Book Seven
12x12" Studies : Collection of Inkjet Prints
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #1 Symmetrical Photograph : Two Flames Merging
Introduction
I am beginning this collection of recently printed favorite images from my blog archive with a Symmetrical Photograph which I have used--in its newly revised red version--as the title image for my Sacred Art Photography Projects link. I first published the image in my project The Center of Being. The image is a visual metaphor for the essential motivation behind my creative process: the conjoining, or merging of an outer-world image with its interior imaginal counterpart. When two corresponding images come together within my response to something I am "seeing photographically" I refer to this kind of meaningful perceptual event as an experience of synchronicity. Henry Corbin might say this aspect of my creative process was most probably influenced by angelic presence. My yoga meditation Master, Gurumayi, could possibly say that the hand of grace and the hand of destiny were the major influences.
Be your own best friend.
Employ time to accomplish the things
you have promised yourself to do
and to sit back and admire the hand of destiny
in your endeavors.
Gurumayi (from the Siddha Yoga Website)
CG Jung wrote about synchronicity in a fascinating way, and in a way that made sense to me in relation to my experience as a photographic picture maker. Back in 1970 when I was beginning to prepare writing my MFA Thesis paper at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, Jung's theories regarding synchronicity, symbol, and the psychological underpinnings of Medieval Alchemy provided me with a clear insight to my own creative process and affirmed my intuitive understanding regarding an emerging, unfolding conceptual-spiritual sensibility that I was becoming conscious of having something to do with what makes a photograph Truly meaningful to me. Jung's ideas helped me through what I though would be an impossible task, writing the MFA Thesis paper, and the finished paper The Symbolic Photograph: A Means to Self Knowledge remains meaningful to me today.
Fifteen years after I wrote that paper I met Gurumayi (in August, 1987) and then in 2016, after my wife Gloria and I returned from our travels through Turkey in the spring, I discovered Henry Corbin and Tom Cheetham's writings about Corbin and his ideas about Islamic mystical Traditions. For while I was in Turkey I encountered Islamic Sacred Art in a series of what I would call mystical visionary experiences. Those experiences made me conscious of the fact that I did not really know anything about Sacred Art. What I learned from all the research I did after getting back home from that unforgettable trip was in truly refreshing and excitingly new for me.
The image above, and all photographs which function for me as True, living Symbols are visual revelations or unveilings of an invisible presence and the radiance of grace which is the heartfelt foundation of the sacred Truths regarding the Symbolic Photograph and The Oneness of Being.
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The first twelve images below, all of which are symmetrical photographs, will begin this collection of newly printed 12x12" inkjet prints. I encourage you to see my blog project Symmetrical Photographs : Images, Projects & Texts which includes an explanation of the process I use in creating them. As in the earlier six published blog Books I have included some personal commentary where possible and hyperlinks to blog projects related to particular images.
(Note: if you are viewing this blog project with a laptop or desktop computer I encourage you to view each image with an alternate viewing mode that can be accessed by clinking once and then once again upon an image. This will enable you to see the image in a dark viewing environment, and the image will appear larger and of a higher visual quality in terms of sharpness and tonal purity from what you at first see in the blog's default viewing mode. Click here for more technical information about this issue.)
Symmetrical Photographs
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #2 Symmetrical Photograph : Snow-burst
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #3 Symmetrical Photograph : Blue Pearl
See the Blue Pearl Project
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #4 Symmetrical Photograph : Broad Brook Stone
visit Broad Brook Road project
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #5 Symmetrical Photograph New Mexico stones
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #6 Symmetrical Photo: Portrait
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #7 Symmetrical Photograph New Mexico stones
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Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #9 Symmetrical Photograph Chandelier. lights turned down
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #10 Symmetrical Photograph Birdbath
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #11 Symmetrical Photograph (Alcazar pond, Fish Feeding Time)
visit Crystalline Paradise
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #12 Abstract Symmetrical Photograph
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #12a Abstract Symmetrical Photograph
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #13 Symmetrical Photograph (goldfish in a pond)
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Most of my photographs fall into the following two categories:
Symmetrical Photographs & "Straight Photographs". I
have included several Meadow photographs in this
project, several images with human beings in
them; several animal photographs, several
images of things hanging . . . If subject
matter is of interest to you I invite
you to visit this Themes link.
My 12x12" inkjet print images were inspired by my very first (six-year-long) Studies Project which spanned the years 1994-2000. I was in love with the "quirky" music of jazz composer and performer Thelonious Monk in that period of my life, and his music inspired me to feel free to experiment, to work spontaneously and break from certain traditions that was holding back something important within me that wanted to be released. The first image below (#14) qualifies as a quirky image, as do many others in this project and the earlier 12x12" Book projects. In the very first Studies project (1994-2000) I placed an emphasis on transformational techniques, odd tonal ranges, quirky formal relationships and points of view, and very importantly the process of re-visiting and revising older images, making new work with new new meanings from older work in surprisingly refreshing ways. And you will see all those interests continuing to operate in the body of work I have produced since then.
The majority of the 12x12" inkjet printed images I have been making in the past year or so consist mostly of new versions of their original source material--images quite often which were long in format compared to the square (cropped) format will be seeing here, below. Cropping the longer image to a square provides an opportunity of choosing new ways of seeing and presenting a familiar image. I have come to love the direct immediacy and compactness of the square image. When you know all four sides are equal you have to pay more attention to what it is that's causing all that energy that is radiating out from the square's center, energy that often feels to me like a divine or sacred presence.
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #14 Still life
visit Brushstrokes
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #15 Pond, Statue, Coins, Bubbles
Quirky images require no explanation. It is their unknown-unintended meaning
which makes them so attractive, mysterious, unexpected to me.
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #16 Vermont Forest overlooking Broad Brook
This image served as the source image for one of my most favorite Symmetrical Photographs.
See the last image in the project Photographs : October 2022
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #17 Light on Trees, Broad Brook below
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #18 Broad Brook Stones under the water
This photograph is looking through water at the rocks on the bottom of Vermont's
Broad Brook. The very brightest parts of the images (leaves mostly) were
floating by on the surface of the water when I took the photograph.
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #19 Broad Brook Stones, Golden light on water
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #20 Dried Rosemary plant in ceramic vase
All of the "Still life" images in this project are a homage to the great
Italian painter Giorgio Morandi. I love his work. Visit Still Life
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #21 Pandemic Inspired still life
(In late June, 2024 I removed some images from this collection causing brakes in the numbering)
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #24 South Meadow, early morning fog
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #25 N Meadow and pond - two layers of morning fog
Book Seven #27 S Meadow with evening storm clouds approaching pink sunset illuminate clouds
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #28 N Meadow and pond with early morning snowfall
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #29 S Meadow Snow covered woods (see next image)
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #30 North Meadow with snow covered pond & woods
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #31 The Secrete Language of Plants
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #32 Ground view of the N Meadow, Pond and fog
Visit my The Meadow Series
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #33 Meadow Stones and Nail
Visit this link to my blog project about sacred rocks.
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #34 A rotted burlap bag full of stones in a neglected warehouse
See my collection of Stone photographs
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #35 Italy--Tourists walking among Vatican Columns
Visit my Italy Project
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #36 Italy--Inversed image of a Pompeii Head
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #37 Faint photograph of a bull in the fog
Visit my project Faint Photographs
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Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #38 Elephant (out of focus) leaving the circus tent
See my Postludes and Thing-Centered Photographs
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #39 Hudson River Valley
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #40 Hudson River Valley
See my Hudson River Valley Project
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #41 Dark figure bending over crying child
See my project Dream Portraits
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Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #42 The Bather
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #43 (Inversed image) Boy with bat & ball
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #44 The boy and the Universe
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #45 Inversed image Man Climbing Ladder
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #46 Man Walking In Rain
See my Homage to Giacometti project
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #47 Man Walking Into the Sky
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #48 Night Snapshot of Gloria standing in the lights of our car
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #49 Ice water in a plastic glass
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #50 Grid Garage
See the Garage Series Photographs
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #51 Bleachers and round tables
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #52 View of buildings through venetian blinds
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #53 Two Hangers hanging in the laundry room
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #54 Hanging bird, blue snow, warm light of the setting sun
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #55 Hanging Christmas Tinsel
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #56 Veiled Tear
see my Project Maya's Veils of Illusion
Book Seven 12x12" Studies. Image #57 Curtain & Illuminated Window Screen
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This project was announced on
my bog's Welcome Page
February 14, 2024
Revised March, 2024
(In late June, 2024 I removed some images from this collection causing brakes in the numbering)
Related Blog Project Links
How to Best View My Online Blog Images with your desktop or laptop computer.
Please visit the Welcome Page to my blog The Departing Landscape. It 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.