Atlanta City Series
1975 / 2017
1975 / 2017
Image #1 Atlanta City Series 1975 (digital print 18x18" rendering of a silver gelatin print)
Image #2 Atlanta City Series 1975 (digital print 18x18" rendering of a silver gelatin print)
Image #3 Atlanta City Series 1975 (digital print 18x18" rendering of a silver gelatin print)
Image #4 Atlanta City Series 1975 (digital print 18x18" rendering of a silver gelatin print)
Image #5 Atlanta City Series 1975 (digital print 18x18" rendering of a silver gelatin print)
Image #6 Atlanta City Series 1975 (digital print 18x18" rendering of a silver gelatin print)
Image #7 Atlanta City Series 1975 (digital print 18x18" rendering of a silver gelatin print)
Image #8 Atlanta City Series 1975 (digital print 18x18" rendering of a silver gelatin print)
Image #9 Atlanta City Series 1975 (digital print 18x18" rendering of a silver gelatin print)
Image #10 Atlanta City Series 1975 (digital print 18x18" rendering of a silver gelatin print)
Introduction
This series of photographs was made in Atlanta, Georgia in 1975 under the influence of the project which preceded it, and three books "written" by an "energy personalty essence no longer focused in physical reality" named Seth. A woman named Jane Roberts, who lived in Elmira, NY served as Seth's medium.
The three Seth books available to me at the time, The Seth Material, Seth Speaks, and The Nature of Personal Reality, were not only incredibly interesting, but most importantly some of the ideas in the books were directly relevant to the photographs I had begun making in Atlanta. How I came to know about the Seth books is an interesting story in itself, and was, I saw later, an integral part of my unfolding creative process.
This blog page, entitled Atlanta City Series, 1975 should have been created back in 2010 when I first began constructing my TheDepartingLandscape.blogspot.com photography website. I don't know why it didn't happen then, but I now able to say why it finally got posted just now, in August, 2017.
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Shortly after I had begun making some of the photographs which you have just seen above, a friend from my college days in Rochester, NY (RIT 1965-7) showed up at my front door in Decatur, Georgia without any warning. I hadn't seen him since I left Rochester. He too was a photographer, so I showed him the earliest pictures for my new project which had no name at that time, but later was to be called the Atlanta City Series. He was interested in the images, in part because, he said they seemed related to the Seth books he had been reading. He insisted that I read at least one of the books immediately.
When I began reading The Seth Material . . . I couldn't believe the fascinating ideas that were being presented by Seth, and how they related to my new project. There was an amazing synchronicity that I could see had somehow been set into play, and it all appeared to be so seamlessly coordinated, as if by fate or some invisible power associated with my creative process. Not only was I being guided though my creative process, it was also providing me with an explanation of what it was all about and affirming the work I was doing!
The Atlanta City Series photographs are indeed strange; they are images from some interior world where time is no longer linear. This "world" is dark and yet illuminated by bursts of internal flashes of light, and haunted by ghosts and spirits--people lost in their wanderings within an imaginary city.
The Seth material shed light on this new work; "his" ideas unveiled for me new ways of understanding the images slowly emerging into what would come to be a coherent (if strange) body of interesting photographs. I believe reading the Seth books at that early stage of the project's evolution provided me with greater incentive, enthusiasm and confidence for the difficult work that was required of me. It strengthened my trust in the project, and more generally in my creative process as a unified whole.
Key Concepts
The key concepts in the Seth material, for me, at that time I was making the Atlanta City photographs, had to do with what "he" called multiple lines of probable realities. Indeed! My project consisted of multiple exposed photographs!
Seth taught that when an event took place in our time-space oriented physical world, its subtle probable realities continued to unfold and evolve into other imaginal "parallel realities" and "dream universes." Perhaps some of these probable lines of reality would interact and affect each other somehow, or even intersect. These alternate realities might fall together into unpredictable, unimaginable relationships that could impact one's perception and meaning of perceived events in any given present moment . . . meaning perhaps too ineffable to say or understand, but nonetheless meaning as a presence that made life richer because of its mystery and an internal kind of knowing, an "intelligence of the heart" that one could at least sense or feel.
After reading the Seth books I began to sense in apparently empty spaces invisible realities that somehow occupied or haunted the space; it was a felt presence that made the spaces somehow come alive. I could imagine events that had taken place in that space perhaps a hundred years ago, or yesterday, or in the future. Everything was alive in my new way seeing the world influenced by the Seth ideas.
The Seth teachings wee particularly interesting to me in the way that they so closely aligned with Carl Jung's ideas about synchronicity, and symbol, both of which had been the key concepts upon which I based my 1972 MFA Graduate Written Thesis at the University of New Mexico-Albuquerque. (Click here to learn more about my thesis.)
In short, synchronicity is the falling together in time of two or more acausal events that are perceived to be, or experienced as meaningful, though in unknown, inexplicable ways. Jung's definition of a symbol was very similar; he said a symbol is "the best possible expression of that which is presently unknown." Indeed, all of the pictures I made for the Atlanta City project were the product of a "falling together" (by "chance" or some other acausal means) of two, three or possibly four or more exposures in the camera, exposures that were layered one on top of the others and yet merged into each other within the single 2 1/4 inch square area of film that was in front of the lens of my old Rolleiflex camera.
When I looked at the processed film, I could see in some of the negatives that they were loaded with hidden, potential, provocative imagery, images that were more felt than seen; images of potentiality, inexplicably meaningful images; images that seemed alive with a visual-psychological energy that I had come to associate with what Jung termed a symbol, an image that held in union two corresponding events--one physical or outward, and the other interior, psychic or psychological.
The Process
The process of making any one exposure for the multiple-exposed-in-the-camera photographs was based essentially upon a felt impulse, instinct, or intuition. When I clicked the shutter, sparked by something I saw or felt, there was a sense of potential in the act; a sense that meaning could somehow be unveiled through this process of photographic picture-making. I simply needed to click the shutter toward something I was seeing or feeling in the constant flow of events unfolding in the downtown Atlanta area and let the creative process do the rest. Taking photographs in this way was essentially asking the "universe" to participate as an equal with me in my creative process. It was my duty, essentially, to allow the universe to supply me with potentially meaningful material.
The process in total consisted of several stages: first of course was the exposing of a consecutive series of images onto one section of the roll film; secondly, after the negatives were developed, there was the chore of searching the deep, dense negatives for potentially interesting images which I could try printing into positive tonal images. Then the final stage involved printing those extremely dense negatives in a way that would bring into visibility, on silver gelatin enlarging paper, the probable images, that is to say, images that I could sense existed within the negatives even if I couldn't quite see them; images that before printing were not even visible to the naked eye because of the deep deep density of the negative. To render those potential images into real photographic prints, I would have to utilize a very special, odd and transformative printing technique.
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Camera Work
The old Rolleiflex camera I used for the project allowed me to take as many consecutive multiple exposures over the same area of 2 1/4 inch square film as I wanted. After making several exposures I would then advance the film for another set of multiple exposures. I could produce 12 very dense negatives on one roll of film with my Rolleiflex. As the project progressed I became able through practice to intuit when I shot enough exposures on any one section of film. If I overshot, the negatives could get so dense that it would be impossible to see (or print) anything in the blackness of the developed film.
I learned to photograph subject matter and tonal situations that would increase the probability of an interesting or graphically dynamic photograph. That is to say, I became sensitive to how shadow & highlight areas were overlapping on the film, and I would consciously choose things to photograph that could accommodate this technical as well as aesthetic necessity. In this way I could perhaps control (to some limited extent) the overall density in the negative and increase the chances of a more contrasty imagery, that is to say, images with interesting dark and light tones and shapes. I actually became quite good at knowing when to stop exposing on one section of the film and move on to the next set of exposures.
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Printing Some of the negatives were so dark from overexposure that I had to use a photoflood bulb in front of the negatives to see if any imagery could be discerned at all. I have a vivid memory of looking at a newly developed roll of negatives one day and seeing on the film what I thought was a figure with a skeleton face, perhaps of an old woman walking on a dark street in Atlanta. So I tried printing that negative in my enlarger to see what the photograph would look like in positive tonalities. (I simply could not imagine what it might look like in print. It took at least 10 minutes of exposure in the enlarger (normal negatives might take 15-20 seconds exposure time) to yield a good print, and that was with using an extra strong bulb in the enlarger!
Fig. #1 Atlanta City Series, Image #6 above
Remarkably, the results were stunningly, surprisingly wonder-full. All the tones came out dark grey with the exception of a few highlights, one of which was the woman's skeletal face; and then there was the white pentagon shape to the left of the woman's face. That shape, which I love, which seems so auspicious, so related to the figure, was not even visible to me in the negative! How technically could this have happened?
Flashing & Solarization, or the Sabattier affect
The results I got in that print were most probably related to a special printing technique I was using with the multiple-exposures-in-the-camera negatives known as solarization of the print, or the sabattier affect. I would "flash" the print in local areas with a penlight while it was emerging in the developing tray, primarily those areas in the emerging image that were too light and having difficulty showing any detailed imagery.
The combination of 1) subtle exposures from light passing through the enlarger and through the negatives onto the printing paper below, and 2) the initial chemical reduction of the silver that was progressing as the print was being immersed in the developing chemicals in the tray, 3) along with the addition of more raw light upon the the silver in the print from the penlight--all this actually created an increase in the light sensitivity of the silver in the printing paper. This added sensitivity in the silver of the paper helped make the very subtle imagery in the highlight areas emerge further into visibility.
The final results could be totally unpredictable and the transformational affects completely mesmerizing. There could be imagery in the highlight areas that would become present that could not have been seen in the negative; and some tones might undergo a total tonal reversal, while other tones might become strangely smoothly silvery--tones with their own internal sense of light.
Printing in this way insured surprise and amazement. Everything was magically unpredictable and sometimes revelatory. Thus the printing of the negatives was critically important to the final realization of the creative process. It made present, visible what before was only potentiality; it literally drew out, into visibility, latent or unseeable images hidden within the densities of the negative and then the white spaces in the developing print.
If all this sounds mysterious . . . well, yes, it was. Printing these negatives was more exciting for me than photographing. When I photographed I was in a daze; I simply had to trust my impulses, and trust that the exposures would yield interesting images which the printing process would have to unveil. Printing, on the other hand, with flashing-solarization techniques brought a sense of active engagement to the process; each time I put the exposed printing paper in the developer there was an excitement about how flashing the print would transform a relatively uninteresting image into a transformed wonder. I could make certain informed choices based on past experience, and play with certain variables in my approaches to printing; but each print yielded un-expected results. It was like playing with the process until a visually exciting and meaningful image finally emerged.
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As I write this text, in August 2017, it occurs to me that there has been yet another stage in the creative process for the images in the Atlanta City Series. Its been 45 years since I made those silver prints. What you see here on the computer screens are digital interpretations or variations on those original prints.
When I created this blog page for the Atlanta City Series project, I had to photograph the prints with my digital camera and then prepare each digital file for downloading onto the blog project page. Photoshop tools provided me with all kinds of options to change, improve, exaggerate, play down or remove selected tones and subject matter in the original silver prints.
The digital photographs presented here are in many ways improved, it seems to me. They are more visually articulate, more graphic, more refined tonally because of the controls that Photoshop tools, or software, have afforded me. On the other hand, the digital versions are more distant in presence because of the electronic medium and perhaps the added refinements. Though I prefer the digital versions in many ways to the original silver prints, they are definitely lacking in some presence, something that comes naturally with the silvery physical object, the original silver gelatin print.
The Atlanta City Series was the natural outgrowth of a project which had preceded it entitled The Georgia Woods Series, 1974. You can see an online version of that project by clicking on the following link In the Woods, Homage to Charles Burchfield. (I revised the project title in 2012 when I created the online version of the project.)
The Georgia Woods Series was the first time I had experimented with multiple exposure in the camera. I decided to try the technique in an attempt to give a more articulate visual form to my experience of the Georgia Woods, spaces which were an almost unimaginably dense with complexity. I had been trying very hard to make "straight" photographs that would convey the complexity of my experience of the woods. The woods I photographed in, near where my family and I lived, outside of Atlanta, Georgia, were overwhelmingly thick with plants, fallen trees, and tangled kudzu vines. It was only after I experimented with the multiple-exposure-in-the-camera technique that I felt I was getting closer to a more true visualization of what I was seeing and feeling in the woods.
I used local flashing of the print in that project as well when I realized I needed to tone down and draw out detailed imagery in the over-exposed highlight areas of the multiple-exposed negatives. I had used this flashing technique earlier, in some of the photographs I had made in New York City in 1969, and then later in graduate school at the University of New Mexico. In fact one of my images, of my wife Gloria, standing in front of a dam in Lockington, Ohio, was made when I was a graduate student. Van Deren Coke, who created the program at UNM was an expert at solarization of the print; he encouraged me to submit the dam image to Time-Life Magazine for their first publication of a series of books on Photography. My image was published in the first book of the series, The Print.
I presented two sets of photographs for my MFA Visual Thesis exhibition: one set consisted of images of the New Mexico landscape, and the other set were images of my family-life. Both bodies of work include some images that had been transformed in varying degrees by flashing of the print. Many of the family-life images were dramatically solarized. (see Figures 1, 2, and 3 below).
Fig. #2 Gloria by Lockington Dam, near Piqua, Ohio, 1970
Fig. #3 Flashed Photograph, MFA Visual Thesis, New Mexico, 1972
Fig. #4 Solarized Photograph, MFA Visual Thesis, New Mexico, 1972
For more about my graduate studies in New Mexico
visit my online page
A Personal History of Photography
For more about my graduate studies in New Mexico
visit my online page
A Personal History of Photography
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I taught at Georgia State University-Atlanta, in the Art Department Photography Program, headed my John McWilliams, for three years after graduating from New Mexico in 1972. After completing the Georgia Woods Series in 1974, I felt a need to extend my work with multiple-exposure-in-the-camera and local solarization of the print, but wanted to photograph in a completely different environment, and so I began the Atlanta City Series, as you know, in 1975.
As I was completing that project, I accepted a teaching job offer at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, beginning in the fall of 1975. I set up the entire photography program and curriculum there.
On our trip to Milwaukee from Atlanta, I had a chance to meet with a friend from graduate school days in New Mexico, Dick Knapp. When he saw prints from my two recent projects, he encouraged me to continue working with multiple-exposure-in-the-camera and local solarization of the print, but he said he would like to see how the process would work with a more personal kind of subject matter.
Fig. 5 Solarized Photograph, Into the Woods (Georgia Woods Series) 1974
Fig. 6 Solarized Photograph, Atlanta City Series, 1975
Fig. 6 Solarized Photograph, Atlanta City Series, 1975
Fig. 6 Flashed Photograph from The Persephone Series, 1975-76
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The three projects, The Georgia Woods Series, the Atlanta City Series, and the Persephone Series constitute what is for me a very powerful suite of related projects. I am so glad that I finally added this project to my photography website. I didn't know it was missing until I though of the images as I was writing about another project.
Giacometti, Lithograph, Paris Without End 1969
"Crowd at an intersection"
Atlanta City Series project 1975
Old woman, and automobile at a street intersection,
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Epilogue
Seth and Siddha Yoga
Seth and Siddha Yoga
My interest in the Seth material and the other books by Jane Roberts came to an abrupt halt after I met my Siddha Yoga meditation master, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, in 1987. After many remarkable experiences of Gurumayi's grace I understood that Gurumayi, her teachings, her grace, was all that was necessary. (See my project Photography and Yoga) Photography became for me a spiritual practice, a yogic form of meditation in action.
However I do hold the Seth material in high regards and feel grateful for the time I spent with it. The Seth teachings were an important form of preparation for my meeting with a living yogic saint, a true Guru, a sadguru. Many of the Seth teachings are in fact close in proximity to the traditional yogic teachings which I now contemplate every day as I continue my yogic practices as a student on the Siddha Yoga Path.
This project was posted on my Welcome Page
August 14, 2017
Related online projects
In the Woods, Homage to Charles Burchfield, 1974 (The Georgia Woods Series)
Welcome Page for this website TheDepartingLandscape.blogspot.com which includes the complete listing of my online photography projects, my resume, contact information, and much more.
