4/17/19

Thing-Centered Photographs 1992-94 / 2019


    Thing-Centered
      Photographs  
     1992-94 / 2019



Introduction
It is April, 2019 and I am just now posting onto my blog this online version of a project I completed and exhibited in 1994. There are many reasons why I have waited so long to post this project.  Perhaps viewers would consider the images "uninteresting, or maybe too dark emotionally--many of the things I've photographed are lonely, sad, neglected or forgotten; and some are even "tearing" and others are unrecognizable and thus nameless.  In any case, this is an important project for me.

*

In late 1984 I read a book of poetry edited and Introduced by the American poet Robert Bly entitled News of the Universe.  I was deeply moved by Bly's essays and commentaries.  The book as a whole, and especially the chapter entitled "Object Poems" inspired me to make some photographs.  The "Object" or "Thing" photographs I began making became the inspiration for an important turning point in my creative process.  Since reading News of the Universe I have produced a large body of photographs that I have identified thematically as "Thing-Centered" photographs.  

I first started consciously making "thing" photographs for my Family-Life project (1985-88) and since then have never stopped making them when the opportunity arises.  Indeed this project of 1992-94 was the first complete project based on the "Thing-Centered" theme, and the work became an initiating force that generated a long-term six-year project (1994-2000) of miniature photographs, entitled Studiesmany of which were thing-centered images.  Other Studies projects have followed, and all of them contain thing photographs.  See the chronological listing of my online "Thing" projects at the bottom of this page.

Bly's Introductory essay to News of the Universe, and the essays that introduce each of the six  chapters, and his two Afterword essays are beautiful, poetic, heartfelt arguments for the consciousness alive in all the things of the world.  I recommend the book with great enthusiasm.  If you go to my blog page entitled News of the Universe, Poetry for the Departing Landscape, you will get a taste of what is in store for you in the book, which was published by Sierra Club Books in 1980.  Though there is an environmental agenda that recurs in Bly's writing, his choice of poems for the book and the overarching meaning of his essays are in no way limited by that agenda.  It seems to me the message of the book is even more relevant today (2019) than it was forty years later.  The poetic striving for a greater Truth, the living Consciousness that pervades all the things of this world, and indeed the entire Universe, is the other even more powerful creative force that pervades Bly's book.   


The photographs I am presenting here were first exhibited at the Michael H. Lord Gallery, in Milwaukee, in 1994.  I am including, below, the "Artist Statement" I wrote for the exhibition.  I neglected to pay homage to Robert Bly in the statement, though I can see now that most of the words and ideas, and even the writing style in "my" statement were inspired by his wonderful writings  in News of the Universe.  

I want to offer my heartfelt gratitude to Robert Bly (b. 1926 -  ) for his life's work in poetry, and for his beautiful and important book News of the Universe.  It is my sincere hope that everyone in the world will read the book.  In this era of Trumpian denials of both science and the natural world, climate change, Global Warming, and the rapid decline of available drinkable water on our planet, Bly's book will offer some comfort and at the same time I hope motivate all of us to make some urgently needed changes in the way we see and interact with the natural world.  I dedicate this online version of the Thing-Centered Photographs (of 192-94) project to Robert Bly.  

Here is the statement, dated 1994, inspired by Bly and his book which I included with the exhibited photographs:


________________________________________________________


Michael H. Lord Gallery
Artist Statement
Thing-Centered Photographs
1992-94 

The things of the world are alive.  In moments of intense seeing, everything has eyes.  Everything is looking at me! 

In the Mediterranean world at the time of Christ people believed that there were tears in things.  Lucretius called it lacrimae rerum, literally "the tears inside nature itself."  In our century, the poet Pablo Neruda wrote: "I know the earth, and I am sad."

There is something beautiful, something holy in a rain of tears; in the sober recognition of intense feeling; in seeing a thing clearly, deeply, with respect.  The thirteenth-century Sufi poet-saint, Rumi, said "our soul takes the shape of things."  Maybe this is why I sometimes feel it's so difficult to know where I begin and leave off in the world of things.

A traditional poem from Ireland says it all so simply:


                                                            I am the flash of sun on water.
                                                            I am the teeth in the sea-sharks's mouth.

                                                            I am the wind on the sea.
                                                            I am a hawk on a cliff.

                                                            I am a dewdrop, a tear of the sun.

                                                            I am the silence of things secret.


____________________________End of Statement____________________________



Francis Ponge, a great poet who took the side of "things" with is prose poems about "the silent world of things" was highlighted in Bly's chapter on the "Object Poem."  Ponge taught me to "listen" to what things are trying to say to us.  In this respect, I think of my thing-centered photographs as an attempt to both listen to things and give visual form to the "silent voice" of things.  I have tried to see and visually acknowledge those things that have been ignored, forgotten, overlooked; those things that long to be known and heard.  I believe there are many things in this world that are sad; and they are sad because we have not paid attention; we have not looked; we have not listened.    

My thing-centered images represent a "silent conversation" that has occurred between myself and the objects I've photographed.  Also, in some instances certain images strive to unveil a conversation that existed between the objects I have centered on and the environment in which I found them.  

When I center my attention on an object, I must place the Thing in the center of my picture frame.  In this way the resulting photograph is a visual affirmation of a conscious and intimate relationship that has occurred between me and the thing photographed.  In such "silent conversations" perhaps there can be at least a felt revelation of the consciousness we both share.  

*

Especially in the early years of my striving to articulate the "thing-centered" photograph, I was very preoccupied with the way a thing affected the place in which it was situated, and similarly the way the place affected the thing I was photographing.  Many of the photographs presented in this project are concerned with place as well as with the thing.   Later the thing-centered photographs focused on things that were more isolated.  Then I began suspended things in the center of black space, which symbolized for me a consciousness merged with silence. 


 


It's possible that a thing and its environment are truly inseparable from each other in a world that essentially is a Unitary Reality.  However, in an attempt to be helpful to the viewer, I have given each image a descriptive titled.  Under each of the photographs I have named the thing at the center of my attention, and then described (in parenthesis) first names or describes in words the thing I have centered upon, and then (in parenthesis) I have briefly described the place or environment in which the thing was found.  If you, the viewer, finds this information of little or no use, or interest, I encourage you to ignore the titles and focus solely on the image.  Most important to me is the consciousness or presence which pervades the image of the thing I've photographed.  

*

In 1987, just as I was nearing the end of my Family-Life project, the ideas that drove my impulse to make the thing-centered photographs exploded into a new level of experiential understanding when I met my Siddha Yoga Meditation Master, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda.  Her yogic teachings are very clear: there is nothing that is not a form of God, the divine Self, the Light of Consciousness.  Every Thing is alive with the Creative Power of the Universe, with grace, with Shakti. 

After practicing Siddha Yoga for the past 32 years, my experience tells me that yes, indeed, we all share the same living, divine consciousness.  This is the essential message, the "News" that Robert Bly writes about in his book News of the Universe.  Poetry is one means of transcending the separating limits of ego perception, and the symbolic photograph, an image radiant with grace, is another.     

*   

Here are twenty-five photographs from the 1992-94 Thing-Centered Photographs project.  They are digital copies made from the original 10x10" silver gelatin prints.  After the photographs, I have provided links to several of my other projects in which the Thing-Centered photograph has a dominant presence.  Welcome to my 2019 digital online version of my 1992-94 project Thing-Centered Photographs.


           Thing-Centered   
                 Photographs      
                     1992-94 / 2019     


#1  Thing-Centered Photograph :  Leather bag (protruding through the back window of an old car parked next to a garage door) 



  

#2  Thing-Centered Photograph :  A small curled up animal  (inside a metal bowl suspended in black space)






#3  Thing-Centered Photograph :  Hammer  (laying in a puddle which is reflecting the sky)




#4  Thing-Centered Photograph :  House plant  (behind a pulled down window shade)




#5  Thing-Centered Photograph :  Rusting chain  (wrapped round a cement column) 





#6  Thing-Centered Photograph :  Corn Stalk (in a corn field, illuminated by the setting sun)




#7  Thing-Centered Photograph :  Paper bird  (taped to a window)





#8  Thing-Centered Photograph :  A Dancing Bear (in a zoo pool) 






#9  Thing-Centered Photograph :  Lamp (on a wall covered with tree imagery)


#10  Thing-Centered Photograph :  A Splash of Powder (on the top of a table)




#11  Thing-Centered Photograph :  A Piece of Broken Wood (in a vacant lot, leaning against a fence)






#12  Thing-Centered Photograph :  Piles of books (in a public library)





#13  Thing-Centered Photograph :  A piece of white chalk (next to an eraser on a wooden trough)





#14  Thing-Centered Photograph : Bottle cap (near a paper bag on an architectural ledge)





 #15  Thing-Centered Photograph : A Beer bottle (next to a stone under a bush)





#16  Thing-Centered Photograph : Puddle (face in an alley next to a piece of wood)





#17  Thing-Centered Photograph : Broken Plaster Dog (facing toward a shadowed area)





#18  Thing-Centered Photograph : Styrofoam cup





#19  Thing-Centered Photograph : Tearing Painted Stake (in a dark hole in the ground)




#20  Thing-Centered Photograph : Leaves (on cement steps, at night, two line shadows) 





#21  Thing-Centered Photograph :  A ripped open burlap bag filled with stones






#22  Thing-Centered Photograph :  A piece of broken concrete (under a bridge)





#23  Thing-Centered Photograph :  Milk box (tearing, on a front porch) 




#24  Thing-Centered Photograph :  Soap Bottle, smudged with black (sitting on a piece of glass)





#25  Thing-Centered Photograph :  Two Wooden Cabinet Knobs and one tear (next to a pulled curtain and window)



________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________

Other Thing-Center
Photography Projects  

Thing-Centered photographs have appeared in so many of my photography projects after 1985, and in particular projects which includes Straight Photographs, that it would not be useful to list them all.  Thus I have listed below, in chronological order, those projects which contain an abundance of this kind of imagery.  

For an additional written statements regarding the Thing-Centered photographs, see my Introduction to Thing-Centered Photographs (with black space), and my Introduction to the Collected Studies Projects.

I also encourage you to see this link News of the Universein which I introduce Robert Bly's book and briefly mention one of his two Afterword "Meditations" or essays at the back of the book.  In that link you will find a selection of my favorite poems from News of the Universe, many of which are "Thing Poems" or "Object Poems."  Two of my favorites are Charles Simic's poem Stone, and Pablo Neruda's poem Ode To Salt.  


Thing-Centered Photographs:
A chronological collection of related online projects


Collected Studies Projects  See the Introduction
Straight Photographs  The second of two essays; the first is about my Symmetrical Photographs


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This project page was announced on  
my blog's Welcome Page on April 14, 2019


Welcome Page  to The Departing Landscape website which includes the complete hyperlinked listing of my online photography projects dating back to the 1960's, my resume, contact information, and more.
      














4/12/19

Seeing the Grand Canyon (4-21-19 version)



Seeing the Grand Canyon  
Perception = Projection

Each of us carries in himself the Image of his own world, his Imago mundi, and projects it into a more or less coherent universe, which becomes the stage on which his destiny is played out.  He may not be conscious of it . . . Henry Corbin: Avicenna and the Visionary Recital 

I was on a road trip with my wife Gloria in June, 2000 to visit the Grand Canyon and other nearby National Parks.  We assumed there would be plenty of places to stay overnight near the Grand Canyon's North Rim because of it being such a popular vacation destination, but we didn’t realize there were three Rim locations for visitors: the North, South and West Rims.  The North Rim was closest to us after our visit to Zion National Park, so of course the North Rim had become our next destination but we journeyed on without knowing what we would be faced with.  

When we got to Jacob Lake, Arizona, which is a 30 miles drive from the Grand Canyon's North Rim, we found that all the motels were fully booked.  It was late in the afternoon so we drove on toward the Park in hopes of finding a motel along the way.  The drive was essentially a road that passed through a beautiful meadow.  Experientially it was a relaxed, meditative preludial drive to the relatively small and somewhat rustic North Rim Lodge; however as we got closer and closer to the Part entrance we grew anxious because there no motels along the way and night was rapidly approaching.  Would the Park Lodge have any openings for us?  We needed a place to stay for the night.       

When we arrived at the Visitors Lodge, we immediately went to the Reservations Office.  There was a long line of people checking in.  When we finally
 were able to talk with the man at the desk he told us there were no available rooms, that reservations were usually made a year in advance, that cancellations were unusual, and that they didn’t have a waiting list.  The only thing we could do was check back with him from time to time to see if any cancellations were called in.  

Just as he was finishing telling us this, the phone rang . . .  A couple had just canceled their room for the night . . . and we were permitted to fill the vacancy!

After checking in we walked out onto the Lodge Terrace for our first view of the Grand Canyon.  I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the canyon, its vastness, its soft layerings of colors.  The late afternoon light filled the canyon’s misty space with a gentle, intimate, mysterious golden presence.  The subtle colors in the canyon walls gently separated from the earthy dark browns and grays such that they appeared to be suspended and floating in slow motion toward me.  I felt very close to the canyon's vast space, its gem-like luminous beauty.  As so often happens when I encounter the sacred, tears began to swell in my eyes.  My heart had opened.


*

The next morning we drove along the edge of the North Rim which has multiple parking and look-out areas.  At our first stop were able to look out over the rim's edge into the vast space of the Canyon in which we saw three different thunder storms over the Canyon, and each one had it’s own rainbow!  In the Hindu tradition, rainbows are very auspicious signs of the the Sacred.  

At the next stop we were able to walk out onto a long narrow viewing point.  When I arrived at the point I felt as if I was in the center of the Canyon.  As I tried to comprehend the vastness of the space before me and around me and above me and below me I noticed the wind blowing into my left ear in a rhythmic pulsating manner.  This seemed to initiate in me a shift in my consciousness.  

Slowly my whole being became pervaded with a deep sense of stillness.  I could hear children playing and laughing in the parking lot behind me, and yet I felt enveloped in a profoundly deep palpable presence that I would identify as Silence.  Time seemed to be slowing down to a halt.  My visual perception began to contract until it was reduced to what seemed to me to be a highly concentrated point.  

A wedge of luminous imagery was being projected out from within me--from within that point of conscious awareness . . . onto something in front of me that was like an unfathomably large screen.  I was the "projector," and I was the "screen" that was receiving the projected imagery; I was the point of origin of the image, and I was the vast space expanding ever wider and deeper within me, a space so vast my mind couldn't comprehend it; I had become the seer and the seen, the projector and the scene . . . simultaneously.  

I was seeing brilliant, astounding images of the Grand Canyon, and yet I was aware that the images were coming from me, from inside myself projected onto a "screen."  It felt like I was experiencing the very center of All Space, the center of my opened Heart.    



Gradually, I began to sense the pulsation of the wind again in my ear; at first I was aware of being in a state of total openness and expansion, and then I became aware that a process of contraction was beginning to unfold.   Gradually the extraordinary mode of perception--which was more like a mode of being--that I had been experiencing dissolved slowly away until I finally retuned nearly “to my senses.”   Time seemed to be running again pretty much at its usual pace . . .   

But my "heart" remained open for several hours after I returned to the car.  The experience had transformed me, expanded me in a way I had never experienced before.  I was overflowing with awe and wonder.  The experience had shaken me to my core; I felt as if my whole being had been turned inside out.  Every time I tried to talk about what I experienced with Gloria, I would start sobbing.  I felt overwhelmed with love for the world, for myself and Gloria and my children . . . and for something I had no words for.


*

That night, before going to sleep in our North Rim motel-like room, I reread--as I often did in those days--a few paragraphs from the monthly set of lessons I had received in June from Ram Butler, author of the Siddha Yoga Correspondence Course.  Each month Ram would write a 10-12 page lesson focusing on a particular theme related to the Yogic scriptures and the Siddha Yoga teachings.  (Gloria and I had been practicing Siddha Yoga since 1987, when we first met Gurumayi Chidvilasananda and received Shaktipat Initiation from her.  See part 1 of my project Photography and Yoga).  

In June, 2000 I received Volume 6, Lessons 15/16 of the Correspondence Course, and these two lessons focused on the themes of perception, the mind, the present moment, and the eternal moment.  Ram wrote that when we truly are living in the present eternal moment our hearts are in a state of pure openness; we can observe and hear the things in the outer world, and at the same time we are fully aware of being in a space of absolute stillness and silence.  He said, this is an experience of grace, an experience of our own Heart, our own Divine Self.   

Then is dawned on me, as I was re-reading lesson 15 of the sixth Volume of the Course, that I had been graced earlier that day with a direct inner experience of the yogic teachings Ram had written about in the lesson.  In a way the lesson was an elaboration upon and preparation for a quote by Gurumayi Chidvilasananda which Ram Buttler used as the conclusion to the lesson.  Here is the quote by Gurumayi:

The sages, the great beings, and the scriptures all say that we create everything in our own minds, and then we live in the reality that we have created.  They say that nothing is really outside us; whatever seems to be outside is our own projection.  If we have this understanding, then we know God, we know the Self, we know what we really are.

Baba [Gurumayi's teacher, Swami Muktananda] used to say, "It is your thought that affects the environment, the atmosphere.  It is your thought that affects other people." . . .

We should understand that we live in our own reality.  We create it for ourselves.  The scriptures say that all of nature, all the elements are also the creation of our own minds.  The sky, the earth, the air, the mountains, and the rivers are all parts of the mind.  They only appear to be outside.  . . .  the sages go on to explain that if our minds did not exist, then those things would not exist either.  As long as our minds are still there, those things exist.  Once our minds go, everything else goes too.  So what we see outside is our own creation.

What is the mind?  The mind is nothing but Consciousness, ultimate reality.  There is a great philosophy called the Pratyabhijna-hrdyam, which discusses the recognition of the Self.  This philosophy describes how Consciousness has become the mind.  In the beginning Consciousness is expanded and without form.  Then it gives up its lofty state and condenses into particular forms.  It becomes various objects.  It also becomes the mind.  Everything is the manifestation of that Consciousness, and because Consciousness is not different from the mind, everything is the creation of the mind.   Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, quoted in Vol. 6, Lesson 15 of the Siddha Yoga Correspondence Course. 

Note: I highly recommend a book entitled The Splendor of Recognition, which is authored by a Siddha Yoga Swami, Swami Shantananda.  It consists of his modern-day commentaries on each of the twenty sutras of the ancient yogic text, the Pratyabhijna-hrdyam.  For a brief survey of his commentaries on the sutras, see my project: Photography and Yoga, part 3: "Flashing-Forth" - Creation, Perception, and the Pratyabhijna-hrdyam.  Click here 

Revised 4-21-19
Steven D Foster


Welcome Page 
 
to my Departing Landscape website 
which includes the complete hyperlinked listing of my online photography projects dating back to the 1960's, my resume, contact information, and more.



4/2/19

Epilogue to The WATER Project


         Epilogue  
                The WATER Project 
                    _________________________________________
                              
                  "The Light and Shadows of Siva Reflected in Water"  Symmetrical Photograph, 2019


               
              Once you experience the inner silence 
               you never feel empty, because in the inner silence 
               you can hear the stars speak, you can hear the voice of the water, 
               you can hear the voice of the great Self.  You can hear and you understand.
                    Swami Chidvilasananda, from Resonate with Stillness (a Siddha Yoga Publication) 
  
     
Epilogue
The name of my photography blog, The Departing Landscape, was a phrase coined by composer Morton Feldman.  It related to his music, especially in the way sounds become suspended in space for a time and then decay, dissolve, leave us as we are listening.  Since the early years of 2000 I have  been witnessing with great concern the gradual and yet steady decay of our Planet.  And more recently the process has been rapidly increasing.  Indeed it is has become quite clear that the decline of the Earth's health is directly related to human causes, such as greed, neglect, forgetfulness, mismanagement and ignorance.  The mining and use of fossil fuels; the use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, the proliferation of plastics . . .  all this and more is making Our Planet--and Ourselves--sick.  The oceans, lakes and rivers are rapidly warming, causing the break-down of Local and Global Ecosystems.  Melting ice caps, extreme storms and flooding, out of control fires and droughts . . . all this and more is the Earth's way of calling out to us for help.  There is no question: we are living in a "Departing Landscape."

Our Planet needs our care and protection; our respect, remembrance and love.  It needs us to hear Her voice within the Land, the Waters and the Air.  We need to acknowledge that we belong to the Land, and that the Land, the Waters and the Air are sacred.  We need to remember to say Thank You.

Our mindless waste and toxic contamination of drinkable water and other natural resources must STOP.  Life sustaining water is becoming ever-increasingly scarce in many parts of the world resulting in growing tensions, legal actions, war-mongering and actual fighting conflicts amongst individuals, regions and nations.

It's essential that we begin NOW to see the planet as our Source of life, the Ground of Our Being, rather than merely a resource to be exploited.  The Earth gives us everything we need and yet we are relentlessly damaging that which we are dependent upon for Our Lives.  As a Global Community we must change our lives; we must change our vision; we must listen and understand what our Planet Truly is.  When we forget or abuse the Planet, we hurt our selves, our children and our children's children.

One of the most inspiring books I have ever read about "listening" to the things of the Earth--listening with respect and gratitude--is Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass : Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants.  I encourage you to read it.

*

In my 8 part WATER project I have taken a poetic-philosophical-sacred view of Water.  However I could not ignore the human aspects of the Earth's suffering, the Earth which has served me in so many ways as a nurturing Source of life, and as a Source of Creative Inspiration.  However I also wanted to offer words overflowing with grace, words that would serve as a Benediction--for the WATER project as a whole, for the Waters of the world, for the Planet, for each and every One of  its inhabitants--including each and everyone of US.

Under the Photograph, above, I have quoted the words of Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, living head of the Siddha Yoga PathAnd below, to conclude this Epilogue, I have quoted the words of Swami Muktanana, Gurumayi's teacher.  Their words are alive with the radiant blessings and inner silence of their extraordinary state of Being, their unbroken Union with God.  They see the entire Universe with a transcendent vision known as Siva Drishti, the vision of Siva, the vision of divine Consciousness.  May one day our vision, and our understanding of the Truth be One with theirs.

Thank you for your participating in my WATER project.  Now, here are the words of Swami Muktananda:

Supreme Siva is everlasting.  All Gods and all creatures originate in [Siva] and merge into [Siva] when they dissolve.  The universe arises as a throb and abides in it.  It emanates its rays of shakti in total freedom. . . The universe, in undifferentiated unity, lives in its very being, though appearing to be different from it.  

Siva is eternal, pervasive, formless.  It activates everything.  It is the soul of the universe--supremely pure, completely full, the conscious Self.  It does not change, though it manifests as space, time, and form.  It is the Consciousness within the spirit within the heart, and it is the same as the Consciousness without.  Right knowledge is the direct awareness of the pervasiveness of Consciousness within and without.  Such an undifferentiated understanding brings worldly fulfillment and spiritual liberation, perfection, realization, and peace.  It lacks only bondage and suffering.  

The truth is that to realize the Self is to get what we already have.  There is nothing apart from Siva.  There is nothing other than Siva.  Whatever there is, is Siva.  To be aware of [Siva] is to be fearless and free in the Self.  There is nothing that is not Siva; there is no place that is not Siva; there is no time that is not Siva; there is no state that is no Siva.  Not a single thought-wave can arise separate from Siva.  To be aware of this is to be aware of Siva.  Here, there, wherever you look, whatever you think--it is all Siva.  Swami Muktananda, from his "Introduction" to Nothing Exists That Is Not SIVA, a Siddha Yoga publication   


*


This project was posted on my blog's Welcome Page
on April 2, 2019


  WATER Photographs : The Complete Project Titles                                                                                                                                               
     3.  Falling Water                                           6. The Bathers                                         Epilogue


To Learn More about the World's Water Crisis, visit the following online links:
(and you can sign up for email updates from each of these organizations)


Welcome Page  to my The Departing Landscape website/blog which includes the complete listing of my online photography projects dating back to the 1960's, my resume, contact information, and more.