The Symmetrical Photographs
A Collection of Images, Projects & Texts
Introduction
I began making Symmetrical Photographs in 2011, after may wife Gloria and I toured Turkey for two weeks. During the trip I became very attracted to the many forms of Islamic Sacred Art I was encountering in the Mosques, Art Museums, and the Shrine of Rumi (the well known Sufi poet-saint we visited in Konya). I loved hearing the Call to Prayer broadcast several times each day throughout the cities we visited. I was entranced by the dancing of the whirling Sufi dervishes we saw in live performance, and the music they whirled to. Throughout the trip I was graced with multiple experiences of the Sacred, which I have written about in detail in my photography project "An Imaginary Book" and particularly the first "chapter" of the "Book," Prayer Stones. Also, in the Preface to the "Imaginary Book" I explain how I became interested in making the Symmetrical Photographs and the processI used to construct them.
"An Imaginary Book" (2011-2013) became, in part, a contemplation on what Sacred Art meant, to me, a contemporary American artist. I had been practicing Siddha Yoga Meditation since 1987, and much of my work was influenced by the yogic teachings and the many experiences of grace I had received from my Meditation Master, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, a True teacher or sadgugu, a Siddha, one who lives in the constant awareness of her union with God. After the trip to Turkey I began asking myself why hadn't I identified my creative process and the photographs I was making as a form of Sacred Art?
After completing "An Imaginary Book" in 2013 I was pretty certain that many of the Symmetrical Photographs I had made for "the Book" were indeed living forms of Sacred Art. The images felt alive with divine presence, the grace of my Creative Process . . . which was how I defined photographs that functioned for me as a True, living Symbols. The symmetrical photographs in the "Book" were clearly inspired by the Islamic Sacred Art I had seen in Qur'an illuminations, Mosque decorations, the sacred meditation rugs I saw at Rumi's shrine, etc.--images which involved infinitely repeating, mirroring, symmetrical imagery.
The impulse to make symmetrical photographs continued after the completion of "An Imaginary Book." In the three years that followed, an amazing number of major photography projects were produced, all of which not only included symmetrical photographs but also were dominated by symmetrical imagery. In 2014 I created the multi-chaptered project, The Angles which was influenced by authors I had begun reading while doing research on Islamic Sacred Art, especially the books by Henry Corbin and Tom Cheetham. Their writings, and the writings of other accomplished Islamic scholars, inspired me to pursue even more deeply the idea of Sacred Art.
In 2015 I created the multi-chaptered project The Photograph as ICON which was based on writings of and the Russian Orthodox priest, theologian, philosopher and scientist Pavel Florensky as well as by Tom Cheetham (who introduced me to Florensky's book Iconostasis) and Henry Corbin.
Also in 2015 I at last felt courageous enough to embark upon the project I had for some time been longing to attempt: the multi-chaptered project entitled Photography and Yoga. I found that project to be very difficult for me, perhaps because I was so close to the teachings of Gurumayi and her teacher Swami Muktananda, and because my very palpable experiences of their grace were so rich and personal, I felt I could not adequately honor the depths of what I had been given through their teachings and their grace, their shakti, their divine state of Union with God. Many of the symmetrical photographs I included in the various chapters were, I felt, too forced and failed to meet my own expectations and the power of the texts I had quotes.
After Photography and Yoga I continued making more and more projects that included symmetrical imagery and yogic teachings. Eventually I began collecting those projects in a blog page I have entitled The Sacred Art Photography Projects. I continue to add projects to the existing list when it feels appropriate to do so.
Most of the Sacred Art Photography Projects include symmetrical photographs and oftentimes the Sacred Art Projects include only symmetrical photographs. And all of the projects include texts that mention the "Symbolic Photograph" or photographs that "function for me as True, living Symbols." I consider True, living Symbols the visual embodiment of grace, or what in the yoga I practice is the divine energy called Shakti, or Chiti-Shakti, the "Origin" and "Creative Power of the Universe."
The Symmetrical Photograph
Mirroring Imagery
and
The Oneness of Being
In projects which include Symmetrical Photographs I have often tried to explain how their special kind of imagery "means" to me, and how I construct them. The project link below is useful for the illustrations it includes and the important distinctions I make between the Symmetrical Photograph and the Straight Photograph which serves as the source image with which I construct the symmetrical images. Thus, in addition to what I first wrote about symmetrical images in my Preface to "An Imaginary Book" I highly recommend this link:
All of my symmetrical images are constructed with a single straight photograph which has been repeated four times and then conjoined in such a way that each image is reflected in itself Above & Below and left & right. These "four-fold" symmetrical images frequently surprise me in the way the construction process manifests such a surprising and often radical transformation of the originating "source" straight photograph. The newborn symmetrical images, the very best of them, feel charged with grace, or shakti, that sacred energy which can turn an ordinary photographic image into an extraordinary image, one radiant with an ineffable light, an unsayable meaning, a True, living Symbol. The four-fold construction process transforms the single repeated image into the visual embodiment of the Oneness of Being. Gurumayi's beloved teacher, Swami Muktananda often spoke of . . .
"The One [that] becomes many
and the many [that] becomes One."
*
That which is Below corresponds
to that which is Above,
and that which is Above corresponds
to that which is Below,
to accomplish the miracle of
the "One Thing"
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The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus
Alchemical Treatise
This well known Alchemical statement was the conceptual center of my 1972 MFA Thesis Paper entitled The Symbolic Photograph : A Means To Self Knowledge. The paper was inspired by the writings of depth-psychologist Carl Jung, especially his research into the creative unconscious psyche, Medieval Alchemy, his theories about archetypes, symbols and, late in life, his fascination with the phenomena known as synchronicity
In 2015 I created a photography project, As Above ~ So Below, which I revised in 2018 entitled As Above ~ So Below : Mirror In the Temple. The project contains only three images, all of which are symmetrical photographs. The initial 2015 version of the project included texts that related to my earlier interest in Jung and alchemy. The 2018 revision shifted the textual focus to Henry Corbin's fascinating essay about the use of water mirrors in mosques and temples as a way of visually and symbolically expanding the sacred space of worship and uniting heaven and earth. Corbin's contemplation of mirrors and reflections relate directly to the transformation I often experience with my four-fold constructions of "straight" photographs and their surprising, expanded transformation spatially into Symmetrical images.
Sacred Art
"The Grace of My Creative Process"
"Self-Knowledge" & the "True, living Symbol"
What makes any photograph, straight or symmetrical, a form of Sacred Art, a True, living Symbol? ~ When I wrote my MFA thesis, the primary focus was on Jung's rather esoteric idea of the Self, a psychological Unitary Reality in which the conscious and unconscious psyches within an individual became merged and transformed into a new, expanded, transcendent level of Consciousness. Jung's idea of the symbol was based on a similar idea: it was an image in which inner and outer (Heavenly & Earthly / divine & physical / material & psychic) corresponding images would synchronistically "fall" into alignment and become conjoined, producing "the miracle of the 'One Thing'" as expressed in the Alchemical Treatise I quoted earlier.
Jung created an articulate argument for his ideas that felt right to me and I was content with thinking in Jungian terms about my creative process in photography . . . until Gloria and I met Gurumayi Chidvilasananda in 1987, when we took a two day meditation Intensive with her and experienced Gurumayi's extraordinary grace (or shakti). It was a life-transforming experience for me (and Gloria) and we immediately began practicing Siddha Yoga with great enthusiasm. We have continued to do so to this very day. (October, 2022)
I wrote about my first meeting with Gurumayi--and other experiences of her grace--in my 2015 photography project Photography and Yoga. And I have provided even more details about my experiences for my 2013 Epilogue for "An Imaginary Book." I invite you to visit:
I feel profoundly fortunate and deeply grateful to have found a True teacher. It is Gurumayi's grace, and the shakti of the entire ancient lineage of Meditation Masters to which she belongs, that is the True foundation of what I often refer to as "my Creative Process," the Symbolic Photograph, and Self-Knowledge.
In Siddha Yoga the term Self is synonymous with God and Guru; all three terms--Self, God, Guru, Atman--are a reference to that ineffable Unitary Reality, also known as Siva, the Universal Soul and The Oneness of Being. A True teacher, a Sadguru, is the human form of God through which the divine Presence bestows grace upon others. A True, living Symbol is an Imaginal form of the Oneness of Being, an image radiant with grace, an ineffable expression of Self-Knowledge, a kind of knowing that is only possible through the experience of the Sacred.
For me, the power of a symmetrical photograph, if it is functioning for me as a True, living Symbol, resides in: 1) its grace; 2) its center point, which is the Sacred origin of the image; and 3) the repeated mirroring of the same one image--above & below, and left & right--which in Islamic terms is a metaphor for the Infinite nature of the divine Presence. These three things (grace, the center point, and mirroring imagery) become simultaneously manifest in the very best of the symmetrical photographs, images which visually embody the Sacred Idea: The Oneness of Being.
Similarly, the power of a straight photograph--one which is functioning for me as a True, living Symbol--originates in the grace that conjoins an internal (psychic) image within me, with its corresponding outer, (physical) form. A straight photograph, if it is functioning for me as a True, living Symbol, is equally an image radiant with grace, and the visual embodiment of the Oneness of Being.
"True, living Symbol"
The term "True" in the phrase "True, living Symbol" is a reference to the Oneness of Being, otherwise referred to as Supreme Consciousness, or divine Self-Knowledge. The word "True" can also refer to a True Guru (sadguru), or a scriptural teaching that is based in an authentic experience of grace.
The term "living", as already mentioned, is a reference to an image that is chaitanya, "awakened" or imbued with the Creative Power of the Universe, i.e., shakti, or grace.
The term "symbol" in Jungian terms is "that which is the best possible expression of that which is unknown." By the very nature of that which is Truely divine, words cannot explain what is essentailly unknowable because words emerge from a dualistic mode of being. Symbols are expressions of the Oneness of Being, and thus we gain "Knowledge" of the divine, the sacred, the Self through our direct experience of the divine, grace, the Self.
The Contemplation of Symbolic Photographs
"The Seeker is one who makes an Effort"
Siva Sutra 2.2
I read yogic texts every day, usually they are the writings of Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, or her teacher, Swami Muktananda, the founder of the Siddha Yoga Path. As I work on my photography projects I sometimes find within the texts I'm reading passages which correspond to and provide insight to the ideas and themes I am exploring in a current photography project. In other words, a kind of synchronistic recognition occurs, and I will then try to find some way to include those yogic teachings in my project's introductory texts.
As I was working on this project, Symmetrical Photographs, I was reading a book consisting of commentaries by Swami Muktananda on a collection of ancient aphorisms known as the Siva Sutras. The title of the book, Nothing Exists That Is Not Siva, pretty much says it all: the reader of the book is Siva, the texts in the book were written by Siva, the book's paper and ink are Siva, the writer of this blog is Siva, and you who are reading this text is also Siva.
Putting this concept into the context of the symmetrical photographs, I could say: The seer of the symmetrical photographs is Siva, and the photographs being seen are Siva; and the process of contemplating the images is one in which Siva is contemplating Siva. A similar Sutra aphorism goes like this:
The Seer is the Seen; The Seen is the Seer.
(*Note: Siva is considered the masculine aspect of God; Shakti is the feminine; but in Truth they are inseparable aspects of the same One, divine Reality. Any form of contemplation is a from of Siva gaining knowledge of Siva [the divine Self] through the Creative power, Shakti, of His own divine nature.)
*
Though I have read Nothing Exists That Is Not Siva many times, the other day I was struck by Muktananda's commentary on Siva Sutra 2.2 which says in its English translation:
"A seeker is one who makes an effort."
In Baba's commentary on this sutra he focuses on the living power of a mantra vibrantly alive with the divine power or presence known as Chit-shakti. Regarding "right effort" he says a seeker who is constantly aware of that mantra given, by a sadguru, or Siddha guru, and who practices the repetition of the living mantra with his or her in-breath and out-breath is making "right effort." He goes on to say, the seeker who is constantly contemplating that mantra . . . is making "right effort."
"Right effort" is beyond doing these practices with proper technique; indeed "right effort" involves "the complete identification" of the seeker with the object of meditation or the object of contemplation. (This teaching can be applied to images alive with grace, images I refer to as living symbolic photographs.)
Baba explains that a mantra is made chaitanya, alive, not only by the grace of a True Guru but also by the grace of the seeker who makes "right effort." Through "right effort" and grace a seeker becomes aware of the Truth, the Oneness of Being.
*
Siddha Yoga is a Path based in the experience of grace that flows thru the ancient and modern day lineage of Siddha Gurus.
(Baba Muktananda was a world famous Sadguru, and he received the power of the Siddha Lineage from his True teacher, a Great Siddha, Bhagavan Nityananda; and Baba passed the power of the Siddha Lineage on to his disciple Gurumayi Chidvilasananda just before he passed away in 1982.)
I have written often in my photography blog projects that after I received Gurumayi's grace during my first meditation Intensive with her, in 1987, my practice of photographic picture-making began to gradually merge with my yogic practices: the grace of the yoga practices inspired and enlivened my creative process in photography, and my photography provided me with a means of contemplating the yogic teachings. See my project Contemplating Symbolic Photographs.
The Symmetrical Photograph
It's Image repetition, It's Center Point,
It's Grace & The chaitanya Mantra
Just as a mantra becomes vibrantly alive by the grace of a seeker through his or her constant repetition of the mantra and the constant process of meditation and contemplation upon the mantra, so any other object--a photograph for example--can become enlivened with the grace, the chiti-shakti of a seeker's right effort, which essentially is the seeker's Creative Process.
A four-fold symmetrical photograph is visually vibrant with the repetition of the same one image four times, each image mirrored in itself both above & below and left & right. This mirroring of imagery invokes the sense of the infinite power and expansiveness of the sacred, divine source of the image: the center-point of the image. The center-point can also be seen as the concentrated space in which the four images become conjoined into one Unitary Reality.
The point, the center and Unitary Reality are essential concepts in Islamic Sacred Art, and their "sacred geometry" is based on the circle, its center point, and the mystery of the Origin of the Point. I have often seen my symmetrical images as essentially round or circular, and that the image unfolds outward from its center point.
Gaston Bachelard, in his book The Poetics of Space, has written about "The Roundness of Being." Of course "roundness" invokes the idea of a circle and in Islamic Sacred Art the mystery of the Origin of the Point is sometimes referred to as the Void, or the place of Divine Presence. (See my blog page The Point of Origin, the Void . . . )
*
Repetition of an enlivened mantra involves aligning a seeker's in-breath and out-breath with the silent (inner) sound of the mantra, and focusing on the space of stillness between the two breaths. That "turning point" in which the in-breath becomes the out-breath, and vice versa is said to be the indwelling Place of the divine Self. The yogic sages say the silence and stillness of that space-between the in-breaths and the out-breaths is the origin point of the entire outer Universe. Similarly, a photographic image that functions for a contemplator as a True, living Symbol is manifested through the alignment and synchronous conjunction of an outer image of the physical world with its corresponding interior image which exists within the the psyche of the photographer. And then this idea carries through to any contemplator who experiences that same image as a living symbol.
The contemplation of any photograph that is functioning for the contemplator as a True, living Symbol involves repeated silent dialogues with that image, dialogues which draw the image inside the contemplator. Through the process of taking an image inside one's Self and listening, in silence to what it has to say, the grace that pervades the image can become absorbed in the Heart of the contemplator, which is the very Center of the contemplator's Being.
With this process of interiorization, and introspection, the grace of a symbolic image, the grace of the contemplator and the grace of the Contemplation Process becomes conjoined in an experience of the Oneness of Being. In other words, the process is one in which God (Siva, the divine Self) is contemplating God (Siva, the divine Self).
Thus a symmetrical photograph that is functioning for a contemplator as a True, living Symbol--an image radiant with grace--is the visual equivalent to or at least similar to the "right effort" being made in repeating a chaitanya manta silently to oneself. And, similarly, both processes have the potential to manifest Self-Knowledge, the experience of the Sacredness of the Oneness of Being, the Oneness of All of Life.
I used the word "potential" above because the success of the creative process depends as much upon the contemplator as it depends on the grace embodied within the image. That is to say, the process depends upon the grace generated by the contemplator's "right effort" which completes the Creative Process.
Repetition is a very powerful form of making "right effort" toward any sincerely established goal. Repeated contemplations of the same symmetrical photograph does manifest experiences of insight, and a symmetrical photograph is the visual embodiment par excellence of image repetition.
Regarding the Photographs
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The Symmetrical Photographs I have selected and presented below are from a large collection of blog projects, and under each photograph I have provided a hyperlinked title for the blog project in which the image was published.
(I encourage you to see my blog's Welcome Page which includes a complete listing of all my hyperlinked project titles, plus there is a section that provides links to collections of images and projects devoted to particular themes, such as this project. Alternately, you could visit this link: The Theme-Related Collections.)
I usually present the Symmetrical Photographs "extra large" on the project's blog page, however I have reproduced them smaller here to conserve space. Also, I generally prefer to see my photographs surrounded in black space rather than surrounded in white space. Depending on your viewing equipment and your choice of web browser (I use an iMac and the Google Chrome browser) you many be able to view these images below in surrounding black space when you click on the image once. Then, if you click on the image a second time, you may be able to see an enlarged version of the image.
The Symmetrical Photographs I have chosen below are among my most favorite, and by that I mean the most striking visually and the most meaningful for me. Of course images can be meaningful in so many different ways because "meaning" depends not only on the image but also on the viewer. For me, "a meaningful image" depends above all else on its abundance of grace, its power to make the image "alive" or radiant with shakti. In other words, images that are functioning for me as a True, living Symbols, images which have in most cases the kind of meaning or Knowledge that is not sayable, because words deal in the limited forms of meaning within the realm of dualism. True Symbols manifest meaning in what Henry Corbin termed the Intermediary Imaginal World,
the realm of the Oneness of Being.
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Related Project Links
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Links cited in my Introduction
Preface to "An Imaginary Book"
This project was announced on
my blog's Welcome Page October 17, 2022
Welcome Page to The Departing Landscape blog, which includes the complete hyperlinked listing of my online photography projects dating from the most recent to those dating back to the 1960's. You will also find on the Welcome Page my resume, contact information . . . and much more.
