Rain
Part 7 of the WATER Photographs project
________________________________________
"The Rain of Grace"
A sequence of six images
subtitled "After the Rain"
&
A Miscellaneous Collection
of Water Photographs
Introduction
For this seventh part of the WATER Photographs project I am presenting two collections of images: a sequence of six photographs which is a visual contemplation on the sacred and mysterious nature of Water that comes down to us from the Heavens in the form of Rain; and a miscellaneous selection of Water photographs drawn from my previously published blog projects--images that have not seemed appropriate for use in the first six Water projects which have focused on water in these particular forms: puddles, ponds, brooks, rivers, water falls, lakes, and most recently "The Bathers," a project about human immersion in water.
From the very beginning I felt that "Rain" should have been the first in the series of WATER projects, for I think of Rain as the Source of all Earthly forms of water. There were however several problems: I felt, at that time I began the WATER project (August, 2018), that I did not as yet have images which could adequately give this most sacred form of Water--Rain--its equivalent visual-photographic form. And equally troubling for me, I had no idea of how to photograph Rain, and I had no idea what a Rain photograph for the project could or should look like.
I eventually found one image that I thought came close to what intuitively I felt could be used in the Rain project (see the image immediately below), but I ended up including it in my "Miscellaneous Collection" of Water photographs (as image #24). I decided that the image is less a picture of Rain and more a picture about Rain, or a picture that functions as a metaphor for Rain.
#24 "Raindrops on screen" (click on the image to enlarge)
I eventually realized that the problem I was facing had something to do with the question of photography's dual ability to both record the outer appearances of things and space-time events, and its ability to generate images that function as symbols, images that have transcendent meanings and thus are not so dependent on worldly subject matter for how and what they "mean."
*
There is a relationship between this Rain project and my earlier Falling Water project. In both I am interested in the idea that Water which falls from its transcendent Origin, i.e., the "Sky" or the "Heavens" is a Sacred substance, that is to say, matter vibrantly alive with life-sustaining grace. As Rain falls from Above to the Earth below it becomes a connecting link which conjoins all three of the elements--sky, water and earth--into an Imaginal Unitary Reality--that is to say, an image that functions as a symbol, an extraordinary image radiantly alive with the Creative Power of the Universe, with grace--an image which unveils and celebrates the Unity of Being, the One divine Self.
The fact that I could not find a way to photograph Rain itself, as a substance or as an event in the natural world, essentially was an unconscious message that I was sending myself that, put simply, I would have to find another way to visually represent Rain for this project. Since the symbolic photograph is, by its very nature, a "uniting image," and since a symbol "means" in a way that is not dependent upon "subject matter," the symbolic photograph finally became my way of resolving the problems that had been plaguing me at the beginning of the WATER project.
*
This seventh project has served as a kind of Interlude within the WATER project as a whole. As I worked on the two parts of this project I have taken time to pause and prepare for the final and most challenging (and perhaps over-reaching) project in the series to be entitled Water and Death : Creation & Dissolution : Fog & Snow. I hope to announce its publication on my blog's Welcome Page some time in April, 2019.
WATER Photographs : The Complete Project Titles
Because my sequence "The Rain of Grace" consists of only six photographs, I have seized upon the opportunity here to present an additional collection of "miscellaneous" water photographs, which I will write more about later, below.
___________________
_____________________________
"The Rain of Grace"
Introduction
When it gently rains or showers, and when storms bring violent downpours, I feel that a blessing is being bestowed upon me and the little part of the planet I'm living on. Thus many of my Rain photographs are about the visual-transformational impact that this sacred form of Water has had upon the worldly surfaces of things. When all the visual elements involved fall together in just the right graceful way the visual power of an image and its inherent meaning "rises above" or transcends mere "surface description." In other words, it functions as a symbol.
The sequence of six images I am presenting below is for me a single unified visual entity which functions for me as a symbol even as the individual images describe, in their varying degrees, the things and events of the outer world.
Water--in all its various forms--is absolutely essential for the existence of life on our planet Earth. Just as life itself is a form of grace, it is essential that I acknowledge the sacred nature of Water, that Water is a form of grace. Rain Water transforms, cleanses, refreshes, nurtures and enlivens every thing on Earth that it touches. Thus I have titled my sequence "The Rain of Grace," with the subtitle "After the Rain."
*
I have often taken my camera out into the world after a gentle rain, or after an intense storm, just to be in the grace-filled atmospheric presence of its aftermath. The Water that showers down upon the Earth turns the world inside-out and reveals an extraordinary, pure, interior sacred reality that had--before the rain--been hiding behind surfaces. After it Rains I want to make photographs which will give visual form to the unveiling of grace that its sacred Waters have made palpably present in the world.
The quality of light that follows a rain shower, or a rain storm, is often quite magical. The light becomes an integral part of the sacred atmosphere that emerges after a Rain. Light, like Rain, is a from of grace.
The wetness of things, together with the light that follows a rain, have a way of making everything in the world look refreshingly new. Colors become more vibrantly alive with a luminosity that seems to radiate from inside the colors and surfaces of objects. The air often becomes rich and sweetly fragrant after a rain. The wild energies of the dual world suddenly become pervaded by a sense of peace after the Rain; qualities of silence and stillness emerge from within the things of the world, and this peacefulness touches and moves me inwardly. In short, every thing touched by Rain Water receives a magical blessing which helps us get in touch with the divine Ground of Being within ourselves.
Mammatus Clouds
_____________________________________
I often feel the impulse to enhance my pictures of Water, Snow and Ice with a transparent-luminous hint of blue color. On the other hand, black&white tonalities can also adequately serve as an alternative to the blue. However, it has been my frequent experience that after a late afternoon storm in the summer, or, just as the sun is approaching the Earth's horizon late in the day of winter, a warm golden light might emerge and magically illuminate the world. Like the grace of Rain, this other-worldly Golden Light transforms everything it touches. Indeed, for me, the Golden Light is a form of grace. Water in is various forms, including Snow and Ice, are equally auspicious when they are aglow with the light of Gold, when they are radiant with an interior blue presence, and when grace manifests in the tonalities of a black&white photograph. The important thing, of course, is the grace.
The Golden light which pervades my sequence of six "Rain of Grace" photographs has awakened in me a remarkable childhood memory. When I was perhaps four or five years old, growing up in a small town in Ohio, I was amazed one afternoon when I looked up and saw the entire sky covered with a blanket of soft Golden balls of light, a light that appeared to be coming from inside the clouds themselves. An intense storm was approaching, I was told, perhaps a tornado. It was a magical, errie sight; I could see and feel the approaching storm all around me and inside me. The atmosphere was hypnotic and terrifying, profoundly beautiful and frighteningly mysterious. It seems possible to me now that this memory, its mystery, its light, its grace, is at the heart of what has informed my sequence of Rain photographs. (Note: The image immediately above, which I found on the internet, will perhaps give you some idea of what I saw as a child.)
*
Despite my initial feeling that I did not know how to photograph or "picture" Rain, I also know that my Creative Process has always provided me with what I need, and much more. I have been blessed with an overflowing abundance of meaningful symbolic photographs, images alive with unknown potential meanings, images filled with an interior light that resonates with grace, the Creative Power of the Universe. The six images I am presenting in my "Rain of Grace" sequence have that radiance. The sequence is imbued with that Golden light which provides both a visual sense of continuity amongst the images and an overarching feeling-tone.
When I contemplate the way the six images interact with each other visually, and when I listen carefully to the "silent conversation" that goes on between the images, I feel I have come very close to the essential Image of "Rain" that I had been longing to manifest within this part of my WATER project.
Its possible, however, that the most articulate image of Rain can exist only in the space-between the images, and in that overarching unity which pervades the sequence of images as a visual whole. That in-between space, which Henry Corbin has called the Imaginal world, is an "unknowable," "unsayable" place, a "place" that exists between the inner and the outer worlds, that space in which the physical world become spiritual, and the spiritual world becomes physical.
"The Rain of Grace"
a sequence of six photographs
subtitled "After the Rain"
_____________________
________________________
____________________________
1. After the Rain: "Late Afternoon Summer Storm Light on the side a house"
2. After the Rain: "Storm Clouds reflection, lamp, raindrops on the window screen"
3. After the Rain: "Storm Clouds, Late Afternoon Summer Sunset over the South Pond"
4. After the Rain : "Rain water streaming down a driveway"
5. After the Rain : Symmetrical Photograph, "Raindrops on the side of the house"
6. After the Rain, Interior: "Water bowl and spider plant"
_______________________
_______________________________
Miscellaneous
Water Photographs
Introduction
Over the course of the sixty years I've been making photographs, many Water images have come to me through my Creative Process which cannot be conveniently placed in a nameable thematic group. I have collected some of those images together here under the ubiquitous title "Miscellaneous."
All of the photographs have come from previously published blog projects, none of which are thematically related directly to Water. But truly speaking, themes are ultimately beside the point. The most important thing about an image is not its relevance to a concept or theme, but rather its ability to carry and be radiant with grace, an image luminously meaningful in its symbolic functioning, meaning which transcends the inherent limits of human language and concepts.
Though I do enjoy putting photographs together within a thematic (conceptual-visual) context, I am also quite aware that such a context could become a misleading obstacle for a viewer, and particularly one who believes or thinks that he or she must understand an artist's "intended" meaning. The most important meaning of any image, (it seems to me) is that which spontaneously emerges from within the Heart of the viewer. Only grace has the power to awaken the deep and dormant meanings which lay silently within the contemplator; and only images which are functioning as symbols, images radiant with grace, can gift the viewer with such epiphanic meanings.
*
The mysterious "matter" we have named Water is full of poetic-symbolic potential, and Gaston Bachelard has made a great effort to demonstrate this in his wonderful book Water and Dreams, An Essay On the Imagination of Matter, from which I have quoted extensively in the first six projects. However, as a photographer who is most interested in images that function as symbols, I will not become dependent on subject matter alone as a source of visual-intuitive meaning. This has once again become quite clear to me when I realized I had not been able to find a satisfactory way to photograph Rain. I learned that I could only get at what for me was the essential nature and meaning of Rain when I allowed myself to approach the problem through the power of the symbol.
In this regard I have found it quite interesting to learn that the word Rain can function in three ways: as a noun, as a verb, and as a transitive verb. click here And if you look at how the word "water" is defined, it's also interesting to note that the definition leans heavily on what is absent or invisible:
Water is a transparent, tasteless, odorless, and nearly colorless chemical substance which is the main constituent of Earth's streams, lakes, and oceans, and the fluids of most living organisms. It is vital for all forms of life . . . Its chemical formula is H2O meaning that each of its molecules contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms connected by covalent bonds. click here to see the full Wikipedia definition
The "covalent bonds" which connect the molecules of oxygen and hydrogen in water is not unlike the ineffable linkage of meaning that is manifested in a sequence of carefully selected and juxtaposed images. That bond which occurs between the images generates a new Imaginal "substance," the symbol, and the symbols emerge with ineffable meanings from the spaces-between those particular images--meanings which transcend words, definitions and intellectual understandings.
Who can understand this mystery we call "life," the mystery we call "matter," the mystery we have named Water and the many forms and contexts in which Water can be seen, experienced, imagined and pictured? The joy of photography--for me--is that moment of intuitive revelation, that moment of felt recognition which becomes palpable through the power of an image enlivened with grace, an image which functions for me as a symbol.
Welcome to my Miscellaneous Collection of water photographs.
Please note: below each of the images you will find a hyperlinked "click me" sign which will take you to the blog project in which the image was initially published. I hope this additional visual context will provide you with even deeper insights into your response to the image.
Who can understand this mystery we call "life," the mystery we call "matter," the mystery we have named Water and the many forms and contexts in which Water can be seen, experienced, imagined and pictured? The joy of photography--for me--is that moment of intuitive revelation, that moment of felt recognition which becomes palpable through the power of an image enlivened with grace, an image which functions for me as a symbol.
Welcome to my Miscellaneous Collection of water photographs.
Please note: below each of the images you will find a hyperlinked "click me" sign which will take you to the blog project in which the image was initially published. I hope this additional visual context will provide you with even deeper insights into your response to the image.
7. Miscellaneous Water Photographs: "Water bottle on a table with a slice of lime inside"
10. Miscellaneous Water Photographs: "Floating Ice on a Hidden Pond"
11. Miscellaneous Water Photographs: "A canning jar lid, submerged in an Oval bowl of water, inside a stainless steel sink"