New Mexico Photographs
Landscapes & Interiors
1971-72
Landscapes & Interiors
1971-72
Introduction
The photographs presented here, representing two distinctly different and yet related bodies of work, were made to fulfill part of the MFA Thesis requirements at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. The Landscapes vintage silver prints (size 4.75" square) and the Interiors vintage silver prints (size 4.75" x 7") were scanned and adjusted with Photoshop software for posting onto this blog page, which was published on August 2, 2019.
In addition to the an Exhibition of Photographs in the Fine Arts Gallery, other Thesis requirements included a substantial Research Paper (approved by the student's Thesis Committee) on a theme relevant to the exhibited photographs, and an Oral Exam which, in my case, was held in the gallery in the presence of the photographs in June, 1972.
My Written Thesis (121 pages) entitled The Symbolic Photograph : A Means to Self Knowledge--A Jungian Approach to the Photographic Opus was inspired by the writings of Carl Jung, and in particular his research on medieval Alchemy and his theories about Archetypes, the "Symbol," and a phenomenon he termed "Synchronicity." (To learn more about my paper click here)
Jung's ideas felt absolutely right to me when I was discovering them in 1971-72, and they continue to resonate for me today. In 1987 I began practicing Siddha Yoga and this has expanded my understanding of my Creative Process in different but equally powerful, experiential and theoretical ways. Jung's concerns writings about the "fragmented psyche" and his preoccupation with the concept of the Self as a psychological Unitary Reality are directly related to traditional and contemporary yogic teachings regarding Self Knowledge. Here are the words of Swami Muktananda, founder of the Siddha Yoga Path, and Gurumayi Chidvilasanda, living head of the Siddha Yoga Lineage:
The nature of the inner Self is knowledge; why do we not immediately perceive the Self? Our inner Self is undecaying, perfect, eternal, and self-effulgent--then why are we in such a plight? Why have we not discovered our own nature? . . . The cause of this is ignorance. Because of our own ignorance, we have shrunk from sublimity to pettiness, from infinity to finitude, from wholeness to fragmentation. Swami Muktananda
Ignorance is the root cause of all suffering. But when we know subjective truth and objective truth, we rise above suffering. Then we know that there is only one Truth, both the subject and the object, the seer and the seen, are one and the same. Gurumayi Chidvilasananda (from the Siddha Yoga publication Resonate With Stillness -- the daily contemplations for July 17 & July 18)
In addition to the an Exhibition of Photographs in the Fine Arts Gallery, other Thesis requirements included a substantial Research Paper (approved by the student's Thesis Committee) on a theme relevant to the exhibited photographs, and an Oral Exam which, in my case, was held in the gallery in the presence of the photographs in June, 1972.
My Written Thesis (121 pages) entitled The Symbolic Photograph : A Means to Self Knowledge--A Jungian Approach to the Photographic Opus was inspired by the writings of Carl Jung, and in particular his research on medieval Alchemy and his theories about Archetypes, the "Symbol," and a phenomenon he termed "Synchronicity." (To learn more about my paper click here)
Jung's ideas felt absolutely right to me when I was discovering them in 1971-72, and they continue to resonate for me today. In 1987 I began practicing Siddha Yoga and this has expanded my understanding of my Creative Process in different but equally powerful, experiential and theoretical ways. Jung's concerns writings about the "fragmented psyche" and his preoccupation with the concept of the Self as a psychological Unitary Reality are directly related to traditional and contemporary yogic teachings regarding Self Knowledge. Here are the words of Swami Muktananda, founder of the Siddha Yoga Path, and Gurumayi Chidvilasanda, living head of the Siddha Yoga Lineage:
The nature of the inner Self is knowledge; why do we not immediately perceive the Self? Our inner Self is undecaying, perfect, eternal, and self-effulgent--then why are we in such a plight? Why have we not discovered our own nature? . . . The cause of this is ignorance. Because of our own ignorance, we have shrunk from sublimity to pettiness, from infinity to finitude, from wholeness to fragmentation. Swami Muktananda
Ignorance is the root cause of all suffering. But when we know subjective truth and objective truth, we rise above suffering. Then we know that there is only one Truth, both the subject and the object, the seer and the seen, are one and the same. Gurumayi Chidvilasananda (from the Siddha Yoga publication Resonate With Stillness -- the daily contemplations for July 17 & July 18)
Jung defined the fragmented or divided psyche as the ego, the "shadow," the "personal unconscious," the collective unconscious, and an ineffable level of the psyche he termed psychoid. Jung believed in the therapeutic power of the symbolic image, an image which united inner and outer corresponding worlds and thus function as an antidote to "ignorance." Symbols for Jung are an affirmation of the Truth, the Oneness of Being, and thus a means of healing the fragmented psyche. In many traditions of the East, the symbol often took the form of the mandala, which Jung used in his approach to psychotherapy.
The images I've selected from both parts of my Thesis Exhibition function for me as Symbols in the Jungian sense. However there are many relevant, personal and synchronistic aspects that belie the work and have played an important role in the formation of the work. I invite you to read about some of 'backstory" I have provided in the text following the presentation of the New Mexico photographs. And I have written some commentary on the images as well.
*
I began constructing my photography blog TheDepartingLandscape in late 2010. I have waited too long to post this early project on the blog. I thought then that the work was less important than at I have just recently discovered it to be. Those years in New Mexico were an amazingly vital, formative period in my life and my Creative Process. The experiences of those first years of my marriage to Gloria, and my graduate studies at the University of New Mexico changed my life in important ways. The photographs I made then contained the seeds of what in fact have remained essential concerns in my Creative Process throughout the past fifty years. As you will see these include experimentation with the transformative potential of the photographic medium, and the constant striving toward an articulate a provocative balanced tension between the representational power of the photographic image and the medium's potential for visual abstraction.
As I worked on this project I decided to place one additional early project on my blog entitled Emergence, Atlanta, 1973. The project followed this New Mexico project chronologically, and it provides a continuation of the story I will be telling here. I worked on both projects simultaneously, in July, 2019, and have thus given them both the same publication date: August, 2, 2019.
Since my graduate school days I have always held the high ideal of striving to make photographs that function for me as luminous, living symbols. Nonetheless the ability of a photographic image to unveil what Jung termed the projected "shadow" aspect of one's psyche has also had its relevant role in my Creative Process, as my commentary following the presentation of the photographs will explain. If the artist is willing to pull those projections back into a conscious form of awareness through an engaged process of contemplating the images, the knowledge gained from the process can have a purifying affect on the mind.
The Jungian and the yogic idea of purifying the mind has its parallels to the Purification Stage described by the alchemists of the medieval period. When the mind becomes pure in varying degrees, certain doors open to the deeper secret passageways leading toward Knowledge of the Heart, the transcendent Self.
Grace, the Creative Power of the Universe, is at the heart of any true Creative Process, and for me, the making of symbolic photographs and the Yogic practices, such as Meditation and Contemplation, have been powerful ways of attracting grace and making images radiant with grace. It is grace which transforms a photographic image into a symbol, and the true, living symbol is both a container of grace and a messenger of Self Knowledge for those who are willing to make the effort to imbibe the ineffable meaning contained within the image.
New Mexico Landscapes 1971-72
MFA Visual Thesis, Part I
Click on the images to enlarge them, and view them against a black ground.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
Interiors 1971-72
University of New Mexico MFA Visual Thesis, Part II
Click on the images to enlarge them, and view them against a black ground.
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
Backstory
I had no intention of going to Graduate School when in the spring of 1968 I moved from Chicago to New York City. It had taken me five years, in two schools, in two cities, to get through my undergraduate studies in photography, and at that point in time I was in no mood for more academia. The Big Apple was my destination for two essential reasons: my best friend Jim Erwin, and his wife Phyllis would soon be coming to NYC to live and work. (I figured I could survive NYC if they were there, too.) And an even more attractive reason I wanted to try living in NYC was the possibility of spending more time with Gloria, a beautiful woman with whom I had fallen head-over-heels-in-love-with during my last year in Chicago. Gloria was Phyllis's sister. I have gained the greatest respect for how Destiny and its ineffable ways manage to make all things happen in life, and the following is a most important part of my life story.
My friend Gary Metz was working as an intern in the Photography Department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and he happened to see a poster that had been sent to the Department from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. The poster was announcing the offering of a Graduate Teaching Fellowship in Photography which included full tuition plus a substantial stipend to help the recipient with living expenses while working toward the three year MFA degree. In return for the financial support the recipient would be expected to teach a certain number of photography classes each year. Gary thought I might be interested in this opportunity; and on a whim, I submitted my application.
I was living in New York City and working for a commercial photographer when Gary told me about the Fellowship. He knew I was growing discontent working as a photographer's assistant. The idea of eventually teaching at the University level was already planted firmly in the back of my mind when I applied for the Fellowship. As an undergraduate student, I had been blessed with the opportunity to study with many great photographers and teachers: I had studied with Minor White one semester at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and with Nathan Lyons for two years at his home workshop in Rochester (at that time Nathan was Director of Exhibitions at George Eastman House). I then moved to Chicago to finish up my B.S. degree with Aaron Siskind at the Institute of Design in IIT. While there I was fortunate to have been able to study with Wynn Bullock as well. I gradually came to the realization that I could not imagine doing anything in my life other than making photographs and teaching. Thus when the Fellowship opportunity at the University of New Mexico came along, it was definitely attractive -- even though at that time Gloria was the foremost attraction on my mind.
Gloria, after working several years in Rochester, NY had decided to go back to school and study art. She had been admitted into Pratt Institute's Art Program in Brooklyn, and would arrive in Brooklyn at the end of the summer of 1968 to set up residence in an apartment near the school. Once she had gotten settled in Brooklyn I was able to spend most of my weekends with her. Jim and Phyllis also found a place to live in Gloria's apartment building--I couldn't have been happier with this situation.
By the time I had applied for the Fellowship, Gloria and I had grown quite close. I was fully--and anxiously--aware of the fact that if by chance I was offered the Fellowship I would have to make some big decisions regarding our relationship.
When I was finally notified that I had been awarded the Fellowship, I asked Gloria if she would come with me to New Mexico. She was willing to do that--she could finish up her undergraduate work at UNM while I completed my graduate studies. But, as we talked more about it we both came to the realization that, out of respect to Gloria's parents, we go to New Mexico together and live together unless we were married.
Was I prepared to get married? Because of my family background, and because I was in no position to get a real job, I was worried about making such a life-transforming decision. While I was struggling with the questions "Should I marry Gloria?" - "Should I go to New Mexico alone?" I had an amazing dream:
I was walking through a dark and rather dreary run-down carnival fairway lined with games and sideshows. I came upon an old man sitting on a wooden crate. He had long white hair and held a cane in his hands, and I could tell that he was blind. He started talking to me as if he knew I was there, as if he could see me, as if I had come to ask him a question. He then said to me: "You have to ask her to marry you." This woke me up. I was stunned by the intense reality of the dream, and the power of the old, wiseman's words. And, I felt relieved; now I was certain about what I needed to do.
I asked Gloria to marry me and come with me to New Mexico, and again she said yes. Just weeks after Gloria agreed to marry me--and just weeks before we were to get married--she was hit by a car near her apartment in Brooklyn. When I came looking for her (she had been away far too long just to get a few groceries) I came upon a huge crowd of people, flashing lights and the sounds of sirens. In the midst of all this I saw a chalk drawing on the street: it was the outline of a body. In the center of the image there was a pool of blood.
Gloria survived the accident, but she was hurt badly, and suffered a severe concussion. This near loss of her was a major traumatic experience for me. The incident--and the image of blood inside the drawing--haunted me and my work both in those years of my graduate studies and beyond. (See images #8, 11, 16, 17, 20 and 24, and visit my Puddle project.)
Gloria's leg was in a cast when we got married, but we were able to go ahead with our plans. After the marriage ceremony, on August 2, 1969, and the wonderful party Gloria's parents gave us, we filled a U-Haul van with all our stuff and drove off to Albuquerque to begin our search for a place to live.
At UNM I studied with Van Deren Coke, Jim Kraft, Ray Metzker and Beaumont Newhall. I think it was during the first class meeting with Van Deren Coke that he took all of his new Photo Grad students into his home darkroom and demonstrated how he solarized his photographs. It was a magical, synchronistic moment for me, for I had already begun experimenting with "flashing" my photographs while living in New York City. And Coke's solarization technique provided me with new and attractive visual possibilities. ("Flashing" is a darkroom technique in which I added raw light exposure from a small flashlight to local areas of the print--either before or during the development of the print. To read more about solarization, click here )
The photographs in both of my Thesis projects clearly show that I continued my experiments with flashing techniques while in New Mexico. In the making of the Landscape photographs I often used paper masks in conjunction with the flashing. And in the Interiors photographs I employed the new techniques I had learned from Van Deren Coke.
Coke left New Mexico in 1970 to become acting Director of George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, replacing Beaumont Newhall who had retired. Ray Metzker was asked to come to New Mexico to replace Coke, so I was able to study with Metzker for two years. I admired Metzker's work tremendously; I learned so much from studying his photographs. However, in the second year I began having problems with him as a teacher. This not only was a disappointment to me, but it put me in an awkward situation: I knew, given the nature of my work and the content of my Written Thesis material, that it would be best not to have Metzker on my Thesis Committee. So I asked Jim Kraft--a very smart, open and supportive teacher in the Printmaking and Photography Areas; David Johnson--an English Professor; and Beaumont Newhall, who in 1972 came to UNM to teach after having been offered an Honorary Faculty position in the Art History Department. All three of these gracious people agreed to serve on my Committee, and I feel so very grateful for all their help.
In the second year of my graduate studies, due to an administrative error, many new Photo Graduate Students were admitted into the Program. Among them was Dick Knapp. Dick became a good friend and a major influence in my Creative Process at that time. He was as serious about photography as I was; he was incredibly well read and verbally articulate; and he was adventurously experimental with the photographic medium. He also introduced me to many (non photographer) artists that I hadn't yet become familiar with. That second year at UNM was an especially wonderful time for me: Dick and I photographed together, we looked at each other's work, and shared our ideas with each other. Dick and his wife Bess would invite us over for Chinese food, and Gloria and I would invite them over for a meal with us. It seemed to me I learned as much from Dick as I did any of the teachers I studied with at UNM.
Most importantly, Dick introduced me to the ideas of Carl Jung. Through Dick's interest in Paul Klee's work, and Klee's use of mythological motifs and Dick's interest in Jungian ideas in regards to the mythic archetypes manifested in Klee's work (and in my work as well as in his own)--I became interested in taking a graduate level English course in Mythology taught from a Jungian perspective by David Johnson.
I loved David's course. His understanding of Jung's ideas and their relationships to the mythological figures we studied sparked a new kind of excitement in me. And Dick's interest in Jung reinforced my desire to explore Jung's ideas further on my own. Gradually it became clear to me how I could focus my Written Thesis requirement around my Creative Process in photography in relation to particular aspects of Jung's ideas.
Though writing was (and remains to be) a huge and laborious challenge for me, the ideas I articulated in my Written Thesis would lay the foundation for what and how I would teach photography throughout my entire teaching career. And of course, the ideas impacted my picture-making practice especially then, and how I perceive and write about my work even today.
The Opportunity to Teach
One of the most important and rewarding aspects of my graduate studies at UNM--which the Fellowship had made possible--was the opportunity to teach photography courses while a student. I taught two Intro to Photo courses each semester, and in my third year I was permitted to teach an advanced level Photo II course. I created my own course assignments and structures, and experimented with varying approaches to teaching from one semester to the next. I had learned so much about photography, teaching and myself from this experience that by the time I graduated, I felt prepared to begin the teaching career I had been dreaming of and which was inspired by all the great teachers I had been privileged to study with. (Later when I was expected to create a graduate program in photography, I insisted that teaching grants must somehow be made available to my students.)
Immediately after I graduated with my MFA I was offered a teaching job at Georgia State University, in Atlanta. I joined John McWilliams in the Photography Program he had established within the Art Department. We developed an innovative program of Team-Teaching our courses, and we helped co-found Nexus, a photography co-operative gallery in Atlanta which later grew into an important Contemporary Arts Center. ~ In 1975 I was offered a teaching job in the Art Department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where I created the undergraduate and graduate level Photography Programs. I was also a co-founder of Perihelion, a photography co-operative gallery modeled after my experience with Nexus. ~ I retired from teaching at UW-Milwaukee in 2007.
Commentary
I had no intention of going to Graduate School when in the spring of 1968 I moved from Chicago to New York City. It had taken me five years, in two schools, in two cities, to get through my undergraduate studies in photography, and at that point in time I was in no mood for more academia. The Big Apple was my destination for two essential reasons: my best friend Jim Erwin, and his wife Phyllis would soon be coming to NYC to live and work. (I figured I could survive NYC if they were there, too.) And an even more attractive reason I wanted to try living in NYC was the possibility of spending more time with Gloria, a beautiful woman with whom I had fallen head-over-heels-in-love-with during my last year in Chicago. Gloria was Phyllis's sister. I have gained the greatest respect for how Destiny and its ineffable ways manage to make all things happen in life, and the following is a most important part of my life story.
*
My friend Gary Metz was working as an intern in the Photography Department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and he happened to see a poster that had been sent to the Department from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. The poster was announcing the offering of a Graduate Teaching Fellowship in Photography which included full tuition plus a substantial stipend to help the recipient with living expenses while working toward the three year MFA degree. In return for the financial support the recipient would be expected to teach a certain number of photography classes each year. Gary thought I might be interested in this opportunity; and on a whim, I submitted my application.
I was living in New York City and working for a commercial photographer when Gary told me about the Fellowship. He knew I was growing discontent working as a photographer's assistant. The idea of eventually teaching at the University level was already planted firmly in the back of my mind when I applied for the Fellowship. As an undergraduate student, I had been blessed with the opportunity to study with many great photographers and teachers: I had studied with Minor White one semester at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and with Nathan Lyons for two years at his home workshop in Rochester (at that time Nathan was Director of Exhibitions at George Eastman House). I then moved to Chicago to finish up my B.S. degree with Aaron Siskind at the Institute of Design in IIT. While there I was fortunate to have been able to study with Wynn Bullock as well. I gradually came to the realization that I could not imagine doing anything in my life other than making photographs and teaching. Thus when the Fellowship opportunity at the University of New Mexico came along, it was definitely attractive -- even though at that time Gloria was the foremost attraction on my mind.
Gloria, after working several years in Rochester, NY had decided to go back to school and study art. She had been admitted into Pratt Institute's Art Program in Brooklyn, and would arrive in Brooklyn at the end of the summer of 1968 to set up residence in an apartment near the school. Once she had gotten settled in Brooklyn I was able to spend most of my weekends with her. Jim and Phyllis also found a place to live in Gloria's apartment building--I couldn't have been happier with this situation.
By the time I had applied for the Fellowship, Gloria and I had grown quite close. I was fully--and anxiously--aware of the fact that if by chance I was offered the Fellowship I would have to make some big decisions regarding our relationship.
When I was finally notified that I had been awarded the Fellowship, I asked Gloria if she would come with me to New Mexico. She was willing to do that--she could finish up her undergraduate work at UNM while I completed my graduate studies. But, as we talked more about it we both came to the realization that, out of respect to Gloria's parents, we go to New Mexico together and live together unless we were married.
Was I prepared to get married? Because of my family background, and because I was in no position to get a real job, I was worried about making such a life-transforming decision. While I was struggling with the questions "Should I marry Gloria?" - "Should I go to New Mexico alone?" I had an amazing dream:
I was walking through a dark and rather dreary run-down carnival fairway lined with games and sideshows. I came upon an old man sitting on a wooden crate. He had long white hair and held a cane in his hands, and I could tell that he was blind. He started talking to me as if he knew I was there, as if he could see me, as if I had come to ask him a question. He then said to me: "You have to ask her to marry you." This woke me up. I was stunned by the intense reality of the dream, and the power of the old, wiseman's words. And, I felt relieved; now I was certain about what I needed to do.
I asked Gloria to marry me and come with me to New Mexico, and again she said yes. Just weeks after Gloria agreed to marry me--and just weeks before we were to get married--she was hit by a car near her apartment in Brooklyn. When I came looking for her (she had been away far too long just to get a few groceries) I came upon a huge crowd of people, flashing lights and the sounds of sirens. In the midst of all this I saw a chalk drawing on the street: it was the outline of a body. In the center of the image there was a pool of blood.
Gloria survived the accident, but she was hurt badly, and suffered a severe concussion. This near loss of her was a major traumatic experience for me. The incident--and the image of blood inside the drawing--haunted me and my work both in those years of my graduate studies and beyond. (See images #8, 11, 16, 17, 20 and 24, and visit my Puddle project.)
Gloria's leg was in a cast when we got married, but we were able to go ahead with our plans. After the marriage ceremony, on August 2, 1969, and the wonderful party Gloria's parents gave us, we filled a U-Haul van with all our stuff and drove off to Albuquerque to begin our search for a place to live.
*
At UNM I studied with Van Deren Coke, Jim Kraft, Ray Metzker and Beaumont Newhall. I think it was during the first class meeting with Van Deren Coke that he took all of his new Photo Grad students into his home darkroom and demonstrated how he solarized his photographs. It was a magical, synchronistic moment for me, for I had already begun experimenting with "flashing" my photographs while living in New York City. And Coke's solarization technique provided me with new and attractive visual possibilities. ("Flashing" is a darkroom technique in which I added raw light exposure from a small flashlight to local areas of the print--either before or during the development of the print. To read more about solarization, click here )
The photographs in both of my Thesis projects clearly show that I continued my experiments with flashing techniques while in New Mexico. In the making of the Landscape photographs I often used paper masks in conjunction with the flashing. And in the Interiors photographs I employed the new techniques I had learned from Van Deren Coke.
Coke left New Mexico in 1970 to become acting Director of George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, replacing Beaumont Newhall who had retired. Ray Metzker was asked to come to New Mexico to replace Coke, so I was able to study with Metzker for two years. I admired Metzker's work tremendously; I learned so much from studying his photographs. However, in the second year I began having problems with him as a teacher. This not only was a disappointment to me, but it put me in an awkward situation: I knew, given the nature of my work and the content of my Written Thesis material, that it would be best not to have Metzker on my Thesis Committee. So I asked Jim Kraft--a very smart, open and supportive teacher in the Printmaking and Photography Areas; David Johnson--an English Professor; and Beaumont Newhall, who in 1972 came to UNM to teach after having been offered an Honorary Faculty position in the Art History Department. All three of these gracious people agreed to serve on my Committee, and I feel so very grateful for all their help.
*
In the second year of my graduate studies, due to an administrative error, many new Photo Graduate Students were admitted into the Program. Among them was Dick Knapp. Dick became a good friend and a major influence in my Creative Process at that time. He was as serious about photography as I was; he was incredibly well read and verbally articulate; and he was adventurously experimental with the photographic medium. He also introduced me to many (non photographer) artists that I hadn't yet become familiar with. That second year at UNM was an especially wonderful time for me: Dick and I photographed together, we looked at each other's work, and shared our ideas with each other. Dick and his wife Bess would invite us over for Chinese food, and Gloria and I would invite them over for a meal with us. It seemed to me I learned as much from Dick as I did any of the teachers I studied with at UNM.
Most importantly, Dick introduced me to the ideas of Carl Jung. Through Dick's interest in Paul Klee's work, and Klee's use of mythological motifs and Dick's interest in Jungian ideas in regards to the mythic archetypes manifested in Klee's work (and in my work as well as in his own)--I became interested in taking a graduate level English course in Mythology taught from a Jungian perspective by David Johnson.
I loved David's course. His understanding of Jung's ideas and their relationships to the mythological figures we studied sparked a new kind of excitement in me. And Dick's interest in Jung reinforced my desire to explore Jung's ideas further on my own. Gradually it became clear to me how I could focus my Written Thesis requirement around my Creative Process in photography in relation to particular aspects of Jung's ideas.
Though writing was (and remains to be) a huge and laborious challenge for me, the ideas I articulated in my Written Thesis would lay the foundation for what and how I would teach photography throughout my entire teaching career. And of course, the ideas impacted my picture-making practice especially then, and how I perceive and write about my work even today.
One of the most important and rewarding aspects of my graduate studies at UNM--which the Fellowship had made possible--was the opportunity to teach photography courses while a student. I taught two Intro to Photo courses each semester, and in my third year I was permitted to teach an advanced level Photo II course. I created my own course assignments and structures, and experimented with varying approaches to teaching from one semester to the next. I had learned so much about photography, teaching and myself from this experience that by the time I graduated, I felt prepared to begin the teaching career I had been dreaming of and which was inspired by all the great teachers I had been privileged to study with. (Later when I was expected to create a graduate program in photography, I insisted that teaching grants must somehow be made available to my students.)
Immediately after I graduated with my MFA I was offered a teaching job at Georgia State University, in Atlanta. I joined John McWilliams in the Photography Program he had established within the Art Department. We developed an innovative program of Team-Teaching our courses, and we helped co-found Nexus, a photography co-operative gallery in Atlanta which later grew into an important Contemporary Arts Center. ~ In 1975 I was offered a teaching job in the Art Department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where I created the undergraduate and graduate level Photography Programs. I was also a co-founder of Perihelion, a photography co-operative gallery modeled after my experience with Nexus. ~ I retired from teaching at UW-Milwaukee in 2007.
I consider both of the projects I submitted for my Visual Thesis as explorations into different but related aspects or levels of "interiority." The New Mexico Landscapes are animated with archetypal mythic human and animal figures which were undoubtedly invoked by my studies of Jung and his ideas about the contents of the Collective Unconscious. The Landscapes are also palpably alive (for me) with the spiritual essence of the land and the indigenous peoples who first lived in deep accord with the land.
When I was photographing out in the landscape I could often felt a presence behind or somehow near me, keeping vigil over the land and over me. I wanted to honor the land with the photographs I was making, and it seemed the spirits could sense that and provided me with protection and guidance.
I remember once, I was taking a picture of a shadow on a rock out in the desert--largely because the shadow looked like a snake. After making the exposure I felt an impulse to look behind the rock, but I also sensed that I needed to proceed carefully and slowly. When I got to the other side, I saw a rattle snake coiled against the rock, warming itself inside the rock's shadow. When it heard me approaching, it began to stir and shake its rattle, then after a moment, it simply slithered away.
Some of the Landscape images are for me literally about looking inside, as if into another plane of reality (see images #2 and #6). And, perhaps you may have already noticed, several of the Landscape images "hint" at the fact that Gloria was pregnant during the time I was making the photographs (see images 3, 5, 12 and 13). I am tempted to add image #14 which, it seems to me, is like a luminous egg.
The Interiors project is for me largely about my own personal issues, fears, anxieties. In Jungian terms the work is mostly about the "fragmented psyche" and more particularly those realms of the psych Jung identified as the shadow and the personal unconscious.
Two of the pictures in the sequence I've presented here include Phyllis and Jim's young child; and two others include images of my mom. The Mother and the Child archetypes were an active, dominate force in my life at that time of my life, and they impacted the work I did for both projects, but particularly the Interiors project, including those photographs which did not include literal images of "child" and "mother." At first glance, perhaps a viewer would see in the Interiors images merely a collection of snapshots. But for me the work is heavy with fear and anxiety and other feelings that related to highly charged personal-psychological and cultural issues. The solarization process helped, it seemed to me, to make the psychology that belied the work more immediately apparent visually and more accessible emotionally.
I believe the Interior images also reflect the anxieties and fears that were dominate in the American culture at that time. Gloria and I were children of the 60's, victims of the stresses of the cold war, the Cuban Missile Crisis, racism and the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, anti-war protests, political assassinations, etc., etc., etc.
When I was in Chicago in 1967 and 68, and then again in New York City in 1969, the Draft Board put me through three physical examination processes before I was finally issued a 4F classification. A Doctor in Chicago had written a letter in support of my knee injury (which I suffered from a fall on the docks at UPS in Chicago), and it was the letter that seemed to have finally settled the issue. I had become tremendously anxious and angered by the Vietnam War and the Draft: I was outraged about how wrong the war was, and how dangerous and horrific and psychologically devastating it had become for the soldiers. And the war and the draft was a serious threat to my growing relationship to Gloria.
Through the Interiors photographs I was making I discovered that I had been carrying within me a long harbored fear of a world devastated by nuclear war. (you can click on the image below to enlarge it)
Fig. 1
I distinctly remember the moment when, as I was looking at the solarized photograph (Fig. 1) above, I realized that the strange, horrific metallic light-- that seemed to burn through the image and its subject matter--reflected my fears of the terrible illumination that could one day pervade my own body and my entire world "when the Bombs finally fell." (Visit: https://news.gallup.com/poll/7903/gallup-brain-facing-fear-america.aspx)
Gloria and I would have serious talks after we were married regarding the question of bringing children into this "messed up" world: "Would it be irresponsible?" "Would we want to subject a child to the kind of madness we had been seeing so pervasively?"
In the second winter of our stay in New Mexico, Gloria started feeling sharp pains when she ovulated. The Doctor we saw told us that cysts--the size of 50 cents pieces--were forming on her ovaries; it seemed likely to him that the cysts would make it nearly impossible for Gloria to become pregnant.
The next summer (1971) Gloria's sister Florence came to visit us. Gloria had heard about a church in Albuquerque which was performing healings, and the both of them--being curious about such things--decided to visit the church and see what was happening there. During their visit a woman came up to Gloria and introduced herself as a member of the church. They began talking to each other, then the woman proceeded to tell Gloria of a healing she had personally experienced at the church: she had had cysts on her ovaries (!) and after the healing she became pregnant. When Gloria heard this she burst into tears. Everyone in the Church gathered round Gloria and performed their healing ritual on her.
At Gloria's next Doctor's appointment, he was amazed when he examined her to find that the cysts had disappeared. We decided that this window of opportunity should not be wasted. In late 1971, Gloria became pregnant with our first child, Shaun, who was born a few months before my Written and Visual Thesis materials were to be delivered to my Committee. The "meaningful coincidence" of Gloria's meeting with the woman in the church, and then the healing she experienced, and Shaun's birth at the time I was about to graduate, are good examples of what Jung termed synchronicity.
Gloria's pregnancy was a wonderful gift to us, and this joy and expectancy was expressed in several of the Landscapes. On the other hand, the addition of a child at this point in my life became an additional source of stress for me, and this too became expressed, and most dramatically so, in my Interiors photographs.
"Would I be a good father?" "How does a father act?" "Will I get a teaching job for next year?" "How would I be able to support my child and my wife if I don't?" As Gloria grew larger and larger with child, I was busily writing my Thesis paper, finishing up the photographs for the Exhibition, trying to get my paper typed properly, and searching for a teaching job--all at the same time. I felt overwhelmed by it all.
I felt totally unprepared to be a father. My dad had died when I was nearly ten years old. And to make things worse for me, at the funeral I was told by one of my aunts: "Now you are the man of the house." (Her words would became etched into the fabric of my entire being.)
My mom was devastated by the loss of my dad. She did the best she could, but she had never gotten through high school, her father had been an alcoholic, and now she was faced with caring for and supporting me and my sister on her own. She became quite depressed. A few years later, after she remarried, she fell into an even greater depression when she realized that my stepfather was addicted to gambling (and perhaps alcohol) and was in serious debt.
In 1968 my stepfather experienced a strange medical mishap in which he died spontaneously while eating a bedtime snack. I was about to graduate in Chicago at the time and was becoming seriously involved with Gloria. My relationship with Gloria brought up a great deal of jealousy in my mother, and all the more so after Gloria and I married, and then again after Shaun was born. She acted out toward Gloria in various ways, and because I didn't not know how to handle the situation, my relationship with Gloria became stressed.
The Interiors photographs reflect (for me, at least) many aspects of these and other personal issues that I was dealing with inside myself. And some of my future work would continue to help me process through the layers of psychological issues, confusion and anger that I tried to resist dealing with . . . or didn't consciously know existed within me. (See for example the three Multiple-Exposure projects, and the 1982 Dream Portraits.) It would take many years of counseling and the grace of Siddha Yoga Meditation to help me gain the necessary insights and understandings that would facilitate my gradual growth and emergence out of those persistent shadowy tendencies. They have not all completely gone away, but I have learned to recognize them when the show up, and this has lessened their power over me.
In the yoga that I practice, the traditional teachings say that we choose the family we are born into. Indeed all aspects of our relations to others and the things and situations in our life before us are there with the specific intention of purifying the karma and the samskaras (mental impressions and tendencies) that we carry around within us. These tendencies come from choices we have made not only in one's present life, but possibly from multiple past lifetimes. I have a feeling for the rightness of this teaching, and it has helped me to learn how to take responsibility for the challenges I have had to face in my life. Blaming others, or blaming Life in general, just keeps me stuck, from moving on.
Our second child, Jessica, was born in January, 1975. (See my project The Persephone Series). And Gloria and I are now grandparents. Our son Shaun and our daughter Jessica and their spouses have given us two beautiful grandchildren!
It was Gloria's sister, Florence, who went to the church in Albuquerque with her and sixteen years later introduced both Gloria and myself to Siddha Yoga. Florence and her husband treated us to a week-end meditation Intensive with Gurumayi, and we both had such dramatic life-transforming experiences of Gurumayi's grace that we immediately began practicing Siddha Yoga. We have continued doing the practices together for the past thirty-two years. (Visit my project Photography and Yoga.)
The Alchemists of the medieval period spoke of two essential complimentary stages in the alchemical process: first the Practice, the making of the "Philosopher's Stone," followed by the Contemplatio, the contemplation of the work produced. In my Written Thesis I similarly emphasized the importance of contemplating photographs that function as a symbol for the artist, or any viewer.
Contemplation must not be confused with the act of interpreting or commenting upon images. Contemplation consists of quieting the mind and opening the Heart so that it can become receptive to the grace which gives a symbol its radiance, attraction, and meaning--a meaning that has its origin in the very center of one's being, a meaning that emerges from beyond the realm of the ego, the shadow, and the personal unconscious. When the grace of a true symbol is received and permitted to be absorbed and integrated into the contemplator's consciousness, into the Heart of one's being, the contemplator is gifted with an ineffable form of Knowledge. Jung and the great seers of yoga referred to this purest form of knowledge as Self Knowledge, knowledge of the transcendent (divine) Self.
The contemplation of images that are essentially projections of shadow or personal unconscious contents can also be useful in pulling back into conscious awareness the projected-unconscious contents. This is an important process of purifying the mind which gradually facilitates gaining access to the more transcendent form of Self Knowledge.
I invite you to visit my blog's Welcome Page. There you will find the complete listing of my online photography projects in chronological order. And I hope you will visit the project that follows this one, entitled Emergence, Atlanta, 1973. I created the online version of the Emergence project at the same time that I was working on this New Mexico project. The Emergence project provides a continuation of the story I have presented here.
I dedicate this project to my wife Gloria. The blog project publication date, August 2, 2019, is in honor and celebration of our 50th wedding anniversary.
Gloria has supported me and my creative process throughout the entire fifty years of our marriage, beginning with the three years we spent in New Mexico as students. I am especially grateful for her patience, her compassionate understanding and her loving way of helping me recognize many of my samskaras. I certainly have been a challenging person to live with.
I can sense, sometimes, how Gloria's insistence on Truth and her Compassionate caring for those in need have in various subtle ways pervaded some of the very best of my photographs, in particular those images which--like Gloria--project a special radiance from within.
I am grateful beyond words for these past fifty, precious years with Gloria. Our relationship and our shared enthusiasm for the Siddha Yoga teachings and practices have been a great, great blessing to me.
I love you Gloria.
Related links:
Emergence, Atlanta, 1973
The Symbolic Photograph
Intuition, Correspondence, Contemplation, The Silent World
The Photograph As ICON
Grace-Photograph-Symbol-Universe
Homage to Federico Mompou and his Sacred Music of Silence: Musica Callada
Visit the Welcome Page to my The Departing Landscape photography blog which includes the complete listing of my online photography projects dating back to the 1960's, my resume, contact information, and much much more.
When I was photographing out in the landscape I could often felt a presence behind or somehow near me, keeping vigil over the land and over me. I wanted to honor the land with the photographs I was making, and it seemed the spirits could sense that and provided me with protection and guidance.
I remember once, I was taking a picture of a shadow on a rock out in the desert--largely because the shadow looked like a snake. After making the exposure I felt an impulse to look behind the rock, but I also sensed that I needed to proceed carefully and slowly. When I got to the other side, I saw a rattle snake coiled against the rock, warming itself inside the rock's shadow. When it heard me approaching, it began to stir and shake its rattle, then after a moment, it simply slithered away.
Some of the Landscape images are for me literally about looking inside, as if into another plane of reality (see images #2 and #6). And, perhaps you may have already noticed, several of the Landscape images "hint" at the fact that Gloria was pregnant during the time I was making the photographs (see images 3, 5, 12 and 13). I am tempted to add image #14 which, it seems to me, is like a luminous egg.
*
The Interiors project is for me largely about my own personal issues, fears, anxieties. In Jungian terms the work is mostly about the "fragmented psyche" and more particularly those realms of the psych Jung identified as the shadow and the personal unconscious.
Two of the pictures in the sequence I've presented here include Phyllis and Jim's young child; and two others include images of my mom. The Mother and the Child archetypes were an active, dominate force in my life at that time of my life, and they impacted the work I did for both projects, but particularly the Interiors project, including those photographs which did not include literal images of "child" and "mother." At first glance, perhaps a viewer would see in the Interiors images merely a collection of snapshots. But for me the work is heavy with fear and anxiety and other feelings that related to highly charged personal-psychological and cultural issues. The solarization process helped, it seemed to me, to make the psychology that belied the work more immediately apparent visually and more accessible emotionally.
I believe the Interior images also reflect the anxieties and fears that were dominate in the American culture at that time. Gloria and I were children of the 60's, victims of the stresses of the cold war, the Cuban Missile Crisis, racism and the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, anti-war protests, political assassinations, etc., etc., etc.
When I was in Chicago in 1967 and 68, and then again in New York City in 1969, the Draft Board put me through three physical examination processes before I was finally issued a 4F classification. A Doctor in Chicago had written a letter in support of my knee injury (which I suffered from a fall on the docks at UPS in Chicago), and it was the letter that seemed to have finally settled the issue. I had become tremendously anxious and angered by the Vietnam War and the Draft: I was outraged about how wrong the war was, and how dangerous and horrific and psychologically devastating it had become for the soldiers. And the war and the draft was a serious threat to my growing relationship to Gloria.
Fig. 1
Gloria and I would have serious talks after we were married regarding the question of bringing children into this "messed up" world: "Would it be irresponsible?" "Would we want to subject a child to the kind of madness we had been seeing so pervasively?"
*
In the second winter of our stay in New Mexico, Gloria started feeling sharp pains when she ovulated. The Doctor we saw told us that cysts--the size of 50 cents pieces--were forming on her ovaries; it seemed likely to him that the cysts would make it nearly impossible for Gloria to become pregnant.
The next summer (1971) Gloria's sister Florence came to visit us. Gloria had heard about a church in Albuquerque which was performing healings, and the both of them--being curious about such things--decided to visit the church and see what was happening there. During their visit a woman came up to Gloria and introduced herself as a member of the church. They began talking to each other, then the woman proceeded to tell Gloria of a healing she had personally experienced at the church: she had had cysts on her ovaries (!) and after the healing she became pregnant. When Gloria heard this she burst into tears. Everyone in the Church gathered round Gloria and performed their healing ritual on her.
At Gloria's next Doctor's appointment, he was amazed when he examined her to find that the cysts had disappeared. We decided that this window of opportunity should not be wasted. In late 1971, Gloria became pregnant with our first child, Shaun, who was born a few months before my Written and Visual Thesis materials were to be delivered to my Committee. The "meaningful coincidence" of Gloria's meeting with the woman in the church, and then the healing she experienced, and Shaun's birth at the time I was about to graduate, are good examples of what Jung termed synchronicity.
*
Gloria's pregnancy was a wonderful gift to us, and this joy and expectancy was expressed in several of the Landscapes. On the other hand, the addition of a child at this point in my life became an additional source of stress for me, and this too became expressed, and most dramatically so, in my Interiors photographs.
"Would I be a good father?" "How does a father act?" "Will I get a teaching job for next year?" "How would I be able to support my child and my wife if I don't?" As Gloria grew larger and larger with child, I was busily writing my Thesis paper, finishing up the photographs for the Exhibition, trying to get my paper typed properly, and searching for a teaching job--all at the same time. I felt overwhelmed by it all.
I felt totally unprepared to be a father. My dad had died when I was nearly ten years old. And to make things worse for me, at the funeral I was told by one of my aunts: "Now you are the man of the house." (Her words would became etched into the fabric of my entire being.)
My mom was devastated by the loss of my dad. She did the best she could, but she had never gotten through high school, her father had been an alcoholic, and now she was faced with caring for and supporting me and my sister on her own. She became quite depressed. A few years later, after she remarried, she fell into an even greater depression when she realized that my stepfather was addicted to gambling (and perhaps alcohol) and was in serious debt.
In 1968 my stepfather experienced a strange medical mishap in which he died spontaneously while eating a bedtime snack. I was about to graduate in Chicago at the time and was becoming seriously involved with Gloria. My relationship with Gloria brought up a great deal of jealousy in my mother, and all the more so after Gloria and I married, and then again after Shaun was born. She acted out toward Gloria in various ways, and because I didn't not know how to handle the situation, my relationship with Gloria became stressed.
The Interiors photographs reflect (for me, at least) many aspects of these and other personal issues that I was dealing with inside myself. And some of my future work would continue to help me process through the layers of psychological issues, confusion and anger that I tried to resist dealing with . . . or didn't consciously know existed within me. (See for example the three Multiple-Exposure projects, and the 1982 Dream Portraits.) It would take many years of counseling and the grace of Siddha Yoga Meditation to help me gain the necessary insights and understandings that would facilitate my gradual growth and emergence out of those persistent shadowy tendencies. They have not all completely gone away, but I have learned to recognize them when the show up, and this has lessened their power over me.
In the yoga that I practice, the traditional teachings say that we choose the family we are born into. Indeed all aspects of our relations to others and the things and situations in our life before us are there with the specific intention of purifying the karma and the samskaras (mental impressions and tendencies) that we carry around within us. These tendencies come from choices we have made not only in one's present life, but possibly from multiple past lifetimes. I have a feeling for the rightness of this teaching, and it has helped me to learn how to take responsibility for the challenges I have had to face in my life. Blaming others, or blaming Life in general, just keeps me stuck, from moving on.
Our second child, Jessica, was born in January, 1975. (See my project The Persephone Series). And Gloria and I are now grandparents. Our son Shaun and our daughter Jessica and their spouses have given us two beautiful grandchildren!
* * *
Postscript
I have tried to show in my narrative how so many things in my life have been connected in meaningful ways. In this regard, Jung's theory of synchronicity is very much in alignment with certain yogic teachings about karma, samskaras and destiny. In my experience as a photographer I have seen quite readily how synchronicity is central to my Creative Process. The felt or visually perceived recognition of "meaningful coincidences" is largely what invokes in me the impulse to make a photograph. The "falling together"-- in a particular point in time--of inner and outer corresponding imaginal realities which are mirroring each other within my projective perceptual processes have the potential to become united in the form of a photographic image. This image of Unitary Reality is what I call a Symbolic Photograph. Experiences of synchronicity, and the symbolic images that they manifest within my Creative Process, generate in me the feeling of a greater, fuller, liberating transcendent reality. Jung called this greater reality the Self; in the yogic tradition I practice it is called the Oneness of Being, or the (divine) Self. Postscript
It was Gloria's sister, Florence, who went to the church in Albuquerque with her and sixteen years later introduced both Gloria and myself to Siddha Yoga. Florence and her husband treated us to a week-end meditation Intensive with Gurumayi, and we both had such dramatic life-transforming experiences of Gurumayi's grace that we immediately began practicing Siddha Yoga. We have continued doing the practices together for the past thirty-two years. (Visit my project Photography and Yoga.)
*
ContemplationThe Alchemists of the medieval period spoke of two essential complimentary stages in the alchemical process: first the Practice, the making of the "Philosopher's Stone," followed by the Contemplatio, the contemplation of the work produced. In my Written Thesis I similarly emphasized the importance of contemplating photographs that function as a symbol for the artist, or any viewer.
Contemplation must not be confused with the act of interpreting or commenting upon images. Contemplation consists of quieting the mind and opening the Heart so that it can become receptive to the grace which gives a symbol its radiance, attraction, and meaning--a meaning that has its origin in the very center of one's being, a meaning that emerges from beyond the realm of the ego, the shadow, and the personal unconscious. When the grace of a true symbol is received and permitted to be absorbed and integrated into the contemplator's consciousness, into the Heart of one's being, the contemplator is gifted with an ineffable form of Knowledge. Jung and the great seers of yoga referred to this purest form of knowledge as Self Knowledge, knowledge of the transcendent (divine) Self.
The contemplation of images that are essentially projections of shadow or personal unconscious contents can also be useful in pulling back into conscious awareness the projected-unconscious contents. This is an important process of purifying the mind which gradually facilitates gaining access to the more transcendent form of Self Knowledge.
*
I invite you to visit my blog's Welcome Page. There you will find the complete listing of my online photography projects in chronological order. And I hope you will visit the project that follows this one, entitled Emergence, Atlanta, 1973. I created the online version of the Emergence project at the same time that I was working on this New Mexico project. The Emergence project provides a continuation of the story I have presented here.
Dedication
I dedicate this project to my wife Gloria. The blog project publication date, August 2, 2019, is in honor and celebration of our 50th wedding anniversary.
Gloria has supported me and my creative process throughout the entire fifty years of our marriage, beginning with the three years we spent in New Mexico as students. I am especially grateful for her patience, her compassionate understanding and her loving way of helping me recognize many of my samskaras. I certainly have been a challenging person to live with.
I can sense, sometimes, how Gloria's insistence on Truth and her Compassionate caring for those in need have in various subtle ways pervaded some of the very best of my photographs, in particular those images which--like Gloria--project a special radiance from within.
I am grateful beyond words for these past fifty, precious years with Gloria. Our relationship and our shared enthusiasm for the Siddha Yoga teachings and practices have been a great, great blessing to me.
I love you Gloria.
This project was published and posted on my blog's Welcome Page
on August 2, 2019, Gloria's and my 50th Wedding Anniversary
on August 2, 2019, Gloria's and my 50th Wedding Anniversary
Related links:
Emergence, Atlanta, 1973
The Symbolic Photograph
Intuition, Correspondence, Contemplation, The Silent World
The Photograph As ICON
Grace-Photograph-Symbol-Universe
Homage to Federico Mompou and his Sacred Music of Silence: Musica Callada
Visit the Welcome Page to my The Departing Landscape photography blog which includes the complete listing of my online photography projects dating back to the 1960's, my resume, contact information, and much much more.
