Makom
Milwaukee "Place"
Photography Projects
Note: this project page is an addition to my Welcome Page section
"Collections of Theme-Related Pictures and Projects."
November 15, 2019 / Revised December 11, 2019
Photography Projects
Note: this project page is an addition to my Welcome Page section
"Collections of Theme-Related Pictures and Projects."
November 15, 2019 / Revised December 11, 2019
Introduction
I have lived in many "places" throughout my life: Piqua, Ohio; Portland, Indiana; Rochester, New York; Chicago, Illinois; New York City, New York; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Atlanta, Georgia; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and currently I live in Canandaigua, New York. Each of these place names--of human settlements--represents an essential aspect of my unfolding life as a Creative Process; each place has had its own unique character, its own historical, sociological, psychological and physiological identities; and each has impacted my life in important, probably necessary ways.
I lived and taught and helped my wife raise our two children in Milwaukee, Wisconsin over a period of 33 years--from 1975 to 2008, when I retired from teaching and moved to Canandaigua, NY. I lived in Milwaukee longer than in any other place I have ever lived. In the first fifteen of those 33 years I created seven projects that are (in varying ways) about Milwaukee as a "Place." In 1999-2001 I added an additional project. Here is the list of nine projects:
The Steve Lacy Series, 1977-78 is included in my list of Milwaukee "Place" projects only because the subject matter I photographed (East Side street scenes, neighborhood front yards, back yards, alleys, etc.) related to Milwaukee as a Place. However "Place" was not on my mind when I was working on that particular project; the music of Steve Lacy had inspired the photographs. And I've included the later project, The Garage Series, 1999-2001 as part of my Milwaukee "Place" projects because the images function for me as "character portraits" of Milwaukee as a place and the people who live in it. (Once again, the Garage project was inspired by the music of American composer Morton Feldman.)
It may be most accurate to say that none of the projects on my Milwaukee "Place" list are about "Place" in the way that we usually think of the word, as associated with human settlements of a particular social character. If you read the introductory statements for each of the projects, you will see I had other ideas in mind. Alfred Stieglitz's idea of the Equivalent had generally dominated my photography throughout my undergraduate years of photographic study (1964-68).
When I was a graduate student at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque (1969-72) I became very involved with the ideas of depth psychologist Carl G. Jung. His research into the Creative Process as it related to Medieval Alchemy, and his ideas about the Self, the Symbol and Synchronicity expanded my understanding of Stieglitz's idea of the Equivalent. I devoted my MFA written thesis to Jung's ideas. (See: The Symbolic Photograph : A Means to Self-Knowledge.)
Around 1980 I read a book about the great abstract painter Barnett Newman, and in the chapter entitled Onement I discovered an entirely new concept of "place" that became a major turning point in my Creative Process. Newman did a series of "Onement" paintings. At the end of this blog page I have reproduced the first painiting.
Makom
In the book by Thomas Hess, entitled Barnett Newman (1971), the author introduces the Jewish concept Makom in an attempt to explain Barnett Newman's experience in 1949 while visiting several Native American Indian Mounds in Ohio. Newman, the great New York abstract painter, tried to write about his experience in an unpublished 1949 monologue entitled "Prologue for a New Esthetic." Here is a brief except:
"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:
" . . . 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 then offers an interpretation of Newman's experience in Ohio based on another later statement Newman had written, in 1963, regarding a model he had created for a synagogue. In the statement Newman used the words Makom and mound. At first Hess refers to the word Makom only parenthetically, then later, he goes on to define it:
Newman evidently was alluding to the Jewish concept of Makom, of "place" or "location" or "site" (Newman refers directly to [Makom] in a 1963 statement about his model for a synagogue, in which the temple itself is designated as Makom, and he calls the "place" where members of the congregation stand to read from the Torah a "mound").
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)
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This brief account of Newman's encounter with his own sacred Presence amongst the Ohio Native Indian Mounds struck me in a very personal, revelatory, transformative way. It seemed as if I was recognizing some essential truth that had already existed within me. And this is precisely what Carl Jung's idea of synchronicity is about, and what Stieglitz's idea of equivalence was about. Indeed my discovery of concept Makom awakened in me memories of my early childhood days in a small town in Ohio named Piqua, which is a Shawnee place name taken from a local Shawnee clan's creation story that tells of "a man who rose from the ashes." I remember seeing elementary school plays that reenacted this mystery story. And though the Indian mounds in Miamisburg are only an hour's drive away from Piqua, and though I have no memory of ever visiting those mounds, I did have--in my own back yard-- my very own "sacred mound site."
Two snapshots (made by my mom?) of the"mound" next to her flower bed; and me and "my" block at the corner of our neighbor's garage
After reading about Makom, and Newman's experience at the Indian mounds, I believe practically every photograph I have ever made since then has been influenced by the idea, and, indeed, by my experience of Makom: "the 'Place' where God is present." My desire to make a photograph would be often sparked by the subtle awareness of a divine presence in the place or thing or event I was perceiving. After the picture was printed, and after I had carefully contemplated the image, if I did not experience that presence in the photograph, I would usually discard the photograph.
from The Lake Series 1981-82 (click on the image to enlarge)
In the spring of 1975, three years before I read the Barnett Newman book, I was invited to come to Milwaukee for an interview regarding a teaching position in photography. One of the Art faculty was driving me around the area near the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, showing me the sites. We stopped and got out of the car and walked toward the edge of a very high bluff that overlooked Lake Michigan. When I stood before that vast, awesome space . . . of water, light and sky . . . I experienced my heart leaping out--into that space which seemed so palpably filled with a luminous sacred presence. My entire being became enlivened by the experience; and in that moment I secretly promised myself that if I was offered the teaching position in Milwaukee I would photograph the Lake until I was able to created a body of work that functioned as a visual equivalent for that deeply heartfelt experience. (See my project The Lake Series 1981-82.)
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In 1987 my wife Gloria and I met for the first time Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, a saint from India in a two day yoga meditation program. Here teacher, Swami Muktananda, had established an ashram in New York State, and at the time of his death (1982) he passed the power of the Siddha Lineage on to his disciple, Gurumayi. Since then she has served as the living head of the Siddha Yoga Path.
In that program with Gurumayi I had an intense experience of her grace, her transcendent state of being. My experience was located in two "places" simultaneously: I felt the divine presence within my own self--in my Heart--and within Gurumayi. (For a full detailed account of this experience, visit my project: Photography and Yoga)
After that experience with Gurumayi, Gloria and I committed ourselves to the practices of Siddha Yoga Meditation and we have continued the practices to this day. It has occurred to me recently that every meaningful event that has occurred within my Creative Process in Photography--beginning with my Epiphany as a ten year old boy; my attraction to Stieglitz's idea of the Equivalent; my fascination with Jung's ideas of the Self, the Symbol, the concept of Synchronicity and then my discovery of the concept of Makom--all this was preparing me for Gurumayi and Siddha Yoga.
Their has been a gradual merging over the years of my practice of photographic picture-making with my practices of Siddha Yoga Meditation. The experience of the divine presence has extended into all aspects of my of my everyday life now; and my Creative Process as a person and as a photographer have become more and more clearly focused on the Oneness of Being.
The Early Milwaukee projects
My first project completed in Milwaukee was not a "Place" project. The Persephone Series, 1975-76 was about a mythic "Place," the darkly lit and psychologically troubled interior "underworld" of Hades--the "land of the dead." This project is also the last in a series of Three Multiple-Exposure Related Projects.
The second project I completed in Milwaukee, The Steve Lacy Series, 1977-78, which followed directly after the Persephone Series, was only indirectly about Milwaukee. The work I did for the Steve Lacy Series got me out of Hades and into the crystalline light of Milwaukee's East Side, which is near the University and only six or so blocks from Lake Michigan. I was attracted to front and back yards and alleys. The work however was for me never about "place." Rather the work had intuitively become a visual response to to music I had been listening to, the music of Steve Lacy.
(L) My dad and me--or perhaps my sister Janice--in front of hanging laundry (R) our backyard with hanging laundry.
The snapshots--often overexposed, nearly all white, almost blindingly brilliant, transformative images of my childhood places--inspired the idea of making negative print images--images which would become a metaphor (for me) of the way personal memories become transformed over time with "interior" or "psychic" luminosity. In my negative print imagery there is an emphasis on the inversion of shadow tonalities. That is to say, the shadow tones in the original photographic image become turned inside-out such that they become the "source" of light which illuminates the negative print as if from within.
from the Memories of Childhood (Negative Print) Series 1978-80
The inner luminosity in the Memories of Childhood photographs became a metaphor for the "transcendental" sense of Makom: "the 'Place' where God is present." The imagery is quite abstract, and based mostly in the my experience of place as related to my childhood memories of "place." The project is an important body of work for me, that begins my photographic relationship to the Makom concept, but the images rarely if at all refers to Milwaukee as a place in the physical world.
Similarly, the 1980-81 Intimate Landscape photographs, made in Milwaukee's Industrial Valley, are about that "place" in some obvious ways, and certainly in the Makom sense of the work, there are some powerful images, but the work is not about Milwaukee per se.
Similarly, the 1980-81 Intimate Landscape photographs, made in Milwaukee's Industrial Valley, are about that "place" in some obvious ways, and certainly in the Makom sense of the work, there are some powerful images, but the work is not about Milwaukee per se.
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It is in the last five of my Milwaukee projects that "Place" is addressed simultaneously by the concept of Makom and by Milwaukee as a "Place" with its own unique character. The Lake Series, the Images of Eden [Milwaukee County Park Photographs] project, the City Places project, the Milwaukee River project, and finally the Garage project, are direct visual responses to Milwaukee "Places," even if their primary focus (for me) as a picture-maker was about Makom in the sense of: "The Place spoke to me . . . "
The Early Milwaukee
Photography Projects
Intimate Landscape Series : Industrial Valley 1980-81
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The Makom Milwaukee Projects
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The Makom Milwaukee Projects
Extending the idea of Makom to "Things"
Around 1983-84 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 the idea is that the things of the world are alive with the same consciousness, and filled with same divine presence as human beings. The Thing-Centered Photography Projects simply extend the idea of Makom from "space" and "place" to "things."
The idea began to unfold in the Family Life, 1985-88 project, and then it just flourished in the Studies projects, which includes The Garage Series 1999-2001, part of my collection of Milwaukee "Place" projects.
Makom, Time & Synchronicity
In Siddha Yoga the presence of God is understood to be all pervasive. The ancient text known as the Shiva Sutras state unequivocally: "there is nothing that is not Shiva" [God, the divine Self of all]. Everything in the universe, including Time is a created form of the divine Presence.
I have already mentioned above synchronicity which is an important aspect of my Creative Process that relates directly to Time. Carl Jung's theory addresses the acausal "falling together" in time (or the acausal intersection of time-space events) which one perceives to be not only personally meaningful but, more importantly, profoundly revelatory. Synchronicity is essentially an experience in which the perceiver and the perceived become One in the act of perception; in other words, an experience of The Oneness of Being.
Just as a symbol in the Junigan sense is an image that conjoins corresponding inner and outer world counterparts into a single Imaginal Unitary Reality, so is synchronicity a perceptual revelation of the Oneness of Being. Barnett Newman's experience of standing before the sacred Indian Mounds and feeling his own sacred Presence (Here, I am . . .) is a perfect example of the experience of synchronicity, an experience in which Newman perceived the sacredness of a Place in the physical world simultaneously within his own Self.
My experience of the vastness of space within my own heart as I stood on the bluff overlooking Lake Michigan is another example of synchronicity. (Visit my blog essay: Seeing the Grand Canyon.)
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Epilogue
In the Siddha Yoga teachings, there is a word darshan that means divine vision. The word could appropriately be applied to Barnett Newman's experience at the Indian Mounds of Ohio, my experience standing before the vastness of space of Lake Michigan or the Grand Canyon, and my experience of Gurumayi's spiritual presence, her grace, when I first encountered her in a meditation program in 1987.
The word darshan can refer literally to seeing a saint or a deity, a sacred Icon, a Symbolic Photograph; it can also refer to an inner experience of one's own divinity, the Self of All, the Oneness of Being. Darshan is an experience of recognition of the divine Reality that exists beneath, behind, above, below, within and surrounding any and all of the things of outer world.
As an homage to Barnett Newman, I offer this mound of words:
Here, I am
Here, in this Place
imbued with a sacred Presence
that is radiantly alive within me, as me
Barnett Newman, Onement 1 1948
oil on canvas and oil on masking tape on canvas
27" x 16" (click on image to enlarge)
This project was announced on my blog's
Welcome Page on November 15, 2019
and revised many times thereafter.
Final Edit: December 11, 2019.
Related Projects:
Yoga and Photography
The Shiva Sutra Rock Photographs
Visit the Welcome Page to my 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.
