Steven D. Foster ~ Photographs : The Departing Landscape website: Dick Knapp

Dick Knapp

Night Photographs 2020-21

"Light in the Darkness"

Introduction

Welcome to this collection of night photographs by Dick Knapp. I am grateful to Dick for sharing his creative process with me over the past few years, and I'm equally grateful for his allowing me to share a selection of his night photographs with all of you, via this blog page which provides you with the actual visual context that represents one of the major influences on the photographs I have made most recently for my project Elegy ~ The Messenger ~ Finding Light in the Darkness. (published in April 5, 2021) His night photographs and the dark basement photographs I have included in my recent project are literally "linked" to each, now, via the two blog project pages I have created with my blogspot.com account.

I am assuming that you are viewing this project page after having seen my project Elegy ~ The Messenger ~ Finding Light in the Darkness, read the section I have dedicated to Dick, entitled Dick Knapp & his Night Photographs in which I briefly discuss how we first met, the many ways he has influenced my creative process, and his night photographs, and then clicked on the hyperlink to this blog page. ~ If however you've come to this project page in some other way I encourage you to visit my project Elegy and at least read that particular section dedicated to Dick.

Logistics

The 26 night photographs presented here were among around 75 images Dick sent me via email from his collection of night photographs now totaling over 700 images!--all made in the past year or so. The final selection was to some extent a collaborative process, and Dick has seen and approved this page before its publication. ~ Dick has been working simultaneously on many other projects, so the night photographs constitute just one part of his creative process which is vibrantly, prolifically on fire! ~ Within the night photographs project there are many sub-themes relating to such things as place, types of subject matter, colors of light, etc. etc. So I have found it helpful to present the 26 selected photographs in the following three groupings.

The Three Groupings

Within each of the three groupings multiple themes present themselves. For example Parts I & II include images made mostly in domestic-neighborhood spaces. In Part I we find ourselves in a world of multiple light sources and multiple shadows which make the apparent world--and his pictures of it--flicker, shimmer and vibrate. Many of his images have, for me, the feeling that the world is alive and yet strangely ungrounded or unstable; solid and yet somehow transparent or illusory.

Part II includes several very dark images that take me deep into a world very close to the pictorial realms of surrealism and visual abstraction. Dick's night photographs have the distinct feeling of interiority. Though the darkness in this visual world seems at times intimidating to me, nonetheless it is also a world illuminated with glints and flashes of light--sometimes from unknown sources which could be a street light or the sun or the cool light of the moon. This alternate visual world maintains a thin thread of connection to the outer "real" world--a world I might like to think I know and thus can take some comfort in . . . and yet it is a world fully present with numinosity and a special kind of luminosity that manifests a presence that seems to exist in things invisible within the image. ~ Dicks night photographs represent for me a courageous journey into the unknown. Though his images seem deeply personal, at the same time they look transformational and feel transpersonal . . . which is another way of saying they function for me as True, living Symbols. Dick's photographs are alive with grace, creative energy that can open my Heart and ignite my Active Imagination.

Part III consists of images made in the urban world of concrete, bricks, bright colored lights, metal screens, barred store windows, speeding cars and opened gates to underground parking spaces for automobiles.

The last image (#26) in which we see a tree with multiple shadows of its trunk cast onto a brick wall, embodies multiple themes that run through Dick's night photographs including: the interface of nature with cultural; foreground spaces juxtaposed with distant spaces; the presence of lights in a dark background. In many of Dick's night photographs I sometimes sense the presence of moonlight. In this image I sense the cool light of the moon coming through the tree's branches near the top edge of the picture.

The presence of the automobile appears frequently in Dick's large collection of night photographs, and in a wide range of visual contexts. In this photograph, the automobile is implied by the light that is being projected onto the tree from an unusually low angle. I sense in that light the presence of the photographer: perhaps the light is coming from Dick's automobile.

The presence of automobile's in so many of his Dick's images seem emblematic, but in ways difficult to know or understand. (Indeed, the unknown in Dick's photographs is something I really enjoy.) I have included at least five "automobile images" in this collection, and perhaps more, especially if you choose to include image #26 in your counting.

The "Silent Dialogue"

When I view photographs within a book, an exhibition, or in blog format like this one--which requires scrolling down through a sequence of images--I often feel there is something like a "conversation" that is going on between one image and the next. There is of course a space between the images, and--imaginatively speaking--when I resonate to one or both of the images juxtaposed in the sequence, an Imaginal space opens for me in the space between the photographs. It is a silent space that allows grace to enter my creative process of contemplating photographs, for I do sense in the space between images a new "third" subtle image that inexplicably emerges spontaneously from inside . . . me, I guess you could say. It is an image that is alive with "meaning" that has been generated (I believe) by the grace radiant within the two juxtaposed images.

In the silence of the space that exists between two images it is possible to "listen" to their conversation, their Dialogue with each other. I have often felt images inviting me to participate in their silent dialogues, though no words are spoken. This kind of communication, this kind of meaning is beyond the limitations of human language which is based in duality consciousness. ~ The yogic saints say that silence is the language of God; and they say God dwells within the Heart of every human being. The grace which transforms an image into a True, living symbol, is unknowable because it gets us in touch with that which is beyond saying: the Oneness of Being.

A similar thing can happen between two artists. I can say this with real authority because I have experienced it over and over again, and you can witness it yourself just by studying the two collections of photographs that are linked together in this project page of Dick's night photographs, and my project page Elegy ~ The Messenger ~ Finding Light in the Darkness which includes dark basement photographs influenced by Dick's work you will be seeing here.

Of course all people are connected to each other in many many ways. I have been influenced or inspired by visual artists, poets, composers and writers (click here to see my Homage projects). The idea of a silent dialogue between artists is just another way of talking about influence (in-fluence) which is probably based in the experience of re-cognition. I have often felt that when I recognize something meaningful in my perception of an object, person or event in the outer world, that something dormant which already exited within me had become awakened. The mechanism involved might be related to a phenomenon ofter referred to as projection, or mirroring. The photographers Alfred Stieglitz and Minor White talked at great lengths about this, using the term equivalence. Carl Jung's theory of synchronicity is related to equivalence. And the concept of The Messenger is also related to the concept of a silent dialogue.

Dick Knapp has made photographs in the night that have lit up my Imaginal world. Thank you Dick for sharing your vision with me and the rest of us, here. And, again, I welcome and thank all of you who have visited this blog page dedicated to Dick's recent photographs.

Respectfully, and with gratitude,

Steven Foster

Dick's Night Photographs

(Note: if you have a desk-top computer, I encourage you to click on the images in hopes that this will provide you with an opportunity to view the darker images in a darkened viewing space. In that alternate viewing mode, the images may also appear sharper, more luminous, and more fully toned. A second click on the image may enlarge the image, providing you with an opportunity to see selected areas in the image more closely.)

Part I