12x12" Quirky Photos

 Quirky Photos 

A 12x12" Inkjet Print PROJECT

A collection of images presented in homage to Thelonious Monk

   

Introduction

I love the music of Thelonious Monk, especially his solo piano performances.  His  (jazz) music is often humorous, with constantly surprising (unexpected) twists and turns; he is always breaking rules . . .  like hitting all the wrong notes . . . and yet it all comes out sounding perfect in ways that both engages and boggles the mind.  He always plays with great intensity, but also with a contagious interior sense of joy.

There are pictures I have made that have unexpectedly turned out similar to the way I just described Monk's music.  I can't say "I" made them;  they just came spontaneously, gifts from my Creative Process.  Their meanings are for me something like "News of the Universe" and as such are pretty difficult to decipher, or, just plain inexplicable since I had no conscious or hidden intention in the making of these images--images which speak their own quirky language.   Just the simple joy of making the photographs is enough to explain their existence, but surely not their meaning.  

When you hear Monk playing solo, it's clear he is following his inner muse--not his intellect--though legend has it that he works very hard at preparing his music (both the performances and his compositions) in a way that allows him to unveil those remarkable musical moments of his, moments which have over and over again lit a fire of inspiration inside me.  In the yoga I practice, one of the basic teachings is something like: "self-effort and grace are the two wings of a bird" . . . a bird that flys to unknown heights . . . 

In 2011 I created a blog project entitled Studies 1994-2000 which consisted of digitally scanned miniature, snapshot size (3 1/2" square) silver gelatin prints, square images I had discovered hidden away within a huge Archive of old negatives I accumulated over many years dating back into the mid 1960's.  There were three formats of negatives I had made photographs in:  35mm, 2 1/4" square, and 4x5".  I loved making those little square images which I found inside the three image formats.  (The long 35mm format always seemed to have unnecessary peripheral information on each side of the central part of the image.)  The  phenomena of re-visioning (re-vising) images and repeating an image in its varied transformed states--turning old images into new square versions--is something I have been doing for a long time and is at the very heart of the early Studies project and my new 2023-2024  12x12" Inkjet Print Books  &  PROJECTS.

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In my Introduction to the first published blog Studies project I explained how my creative process were inspired by many kinds of brief piano compositions, (recordings) I loved listening to.  After I published the blog project, I realized that I had never mentioned the music of Thelonious Monk!  I had mentioned the contemporary and classical piano compositions in the introduction but skipped over the jazz I was listening to during the six-plus years I had been working on the Studies project.   Most importantly, and most often, it was Monk's piano solo recordings I would turn to when I needed a refreshing, energizing boost of inspiration.  His music, when I listen with full attention, is alway engaging, fascinating, and helps me enjoy the present moment of the musical experience.  I wanted to make little square photographs that functioned for me like that! 

So, after I realized I had not mentioned Monk in the first Studies blog project, I created a separate, second collection of digitized images from the huge number of miniature silver gelatin  Studies prints I had made between 1994 & 2000.  I was careful to choose images which in their small, cryptic, square format . . . in some way or another functioned for me as visual equivalents of Monk's music, and in particular, those images which were imbued with a "quirky" nature.  That second published Studies blog project is entitled  Studies II : Monk's Quirky Music 1994-2000.

(Note: Examples of the early miniature silver gelatin prints I had made for the Studies I and Studies II 1994-2000 blog projects can be seen below in their new 12x12" format:  see below Images #3, 4, 11, 23, 29, 37, 51 & 52) 

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For this 12x12" PROJECT, the images I am presenting were chosen from a collection of around 800 12x12" inkjet prints I have made over the past 15 months or so, images I considered my favorites from among all the blog project images I had published between 2011 and 2023.  Each image qualifies (for me) as a Monk-related or Monk-inspired "quirky" image.  Several of the images will be found in many of the other 12x12" PROJECTS, and I like that very much, because good photographs cannot be restricted in meaning.  Indeed, that's the inherent nature of images which are functioning as True, living Symbols.  

I have written brief commentaries under many of the images, to explain how the images came about, and perhaps to a lesser extent, hint at how they are a homage to Monk and his Music.  In any case I hope you find the commentaries interesting.  Welcome to this quirky PROJECT.   

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A note about: "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.  You can then use your zoom-in & zoom-out options to adjust the image size, and you can darken or lighten the screen brightness with keyboard controls (or file menu options) to suite your particular viewing preferences in relation to your computer.

   

Quirky Photos

A collection of 12x12 inkjet print images in 

homage to Thelonious Monk and his Quirky Music  

Image #1  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT  A dog asking "What am I looking at?"  

See my blog project Silent Dialogues

  

Many of the Quirky photographs are in a sense "about" the silent dialogue that 

is being presented.  Everything is in dialogue with whatever is next to it,

or who ever is looking at it.  ~  Contemplating photographs is all

about having a silent conversation with one's Self in relation

to an image, and, importantly, listening to what the image

wants to say to you, the viewer, the contemplator.  Listening to Monk

has helped me to learn how to listen to images which function for me as Symbols.

Image #2  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT  Garage: light streaks & my garden hat's shadow     

Many of my quirky images have to do with perception.  For example, in this image, my garden

hat's shadow is a gray tone that takes on (it seems to me) a near-material substance, as if

another hat is somehow emerging out of the wall.  (I have a hat that looks and feels

velvety to the touch in the way the gray part of the hat shadow looks & feels.)

 

In the next two photographs, from my 12x12" PROJECT   

The Early Studies Photographs I present two examples of 

these kinds of perceptual games.  (Note: the original 

silver-gelatin Studies prints were 3.5" square in size)  

Image #3  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT    Upside-down stairs

(From the early 1994-2000 Studies Project)

   

Image #4  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT    White wall, truck Shadow, metal & rubber wheels 

(From the early 1994-2000 Studies Project)

Image #5  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT  Four plastic hangers dissolving into the background

 

Image #6  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT   White shape suspended in a strange basement light

The white shape is the way a note or chord Monk has created looks and sounds like  

when in becomes suspends in a musical space during its performance.

   

 Image #7  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT   Mr. Blue's shadow on the illuminated  floor

I love the electrical interactive "dance" between the light streaking on the 

floor and Mr. Blue's (multiple) magnified shadows

Image #8  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT    "Seeing With the Eye of the Heart"

This is an example of what I would call a mysterious quirky photo.  I'm fascinated by how this

"Thing-Centered" photograph is also interactively in dialogue with the red branch.

Part of the mystery of this image for me has to do with the feeling that the thing

(the flesh colored stone) looks and feels like an eye that is looking back at me.

This is something I have experienced often with my Thing photographs for

the idea evolved from the feeling I have that Things (inanimate objects)

share the same consciousness as my own.  This has to do with the

yogic teaching that everything is pervaded by the same one Self, 

or "Universal Supreme Consciousness," and that duality is

an illusion, maya; the Truth is the Oneness of Being. 

As I've been continue to work on my many different 12x12" Inkjet Print PROJECTS

I've discovered that an individual images can be placed into many different  

 thematic contexts.

Image #9  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT   Symmetrical Photograph: 

"The Face (or Ritual Mask) of Maya, Goddess of Illusion"

Visit my blog project Maya's Veils of Illusion

     

Image #10  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT   Basement window light reflection on a wall calendar 

I did not really photograph anything in particular here, except some inexplicable order of 

fragments of things and spaces that existed in relation to each other: the calendar,

the lamp shade, the corner of the room, the light bouncing around and on and off 

surfaces.  There is nothing here that is at center of my attention, though it was 

the light reflection on the calendar that caught my eye and ignited the  

impulse to make a photograph. 

Image #11  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT          Lake Photograph, 1982 

When I was working on my Lake Series photographs during the winter of 1981-2 Milwaukee was blessed 

with a few days of 30 below-zero weather.  Amazing things were happen on the Lake front so I had

 to go out and try to make some photographs.  I was using my Hasselblad camera for the project 

which I had gotten used a few years earlier.   It came with an old 120 film back that I had never

used before, and I took it with me that day--loaded with film--in case I need to reload my 

camera. What you are seeing here is a part of the film that was in the old film back.  It  

leaked light onto the film which created this odd image which includes the sun over 

a dark image of the lake with mist rising up into the air from the water.  A gift 

from my Creative Process and a dysfunctional old piece of used equipment.

(From the early 1994-2000 Studies Project)

   

Image #12  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT    Masked Ghost Woman surrounded by other ghosts    

I read all the Seth Material books by Jane Roberts in the early1970's.  I still think back on them  

with a fond regard.  They inspired me to make this series of multiple-exposure photographs 

in 1975 in downtown Atlanta, where I taught at Georgia State University.   ~  I had no  

idea how the (up to five) exposures on a single 2 1/4" square frame of would fall

fall together.    ~    Later, in 2017 I made digital copies of the prints I had

made and created the blog project:  The Atlanta City Series.

Image #13  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT    

"Blue Eyed Monster" (Air vents, looking up from an Underground City in Turkey)

  

 

Image #14  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT   Blue Angel spinning white light & lines

 Image #15  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT

Our Grandchildren's Golden hand prints & drawings on our picture window

  

We have a picture window that looks out over a meadow and two ponds just beyond our back

yard.  Each fall at a certain point in time, the light of the setting sun comes through the 

window at just the perfect angle to illuminate the otherwise invisible (cave-like)

 drawings our grand children place on the window at Christmas-time.

I have created a three-part project regarding "the window" as a recurring subject and 

conceptual theme in my photography.  Visit this blog page:  Window Pictures 

Image #16  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT  Angelic apparition, as perceived in our picture window 

Our picture window has been the site of many many photographs I have made since Gloria

and I moved to Canandaigua, NY in 2008.  I can't really explain this image.  I have a 

blurry remembrance of seeing a surprising figure appear, perhaps a reflection of 

something, perhaps in the window.  I consider it an "Angel photograph."  

I became fascinated by Angels after falling in love with Islamic Sacred Art while

visiting Turkey in 2011. The writings about angles by Henry Corbin and

Tom Cheetham were an important influence on my work after I 

completed my multi-chaptered project inspired by my

experiences in Turkey.  Visit the project 

"An Imaginary Book" and see my Angel Projects.

Image #17  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT

A limbless tree in a Milwaukee park on a very foggy day following a snow storm

Visit my Images of Eden project

    

     Image #18  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT     Moonlit photograph : "The ghost in the corner"  

(Read about my experience taking this picture in my project Nocturne)

Image #19  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT

(A negative-positive image, with a swan & a diamond of light suspended above it) 

Image #20  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT   

Four shadowy figures walking in a circle, in Italy under a flash of light

Image #21  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT     Motel window view

   This is one of my favorite quirky pictures.  

Image #22  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT

Shepherds on the side of a hill in Turkey.  (The blue is a shadow.)

Image #23  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT     Miniature Pony reflected in a puddle

from my project The 12x12" Early Studies Photographs

Image #24  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT   Chatham Lane houses in early morning sunlit fog 

From my project Creation-Dissolution of a World 

Image #25  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT    "A finger pointing"  (Frozen Meadow Pond)

Image #26  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT  

 "Shadow figures under a blossoming cherry tree, Washington DC"

Image #27  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT   from the "Dream Portrait" project; photo collage

This Rousseau painting fascinated our two year old son Shaun as he lay on his changing table

 by the curtained window.   I collaged together several strips of photographic images

 (from other 10x10" silver gelatin prints) to construct this collaged image.

(Note: After I initiated my blog in late 2010 and made several new blog photography projects

I went back to some of my early silver gelatin print projects and--where possible--made

digital copies of the prints for blog publication purposes so that I could have a more

expanded online Archive of my Creative Process in photography which 

included silver print projects.)   

Image #28  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT        Turtle with  bubbles in a backyard pond

Image #29  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT   A Bather looking at me from within an ocean of light

(From the early 1994-2000 Studies Project)

Image #30  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT    Hand Truck in parking lot in turkey

I took this picture while traveling in Turkey.   ~   It was a rainy day and I was in a tour bus

parked in a lot for tourist buses at some very important historic Tour Stop.  The windows

were quite dirty; I don't know where the blue blob came from, and I don't know

 why the hand truck was in the middle of the parking lot.  I don't know why

I am writing all this . . . 

Image #31  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT   "The gray cloud."  

This image is from my silver gelatin print project of 1978-80 the The Negative print series.  

The title I used with this image came from a brief, quiet piano composition by 

Franz Liszt,  Nuages Gris  (Gray Clouds)

Image #32  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT   Symmetrical Photograph (Tree leaves in a blue sky)

I seldom if ever title the symmetrical images, for they almost always are about something

not sayable, that is to say, they are almost always about transformation and the Sacred.

This particular image reminds me of a bird in flight, not a soaring kind of flight 

but the sort of flying I associate with a helicopter; a vertical rising up.

This image is for me strangely humorous; awkwardly and  

 mysteriously and fascinatingly  Iconic in nature.

Image #33  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT   Symmetrical Photograph  

A 12x12" inkjet print version of a symmetrical snow drift image from

 the blog project Snow Photographs from The Silver World)

Image #34  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT   Bathroom window, Minneapolis Airport, on to Alaska 

A piece of frosted plexiglass was placed over the bottom part of the window to provide some

privacy for those using the bathroom, I guess.  For our 50th wedding anniversary

Gloria and I took a trip to Alaska.  The week long tour was cut very short after 

Gloria fell and badly smashed her shoulder. Visit my ALASKA blog project:

Image #35  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT          Snapshot (of a Child's Puddle Fantasy)

This is River, our Grandson, splashing in a meadow path puddle with his "frog" boots.

His splashing stirred up the mud under the puddle and created a "fantasy image"

of what appears (to me) to be some kind of smiling animal playmate.

Image #36  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT      Foot Print in blue snow

I took this photo late at night after arriving home from a trip out of town.  Gloria had been

getting calls from the local police about 911calls they were getting from Gloria's mobil

phone with no explanations why.  Apparently the police had to check out our house.   

When we pulled into our driveway, we saw footprints in the snow and all around  

 the house including on our back deck.  We got freaked out by the footprints.

I took some "documentary photographs" as evidence of a prowler and

 possible break-in before we called the police and learned about all

 the "butt calls" they received from Gloria's phone. We all had a 

good laugh about it, but this picture always haunted me. The

blue snow had something to with the light from our front

porch, and the way my digital camera had been set 

for a different kind of light source.  

Image #37  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT   (Faint photograph) Four men in suites

I was asked to photograph the wedding reception of a friend who had gotten

married to a woman from a wealthy family. The reception was held at the

family's house, mostly in the back yard which looked out over Lake Erie.

My friend, a poet, wrote about the sound of the waves laughing at the 

 entire phenomenon.  He and his wife divorced a few years later.  In  

this version of the photograph of the four best men, I threw 

the image out of focus and printed it very light (faint, like 

a fading photograph or a fading memory) just dark

   enough to hear the mysterious sound of the lake  

"laughing" in the background.

(From the early 1994-2000 Studies Project)

 

Image #38  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT    "Untitled" (Orange box)

from part viii,  Zen Practice, Silver World project  

Image #39  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT   :    Vatican Statue of a young boy

Image #40  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT     Still life  

visit my Morandi inspired project "Still Life" / Brushstrokes

Image #41  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT   "The white garden hat" (worn by a garden child)

Image #42  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT  Garden fountain, circular waves, coins, bubbles, hand

Image #43  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT   (Sawed tree trunk between trees)

Image #44  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT  A sliding stone & its shadow

 Image #45  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT  Encased Pompeii Figure 

  

 Image #45-A  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT    Italy:  an inversed image of a Pompeii Head  

Image #46  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT      Man Walking Into the Sky

This image is from a project in homage to Italian sculptor and visionary

Alberto Giacometti  (click here to see the project)

Image #47  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT   (out of focus portrait) "Animal Face"

Image #48  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT    Grasshopper (a Faint photograph)

Image #49  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT     A Broad Brook Stone & a moist red leaf

Image #50  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT    Blue & Gold Symmetrical Snow photograph

(Note: A friend saw an elephant in this photograph.  I see it too!)

Image #51  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT  Symmetrical Photograph  "Scary Angle"  

See my Angel project, Homage to Paul Klee    

Image #52  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT

A Straw Ball (that was thrown by some kids in a barn through a shaft of light)

See my Postlude & Thing Photographs  

Image #53  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT      (inversed) Fishing pole with five eyes

Image #54  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT   Old ladder, suspended by a thin line  

Image #55  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT  Make-Shift Studio Lamp

Image #56  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT   Photographic flood light aimed at ceiling   

Image #57  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT : Camera equipment table top

Image #58  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT  Charging cord

Image #59  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT   Chewing gum on a round dish 

  

Image #60  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT   :   Waving Goodbye (Faint photograph)

(From the early 1994-2000 Studies Project)

This Faint Photograph is for me a metaphor for The Departing Landscape.  Most  things,   

 including human beings & photographs--dissolve when they become over exposed to light.   

 (Note:  The inks and paper I use for my inkjet prints are--according 

to lab tests--good for at least 200 years.)     

Image #61  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT   Faint Photograph of a fading photograph 

(From the early 1994-2000 Studies Project)

  

Image #62  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT  Bus Window & blue dots above a sleeping passenger   

         

Image #63  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT  

Plastic flowers in a black square, on a white bowl? & on two horizon lines.)   

From my Still Life project in homage to Giorgio Morandi, who made many "Flower Paintings" 

and he often painted the same plastic flowers over and over again.   Many of his paintings,

regardless the subject matter, dealt in very sophisticated ways with spatial illusions.

Do you believe what you see?  

Do you see what you believe??

Image #64  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT   (glass covered table, lamp, glints of light) 

I placed this image in the last, Ninth Book of inkjet printed images, with   

 reservations about it's abstract nature.  Was it too cryptic to include in   

my 12x12" inkjet print collection?  Then I decided to include it here  

in my Quirky Photos PROJECT.  Then the image gave me the 

idea for what would become my next PROJECT, to be 

entitled Approaching Abstraction.  

The image is very attractive to me mostly because of the jewel-like structure

   of the reflected highlights seen against the dark field.   There's also  

something intriguing about the secretive look  & voyeuristic 

feeling in viewing this obscured constellation of glints of 

light from behind a wall with hair-like or finger-like 

plant material hanging down over the entire scene.

 

Image #65  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT  "TV screen reflection" 

This image, and the next two, were inspired by zen ink brush painters   

(Zen Practice, Silver World project)      

Image #66  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT    Infinite lampshade shadow         

Image #67  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT   "Pillow & vines"

Image #68  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT 

"Gettysburg; Windswept Blue Horse & Rider with a blood red sky

Windswept Memorials  

Image #69  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT  The United States (in big trouble) hanging by a string

Image #70  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT     Nocturnal View of a garden 

Image #71  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT    "Chair shadow"

viii,  Zen Practice, Silver World project   

   

Image #72  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT  :  A piece of Blue Granite  

Thing Photographs

     

Image #73  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT  (Inversed)  light and shadow on sand 

   

Image #74  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT    Veiled face

Image #75  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT  Corner of a room with leaf shadows

Image #77  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT   My birthday card from River


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Additional Quirky Images 

Image #78  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT  (Added Sept. 2024)

Smiling Garage (with a "hat" on its top)

Visit my Garage Project

Image #79  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT  (Added Sept. 2024)

Sunlight on a garden path 

 Image #80  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT  (Added Sept. 2024) 

A strange event sighted in the Vermont Woods near Broad Brook

Image #81  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT  (Added Sept. 2024)  

Still Life: Plastic cup, wood angular bowl, granite base

Image #82  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT  (Added Sept. 2024) 

Blue fish (mouth open) in Green water

Image #83  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT  (Added Sept. 2024) 

Vermont Still Life (reflections on a tv screen)

Image #84  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT  (Added Sept. 2024)  

A streak of sunlight on our kitchen ceiling

Image #85  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT  (Added Sept. 2024)  

Lamp light near the corner of a room

Image #86  12x12" Quirky Photos PROJECT  (Added Sept. 2024) 

Lamp Light on our vaulted ceiling (the image was made on a full moon night)     

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This project was first announced on 

my bog's Welcome Page on

June 11, 2024

Images were added September, 2024

Related Blog Project Links

How to Best View My Online Blog Images   with your desktop or laptop computer.

 Studies I  1994-2000   (the first early Studies blog project: miniature silver gelatin prints)

 

Studies II : Monk's Quirky Music 1994-2000    (The early blog project)

The 12x12" Studies Inkjet Print Books, Projects & other LARGER print projects

The 12x12" Early Studies Photographs

"Thing-Centered Photographs"   (Thematic blog project)

Window Pictures   (Thematic blog project)

The Complete Collections of Theme-Related Blog Projects

The Symmetrical Photographs

The True, Living Symbol & The Symbolic Photograph 

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.

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