" is bliss, "I am" is light, "I am" is the Truth.
Contemplate this.
It is the inner sound you must hear with the inner ear. This sound is the sound of ecstasy. This sound is the word of knowledge. This sound arises from the inner Self.
"I am."
Always remember "I am, I am." No matter what is happening. "I am" is constant. "I am" is the Truth. "I am" is the light. Through the Guru's grace you become "I am." As the syllable vanishes with the sound, only silence, the highest state, is experienced. Then there is complete silence.
If you can imagine how much silence there must have been upon this earth once upon a time, and then you multiply that silence by a billion times, that is the silence of the Absolute. It sill exists within us. When we reach this inner silence we feel fulfilled: we experience, "I have seen God": we merge into the Truth. In that silence there is no limitation. There is complete freedom.
We must discover it.
So we follow the sound of "I am,"
and it takes us to the absolute
silence, the absolute Truth
--it takes us to the
Absolute.
Gurumay Chidvilasananda
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This project was posted on my Welcome Page
on May 21, 2018.
Related Project Links
This Project is the third in a series of three related projects:
The Rising Sun : Prelude To An Exhibition
Snow Photographs : Homage to Harry Callahan and All My Teachers
Postlude To An Exhibition, Homage to Minor White, Alfred Stieglitz & Valentin Silvestrov
Alice Wilds Archive--Installation photographs of the exhibition
Snow Photographs: A Collection of Projects
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.
