Makom
"the Place"
A 12x12" Inkjet Print PROJECT
Introduction
This is my fifteenth 12x12" Inkjet Print PROJECT. The images you will see here were drawn from over 800 12x12" inkjet prints I have made since February, 2023, images divided up into nine non-thematic Books. The 800 or so prints represent what I consider to be my best or most favorite images from the blog projects I started creating between 2010 to the present time, and most particularly blog projects of new work, which after 2010 I decided not to make prints of unless it was necessary. As I was creating the Books I made a few theme-related PROJECTS from new work I had made at the time. Then a few months ago I felt it was time to organize the 800 12x12" prints in thematic or conceptual ways that would provide a clearer orientation to the many aspects of my creative process that have emerged over the years. Visit this link, PROJECTS to see the updated list of 12x12" Inkjet Print PROJECTS.
This is my fifteenth 12x12" Inkjet Print PROJECT. The images you will see here were drawn from over 800 12x12" inkjet prints I have made since February, 2023, images divided up into nine non-thematic Books. The 800 or so prints represent what I consider to be my best or most favorite images from the blog projects I started creating between 2010 to the present time, and most particularly blog projects of new work, which after 2010 I decided not to make prints of unless it was necessary. As I was creating the Books I made a few theme-related PROJECTS from new work I had made at the time. Then a few months ago I felt it was time to organize the 800 12x12" prints in thematic or conceptual ways that would provide a clearer orientation to the many aspects of my creative process that have emerged over the years. Visit this link, PROJECTS to see the updated list of 12x12" Inkjet Print PROJECTS.
After I recently completed the Pandemic Inspired Photographs 12x12" PROJECT it became clear to me that I needed to devote a PROJECT to the concept Makom, which has been a dominant concern of mine since the late 1970's and which was very much central to the 18 projects I created during the Pandemic. I had written very little about Makom for many years, and felt there's no point about keeping it a "secret" any longer.
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I discovered the Makom concept in 1978 or so, in the book by Thomas Hess entitled Barnett Newman (1971). I had looked at this book when I was a graduate student (1969-72). Why I came back to it in 1978, I can't say for sure, but I am pretty sure it had something to do with the Negative Print project I had started at that time, and perhaps a remembrance of the Makom concept I must have seen in the Hess book. Barnett Newman (b. 1905 - 1970), was one of the truly great New York School abstract painters of the 1960's, and he produced many paintings that were in certain ways the visual embodiment of a still, meditative state of mind. (I will write later about how the yogic practice of meditation would become very very important to me in 1987.)
I was fascinated to read Thomas Hess's account of a life-transforming experience which Newmann tried to write about in an unpublished 1949 monologue entitled "Prologue for a New Esthetic." The experience occurred in 1949 while Newman was visiting the sacred mounds of the indigenous people who lived in what is now the state of Ohio. I was born in Piqua, Ohio and lived the first 14 years of my life in Piqua, which is located on the Miami River, less than an hour's ride from the mounds Newman had visited in Ohio. (See my earlier Makom blog project for more details.)
Here is a brief except from Newman's "Prologue for a New Esthetic" quoted by Thomas Hess in his 1971 book Barnett Newman:
"Standing before the Miamisburg mound, or walking amidst the Fort Ancient and Newark earthworks--surrounded by these simple walls of mud--I was confounded by the absoluteness of the sensation, their self-evident simplicity . . . "
Hess informs us of a later conversation he had with Newman in which the painter describes in more personal detail what he felt. Newmann told Hess he experienced at those mounds " . . . a sense of place, a holy place. Looking at the site you feel, Here I am, here . . . and out beyond there [beyond the limits of the site] there is chaos, nature, rivers, landscapes . . . but here you get a sense of your own presence . . . "
Hess offered an interpretation of Newman's experience of the mounds in Ohio based on a statement Newman wrote in 1963 about an architectural model he had made for a synagogue. In that 1963 statement Newman used the words Makom and mound. Hess explained that the Jewish concept Makom means "place" or "location" or "site" . . . and that Newman had designated a mound-like "place" in his temple model which he identified by the word Makom, "the Place" where members of the congregation would stand (directly, before God) and read from the Torah. Hess then provides more elaboration on the word Makom:
"Standing before the Miamisburg mound, or walking amidst the Fort Ancient and Newark earthworks--surrounded by these simple walls of mud--I was confounded by the absoluteness of the sensation, their self-evident simplicity . . . "
Hess informs us of a later conversation he had with Newman in which the painter describes in more personal detail what he felt. Newmann told Hess he experienced at those mounds " . . . a sense of place, a holy place. Looking at the site you feel, Here I am, here . . . and out beyond there [beyond the limits of the site] there is chaos, nature, rivers, landscapes . . . but here you get a sense of your own presence . . . "
Hess offered an interpretation of Newman's experience of the mounds in Ohio based on a statement Newman wrote in 1963 about an architectural model he had made for a synagogue. In that 1963 statement Newman used the words Makom and mound. Hess explained that the Jewish concept Makom means "place" or "location" or "site" . . . and that Newman had designated a mound-like "place" in his temple model which he identified by the word Makom, "the Place" where members of the congregation would stand (directly, before God) and read from the Torah. Hess then provides more elaboration on the word Makom:
Makom is place. Hamakom is, literally, "the Place." It is also one of the secret names of God and one of the poetic locutions which the Torah uses to avoid pronouncing [God's] name or spelling out its letters. Thus Moses would not say: "The Lord spoke to me . . . " but "The Place spoke to me. . . " ~ For the early Kabbalists, as for Aristotle, "place" and "space" were identical. There was no such thing as an abstract, metaphysical "space." Everything was "place," even heaven, and for the Jews "the Place" is imbued with the transcendental presence of God. (Thomas Hess from the 1971 publication Barnett Newman)
I had often felt, as a young student of photography, something like "the transcendental presence of God," in certain photographs I was looking at, or a thing, place or space I was about to photograph, and I wanted to make photographs that radiated (at least for me) that same feeling which, later, I discovered existed as much within me as it seemed to exist in what I was looking at and what I was about to photograph. Knowing that Newman had that same feeling with the mounds was a revelation to me and a confirmation of the reality I had been experiencing.
I must quote again Newman's own words:
"I was confounded by the absoluteness of the sensation . . .
a sense of place, a holy place. Looking at the site [the mounds]
you feel, "Here I am, here" . . . here you get a sense of your own presence . . . "
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In 1987, when I met Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, and spent two days with her in a meditation intensive, I experienced Her grace within me; Her grace (shakti) opened my heart which allowed me to experience an inexplicable feeling of love that was for me life-transforming. I knew, then, that I had at last found the True Teacher I had been (secretly) seeking, one who consciously lived constantly in that transcendental state and who could awaken the divine presence within others, including me, with the experience of what in yoga is termed the Self, that must have been similar for Newman who wrote about experiencing his own presence . . . "Here I am, here" . . .
The saints from all traditions say the same thing, essentially. They say: "God pervades everything in the Created Universe, including every human Heart." Thus, Truly speaking, there is no difference between Place and Space and Thing. They are, essentially, One. The illusion of separateness has to do with the ego aspect of the Human psyche, otherwise known as Maya.
(Note: The yogic saints teach that everything in the outer-world originates from the inner world, the world of the Human Heart.)
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I believe the photographs I make which are (for me) radiant with the interior feeling of "the Sacred," with Makom, "the Place" are alive with the grace of my Creative Process, the divine presence which lives within me. I have identified these kinds of images as "True, living Symbols," photographs which hold in equilibrium the inner and outer corresponding images, images which have become merged into each other, as One in the visual form of a photographic image. In other words, True, living Symbols are images which pervaded by grace, the Oneness of Being:
I am the space where I am.
Noel Aranaud from L'etat d'ebauche
Every object invested with intimate space
becomes the center of all space.
Both quotes are from Gaston Bachelard's book The Poetics of Space
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I encourage you to visit my earlier blog project Makom "the Place" to read a more expanded explanation of the Makom concept and how it relates to several of my earlier Milwaukee photography projects (listed here, below) which were influenced by the Makom concept between 1978 and 2001.
The photographs I have presented in this project were chosen from my nine blog 12x12" Inkjet Print Books function for me as alive and functioning for me as True, living Symbols which are pervaded by a presence that relates directly to the Makom concept that Newman strived to write about and express in his own words. Clearly, Makom has been a constant companion for me since I first read about the concept in 1978 and perhaps as early as 1971-72. It has been a creative force in my Creative Process and has manifested itself through the many projects I created in Milwaukee, listed below, and later projects as well.
See my blog version of the first consciously created Makom projects:
The Garage Series 1999-2001 This one may be hard to understand. Watch for my 12x12" PROJECT Version of my blog project. I will link to that here later
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A few years after I completed my 1978-80 Negative Print Memories of Childhood project I read a book by Robert Bly entitled News of the Universe. His chapter about "object poems," or "thing poems" had a profound influence on me at that time. It was another one of those major turning points in my Creative Process. Essentially Bly's idea is that the things of the world are pervaded by and alive with the same consciousness, the same divine presence which dwells in human beings. The concept Thing-Centered Photographs simply extend the idea of Makom from "space" and "place" to "things."
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Here is a list of more recent "Makom" related projects:
The Meadow 2008 to present
Time Changes 2017
Nocturne 2022
In the Presence 2024
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One of my most profound experiences of Makom occurred as I looked out over and into the vast space of the Grand Canyon. I wrote a blog essay about that experience in great detail; I invite you to read the essay: Seeing the Grand Canyon.
I look back now and remember with great fondness how in 1963-64, during my Freshman year in the Photography Program at the Rochester Institute of Technology, I would walk or bus to Eastman House every week to take Beaumont Newhall's lecture course, the History of Photography (ten years later he would be on my MFA Thesis Committee at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque). Just about every week, both before and after the lectures, I would go visit the upstairs galleries to study the photographs on permanent display by Edward Weston, Alfred Stiegliz, Minor White, Eugene Atget, and a few other favorite photographers of mine whose work was on display. I could sense in many of those photographs that the things photographed (things, places, spaces) had an "inner essence" or living spirit. The images invoked in me a strong impulse, a "hunger" to be able to make photographs like my mentors.
I understand better, now, how seeing those photographs had been a kind of preparation that would help me to recognize and awaken to the idea of the True, living Symbol, the Makom idea, and Gurumayi's grace and teachings; and that the dualistic appearances of inner and outer, vast space and intimate space, are just parts of a greater whole: the Oneness of Being. In Siddha Yoga, the basic teaching, which is a loving encouraging command from the teacher to the student, is: "See God, See the Self Everywhere and In Everything". When I first began practicing Siddha Yoga Meditation, whenever I heard or read that it was for me a confirming affirmation that my Creative Process in Photography could become a form of yogic practice, a form of meditation . . . and indeed it has become that.
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I have written some brief commentaries under many of the images I have presented here, and some related blog links. I hope you find them useful. Welcome to Makom.
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How to Best View My Online Blog Project Images.
If you are viewing this project on a desktop computer or a laptop, I encourage you to read my blog explanation of How to Best View My Online Blog Project Images. In brief, click on the images once, then once again; this will enlarge the image and present it in a dark tonal environment at its maximum viewing quality in terms of image sharpness, luminance, tonal gradations, etc.
Selected 12x12" inkjet printed
Photographs on the theme:
Makom
"the Place"
Image #1 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Green river & tree shadows
Image #2 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Christmas Candle and house plant
Image #3 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT
from the project "In the Woods"
Image #4 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Side of house after an early evening rain storm
Image #5 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Spider plant in clear glass bowl
This photograph is inseparably and at once a "Thing-Centered" image and a Place (Makom) image.
Image #6 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Bed post, lace curtain, opened window
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Image #7 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Outcropping of "steps" by Broad Brook Road
Image #8 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Symmetrical Photograph
Angelic Presence, Vermont Woods above Broad Brook
(This image must be viewed enlarged)
(Click here to see the three Broad Brook project links and other Water themed projects.)
Image #9 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet Symmetrical Photograph "Framed Photo and house plants"
Visit my project: Symmetrical Photographs : Images, Projects, Tests
Image #10 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Light dots on a wall with a whisper of light
From a project entitled "Walkabout Part II"
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Image #10 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Symmetrical Photograph "Tree Limb / Angel"
Note: I have made several projects which include "Angel" photographs"
To learn more visit: Collected Angel Photographs, Projects & Texts
Image #11 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT "Seeing With the Eye of the Heart"
Often, when I make a Thing photograph, I can feel the consciousness in the thing,
and I experience the thing "looking back" at me as in this image
Image #12 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Mexican Restaurant table top still life
This image is from my Morandi inspired three-part Walkabout project.
Image #13 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet Symmetrical Photograph Early morning fog over a pond
This image is from my project Creation-Dissolution. In a way, the process of transforming the image
using the Four-fold construction process is a good example of how Makom can manifest for me
photographically after the camera work. I could not have imagined what I photographed
could yield the Imaginal pictorial space that is before us now. I consider this image
another gift--given freely, spontaneously--from the grace of my Creative Process.
Image #14 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT "Garage Window Curtain with House image"
Image #15 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT (Zen Practice, Silver World project)
This image was inspired by zen ink brush painters
Image #16 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet PROJECT "TV screen reflection" (Also a zen inspired image)
Image #17 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Corner of a basement art studio
Despite its minimal geometrical picture construction, the light in this image
provides the space with a palpable presence
Image #18 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet PROJECT (View from outside our picture window after a storm)
Image #19 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT "Still life: plastic book holder, light, shadows
Image #20 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Reflection of an illuminated window curtain
Windows are a recurring subject in my Creative Process. Photographs were sometimes
Image #21 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet PROJECT Orange Storm Cloud over North Meadow & Pond
See my 12x12 inkjet print Meadow Project and the original blog version of the project:
The Meadow 2008 ~ ongoing. I fell in love with the Meadow when we were looking
for places to move (from Milwaukee) in 2008 at first sight. In fact I saw the
project in my imagination in a way difficult to explain. And now, as I
write this in June, 2024, the project continues after nearly 16 years
and its presence is seen and felt and often mentioned in many
other photographs you will see here and in other projects.
Image #22 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet PROJECT Light reflection on wall calendar
The space between things can generate the experience of Place, Makom. The
space between the calendar, the corner line, the lamp shade plus the
presence of light create a strong sense of Place for me here.
Image #23 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet PROJECT Symmetrical Photo
(Illuminated driveway puddle, jewel-like shape of reflected blue sky, & shadows)
Image #24 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet PROJECT Symmetrical Photo
(Late Evening Blue garden tarp, puddles & stones)
Image #25 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Symmetrical Photo (Inside a Stone)
See more of my Rock Flowers in the Epilogue, part VII of the Angels project
Image #26 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Symmetrical Photo (Inside a woods)
Visit my In the Woods Project
of the Meadow with early morning fog & a bird ascending
Image #28 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Early morning view of the Hudson River Valley
Image #29 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Early morning view of the Hudson River Valley
Image #30 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Heart shape in a wet lands area
See my project The Hudson River Valley
Image #31 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Stormy-Golden sunset, South Meadow & Pond
Image #32 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet PROJECT "Waking Up This Morning" Golden Light, Red Cup
Image #33 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet PROJECT Broad Brook Stones
Symmetrical Photograph with two blue "heart" stones
Image #34 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet PROJECT Puddle with reflections and fallen leaves
Image #35 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Tire Swing
Again, I enjoy the conjunction of Place and Thing in this image. Often the
"character" of a thing we see is determined by the Place, in which it is situated.
This image reminds me of the tire swing I made for our first child, Shaun in Georgia
where I landed my first teaching job at Georgia State University, Atlanta
Image #36 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Laundry Room light & cloths hangers
Image #37 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Rain on our back deck sliding door & screen
Image #38 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Symmetrical Photograph
(Reflections in our back deck sliding glass door)
Sometimes the symmetrical photographs generate a space that is inexplicable,
simultaneously providing clues of familiar spaces in the world I inhabit
and totally surreal, surprising, unknown spaces-places as well. (I
just remembered I wrote something similar for image #13.)
Image #39 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT North Meadow, early morning fog,
with red and blue lights visible through the window of a Chatham Lane house.
Image #40 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT
A plant looking out a window steamed up from an early morning fog over the meadow.
Image #41 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Our Steamy Picture Window, with
tomatoes ripening on its sill as the sun rises over the fog covered North Meadow
The mood of the moment & the situation is thick with palpable presence.
Image #42 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Angelic Presence in the sky over the Meadow
I love this image, it's mysterious presence. I sometimes refer to that mystery
as "Angelic Presence". I don't try to make photographs like this;
they come spontaneously, as gifts, gifts of grace.
Image #43 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Early morning light after a Spring storm
The meadow behind our house is an amazing thing to contemplate. Its presence is so
constantly palpably alive & changing, and the light and weather conditions of course
determine how the space looks, but also how the space, as Place, feels.
Image #44 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet PROJECT Basement still life with spools of colored thread
So many of my "still lifes" are found, as opposed to constructed. They often emerge from
within a space or place that gives the image its living presence. Certainly the low level
light coming from the basement windows plays an important role in that regard. The
subject matter here was stored in a basement closet, awaiting future sewing needs.
Image #45 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet PROJECT Old Purse in a bedroom closet, on a high shelf.
The purse belonged to my wife's mother, as did the sewing items in the picture above. Old
Things, it seems, carry memories & feelings associated with the people who have used them.
Image #45 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Moonlit photograph : "The ghost in the corner"
(Read about my experience taking this picture in my project Nocturne)
Image #46 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT "River Sprite" (near the river's small dam)
The photograph is from an early color print project that I identified as one of my Milwaukee
Makom projects. In 2011 I created a blog version of the 1989 project. Visit River Songs
Image #47 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Workout room, early morning
This is for me a very mysterious object in a very mysterious place. There is a slight
tonal difference between the border (matte) tone and the black inside the image
which I like for the way that the border adds another level of complexity in
relation to the idea of Place.
Image #48 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet PROJECT (Nocturne) Bathroom light with a glass of water
This photograph and the one above of it are from the same project, 2023 Return to Memphis
The first Memphis project, together with this one constitute a kind of poetic document of
a Place: the house that my friend Larry lives in. Both projects are Makom projects.
Image #49 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet PROJECT Metal Serving tray with reflections
This too is a nocturne image (made at night) from my Morandi inspired Still Life project.
The glowing lamp and the tea kettle reflections create a miniature still life within the tray's
circle and contribute to the sense of Place in which the tray is situated.
Image #50 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet PROJECT Pandemic Still life
(dried plant in vase, light on curtain, green bushes in the background)
I sometimes enjoy identify the elements in a photograph in words. Of course
the photograph is about more that what can be said in words, and that too is, in a
strange way, adds to the pleasure of writing the words. They help point to that which is
not visible, that Presence which exists in everything and yet has no name or objective form.
Image #51 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet PROJECT
Basement Light, furnace room A Pandemic inspired photograph.
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Image #52 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT (Inversed image) Telephone pole in a field
An inversed image is an image in which the black and white tonalities have been reversed,
turned inside-out, in a way. What is luminous in this image was dark in its ordinary
photographic form; what is dark here was luminous in its positive version. This
is a strong and haunting image for me; it invokes personal emotions that take
me back to my high school days, when all I wanted was "to leave this
place" and study photography in Rochester, NY. Back then I no
sense of the sacredness of that place or any other place..
This image looks like it was taken at night. The game is long over; the players have gone home.
The chalk line on the earth has been disturbed by human activity which has left visible traces,
the presence of those now absent. In the yoga that I practice, the life we experience is
understood as merely a play of the divine shakti, the divine Presence or Self.
This image is a visualization of an I'ching hexagram. I took the picture in the state
of Washington because it was simply a beautiful, archetypal, Iconic event to
be standing in front of, simply witnessing the magical grandeur.
The lake is but a subtle tone change at the bottom of the
square, the foot of the mountain. It's depth: unknown.
Image #55 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Early morning dew on the garden circles
Image #56 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Circular puddle in the falling snow
Image #57 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Symmetrical photograph Broad Brook, pool
Image #58 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Symmetrical photograph "Falling Water"
Visit my 12x12" PROJECT Falling Water (photographs made at Niagara Falls State Park)
Image #59 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Symmetrical photograph
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Image #60 MAKOM 12x12" Inkjet print PROJECT Symmetrical photograph
These images and most other symmetrical photographs I have published on my
blog must be seen magnified so that an intimate, close-up view of the subtle
details in the images can be obtained and fully appreciated.
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This project was first announced on
my bog's Welcome Page on
June 8, 2024
Related Blog Project Links
How to Best View My Online Blog Images with your desktop or laptop computer.
Makom "the Place" my earlier blog project on the theme and how it relates to my earlier Milwaukee photography projects
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.