This project was published in March, 2022 and revised in May & June, 2023
The Pandemic Inkjet Prints
~ Finding Light In the Darkness ~
A collection of 25 inkjet prints selected from 18
"Pandemic Inspired" Photography Projects
(Ghost Ship)
Introduction
Looking back, the Pandemic had made everything come to a suspended halt in March, 2020 and that date marked the beginning, for me, of a large collection of photography blog projects inspired by the Pandemic. (click here or scroll down this blog page to see the list of 18 hyperlinked project titles.) In May 2023, the Pandemic had been officially ended Internationally by the WHO, and in the USA, Medicare officially called an end to the Pandemic . . . though we have been told that there may be no end to yearly vaccinations for the newest strains that will probably be coming forth . . .
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Last January, 2022 I decided I should create one last blog project that would summarize both visually and textually what had transpired over the previous two years of the Pandemic and the 16 projects I had made that were in various ways influenced by the Pandemic. And--surprising to me--along with that idea there came a strong urge to make a set of inkjet prints of some of my favorite images from that series of projects.
I hadn't made prints of my photographs since 2018, in preparation for a mini-retrospective exhibition at the Alice Wild's gallery in Milwaukee. And before that, I hadn't made prints of images in my blog projects after an exhibition at Spectrum Gallery in Rochester, NY in January, 2012. At that point I decided I was finished with exhibiting my work, and that blogging was a much for satisfying way for me to present my work to the public.
I believe the impulse to make some inkjet prints in Januray, 2022 came from a deeply felt need to give a more grounded or concrete form to all the images that had emerged from my extremely introverted state of being that occurred during the Pandemic. ~ However, another possible explanation for the urge to make prints again may have had to do with a retrospective exhibition of my work that had been publicly announced by a curator at the Museum of Wisconsin Art at the end of October, 2019, just a few months before the Pandemic hit the United States. (click here to learn more about the announcement)
The Museum had intended to prepare a major exhibition of my photography, and travel the exhibition along with a major published catalogue. However, once the Pandemic officially kicked in, I never heard from the Museum--directly--again about the retrospective. I have learned indirectly that the Museum remained interested in the project, but that the curator who was to organize everything, left the Museum after having gotten married, had a child with his new wife, and moved to another state during the two year interval of the Pandemic.
That's as much as I know about the current situation, and I suspect my desire to make a series of prints from my Pandemic inspired photography (blog) projects was a way of keeping the idea of the retrospective alive for me, a way of holding onto the hope that one day there would be an exhibition and that printing these images would give me a leg up on the process of preparing for the exhibition.
*
As it turned out . . . the prints I made in January-March 2022 were technically very disappointing. The nozzles on my old Epson 7600 printer (which I had purchased in 2003) had been continually clogging up and creating subtle but perceivable patterns in the smooth fields of dark tones that I used surrounding the Pandemic imagery. Also, at that time, I was not able to find any vendors for the Epson inks I needed for the old printer. I found alternative inks made by a company in Canada, but the blacks in my prints were not smooth and deep like I was used to seeing with the original Epson inks. ~ And that's not all. My printer starting showing a number code in its control panel that, essentially, was telling me that the printer would soon no longer be usable. The printer was about to die.
There was no question, at that point, that I would have to buy a new printer, and that would mean that I would also have to buy a new computer, a whole set of inks for the new printer, and than learn how to put all this new technology into running order and coordinated with the online Photoshop software I have been using for the past several years. I dreaded the thought of all the time and energy and money this transition would take--ordering, arranging delivery, setting everything up, talking on the phone for endless hours to Epson, Apple and Photoshop advisors, trips to computer stores, hiring two guys to come to my house and move the printer from my garage to the basement . . .
But, if I wanted to make prints (and I would have to, for sure, if the retrospective project was soon to be re-initiated now that the Pandemic had apparently reached an end-point) I would definitely need to update all my equipment. So, early 2023 seemed like a good time to do all this, since I was scheduled for cataract surgery on my right eye for January 15 (and 31 for my left eye) and wouldn't be able to see well for around six weeks or so. I could devote all that time, from January thru part of February to getting all the equipment, setting it up, and getting everything running well together . . . while my eyes were healing from the surgery.
Regarding my NEW printer,
my FIVE eye surgeries, and
Printing with a BUBBLE in each eye
I purchased a new Epson P6000-P and a new Mac Studio computer in early January, 2023 and got the equipment just before my first surgery (on my left eye). By the time I had cataract surgery on my left eye I was able to muddle through the process of getting the new printer and computer I need, hiring two two people to move the printer down into my basement studio, setting it all up, and learning how to get everything working together in a perfectly coordinated manner. It all seems like a miracle to me now that it all worked out so well. It took a lot of phone calls, but by mid February, 2023, I was making my first prints with my new Epson 6000P with eyes that were much clearer, brighter, and now focused on infinity, which would require a new pair of glasses with lens built in for viewing my computer and, another for close-up reading.
I was quite excited by the improved faster printing times of the Epson 6000-P, and soon began to get very exited by what I was able to bring out in the prints that was not so obvious as blog images on a computer screen. After I saw the first few reprints of the images I had printed a year earlier for the Pandemic Inkjet Prints project I knew I would have to reprint all twenty of the images. And by the time I completed that process, I decided to add several other images to the project. There are presently 25 prints included in the project, all printed with the new Epson printer. (And I may had a few more later.)
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In February, after I had begun the re-printing of the Pandemic Inkjet project, I started experiencing the presence of some subtle, ghost like shadows in my peripheral vision. And following that, there came some very odd brownish colored graphic images covered with thin lines. I had been warned about the possibility of some problems that might follow my cataract surgeries because I was extremely near-sighted and thus had an extremely elongated eyeball which when stressed by the cataract surgery, could cause a detachment of the retina in either (or both!!) of my eyes. Though I was a little concerned about this part of the decision to have the cataract surgery, I really felt I had no choice in the matter, that I could not wait any longer to have the cataracts removed because it had become too dangerous to see while driving at night, and the brown tones I was seeing and the reduced brilliance of the light was really bothering me. (It is a bit ironic as I think back on all this now, for the subtitle for the Pandemic Photography Projects was "Finding light in the darkness.")
The shadowy presences I was experiencing, and the graphic shapes I saw, and just before surgery on my left eye, the brown fluids in that eye that gradually began to "drown" my vision of the world . . . all these symptoms were absolute signs of a serious retinal tear. The surgeon confirmed this with after a very careful examination, then performed surgery immediately on my left eye, on February 21, 2023. She "stitched" the tear in the retina using laser light, then placed a gas bubble inside my eyeball which pushed the torn retina up against the wall of my eyeball. After several weeks of being held in place against the wall of my eyeball the torn retina naturally re-attached itself to the wall. I could see light and vague shapes, but I could not see sharp images through the gas. Gradually, the gas bubble began to get smaller in my eye until it finally completely dissolved and disappeared . . . on May 5, the day of the full moon!
There was some damage to the macula of my left, causing some warping and fracturing of the image, especially noticeable with straight lines; and the image in my left eye was darker and quite noticeably smaller than the image I was seeing in my right eye. But I could see pretty well with my two eyes at the same time, and there was the hope that my brain would compensate for the disparities between the two eyes and eventually normalize the situation for me in a way that would not be so bothersome to me.
Then, in mid-March, 2023, just a few weeks after the first retina surgery, I noticed those mysterious shadows again, and then the same odd graphic imagery . . . this time in my right eye. The imagery was much subtler and was just beginning to worsen. After the surgeon examined my eye I immediately was sent to surgery and the eye was repaired with much less damage compared to the left eye.
For the right eye surgery I was given the option to have an oil bubble placed in my eye rather than a gas bubble. The oil would allow me to see pretty well with the right eye while it was healing. I certainly did not want to be helpless for the next few weeks while my left eye vision was still being blocked by the gas bubble, so I chose to have the oil bubble placed in my right eye.
I was told it was very unusual to have both eyes needing retinal surgery so closely together in time, but thankfully the oil bubble option did allow me to see very well out of the right eye while my left eye was still clouded by the gas bubble. The downside to the oil bubble option was that an additional surgery (the fifth in the series) would be required to remove the oil and replace the oil with saline solution. The oil was removed from my right eye on May 9.
THE GOOD NEWS
I am happy to report that as I was going through the process of having each of these five surgeries and their different periods of healing, I was able to make these new Pandemic prints with my new printer . . . and many other images as well! The oil bubble in my right eye, when used in coordination with +1.75 reading glasses and a 6 inch diameter magnifying glass,--with 2X magnification--help up before my right eye, allowed me to see the computer screen and the prints produced by my new printer, well enough to make very accurate decisions and completely satisfying inkjet prints during the nearly four month period I was dealing with the retinal surgeries and the bubbles in my eyes.
The 25 prints in the Pandemic Inkjet project were all made with the bubbles in both my eyes, plus I made many new prints carefully selected from images in many other blog projects. Then after both eyes were free of their bubbles I continued making prints for another revised project, Blue Angel and two new projects: Silent Dialogues and the 12x12" Studies project.
*
More about my eyes
I am very pleased with the results I have been getting with my new equipment, and am very grateful I was able to make so many beautiful prints while I was going through this four or five month long, and very challenging experience with my eyes. Printing has been a life-affirming activity for me, more so now than ever, though I am experiencing some rather unusual tiredness and some mild headaches from what probably has to do with my brain working overtime with the extreme stress of trying to coordinate the two disparate images coming from my left and right eyes. The problem is not being identified as a "double image" issue. That can be corrected optically. Unfortunately, my problem, referred to as a disparity of vision between the two eyes.
As I write this text, in mid-June, 2023, I am seeing the two disparate images from my left and right eyes "layered over each other" or "layered within each other." This is causing me to experience some subtle visual vibration and spatial disorientation that in turn is causing some mild dizziness and nausea at times. The hope is that my brain will eventually adapt to these visual issues I will grow more comfortable with my "new normal." For now I am content to make lots of prints from past blog projects, hoping to establish--in print form--something like a personal archive or catalogue of many of my most favorite works. The new project I am working on now, the 12x12" Studies project, shows promise in fulfilling this ideal for me.
* * *
Immediately below is a listing of the Pandemic Inspired Photography Projects from which I selected images to print for the present project. Directly following the list I have provided a brief textual discussion regarding several of the artists and writers who have influenced the work I made during the Pandemic.
The
Pandemic Inspired
Photography Projects
Finding Light In the Darkness
(Ghost Ship)
March 2020 ~ June, 2023
Prelude to the Pandemic Project
-------------------------------------------------
STAY HOME Published May 5, 2020 Pandemic Project I
Returning Home Published August 2, 2020 Pandemic Project II
The Bird, The Angel of Tears . . . the Rain of Grace Sept 9, 2020 Pandemic Project III
A Walk In Twilight Garden On A September's Eve Oct. 7, 2020Pandemic Project IV
The Conference of the Birds & Their Flight To Union Nov. 2, 2020Pandemic Project V
The Conference of the Birds II : Selected Teachings of the Hoopie Bird Dec. 11, 2020 Project VI
Snow Photographs : In Praise of Christmas Spirits Jan. 5, 2021 Project VII
Elegy ~ The Messenger ~ Finding Light in the Darkness April 5, 2021 Pandemic Project X
Related Projects that I feel should be included as "Pandemic inspired" projects:
The Secret Cave July 3, 2021
The Light of Memory August, 2021
The Letter (Morandi wrote to Thelonious Monk) September, 2021
That Ineffable Invisible Interior Presence October, 2021
The Splendor of That Auspicious Interior Light December, 2021
Nocturne Homage to Frederyk Chopin & his 21 Nocturnes July, 2022
The Sacred in Things, Places & Photographs September 20, 2022
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The Pandemic Inkjet Prints March 2022 / revised May & June, 2023
This series of 18 Pandemic inspired projects (plus the project before you now) began while I was in the midst of working on Snow Photographs, Winter 2020 which I had started in late January (2020) and then continued to work on it through all of February, March and April. Though most of the images in the Snow project were not directly influenced by the Pandemic, I did mention the Pandemic for the first time ever in that project's text. Thus I consider the Snow project a "Prelude" to the Pandemic Series.
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On March 19, 2020, as Gloria and I were driving to Rochester, New York from our home in Canandaigua, we saw flashing electronic road signs saying: "STAY HOME" That was the point in time in which I realized the seriousness of what we, our two children, their spouses and our two young grandchildren . . . and the rest of us in the United States . . . would have to be living with for some time.
The "STAY HOME" signs at first generated a feeling of fear and dread in me. Then, later, as I continued doing my yogic practices and continued making photographs "at home" I began to see a direct relationship between the injunction "STAY HOME" and the classic yogic teaching "Go inside." With the help of the grace of my yogic practices and the grace of my creative process in photography I was gradually able to accept the Pandemic and deal with it in a way that was meaningful to me and perhaps--someday--to others. In a way the three years of the Pandemic and the 16 photography projects made in response to it were like a long mediation, an experience of "going inside" myself.
I had been using photography as a form of "open-eyed" meditation since I was first introduced to Siddha Yoga in 1987, when I took a two-day meditation program with Gurumayi Chidvilasananda in which I was blessed with a life-transforming experience of her grace. After that initiating, I gradually began making photographs as an integrated aspect of my meditation practice, for I realized that Gurumayi's grace had become the very center and Heart of my Creative Process. And I came to understand that the photographs which functioned for me as True, living Symbols was a powerful means by which I was able to keep connected with my meditation Master and her grace, chiti-shakti, the creative power of the universe, a radiant energy which made certain of my most "alive" photographs "illuminated" with a transcendent (nonverbal) kind of meaning, a meaning that had to do with yoga, with the experience of union, the Oneness of Being.
"Seeing photographically" became for me a way of seeing with the "Eye of the Heart." This mode of seeing, "seeing outward things inwardly," with grace, became the means by which I was able to unveil Maya's dark illusions and find the light of the divine Self which is hidden within and behind all of the created universe, which paradoxically, is simultaneously Maya's world of "illusion."
The light of the universe is within us.
. . . Yoga exists naturally in our
lives because the world is the
embodiment of yoga.
Swami Muktananda, Gurumayi's teacher
Other influences upon the Pandemic Projects
In the mid 1960's when I was studying photography as an undergraduate student, I did have an intuitive sense of some ineffable, divine presence in the things and places I was photographing. I resonated to the teachings and photographs of Edward Weston, Alfred Stieglitz and Minor White. Eugene Atget was an inspiration for me as well. Then in graduate school (1969-72) my friend Dick Knapp introduced me to the wonderful book The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard which further affirmed those feelings and experiences I had been having as a budding young artist. Here are a few quotes from Bachelard's book which relates directly to much of the work I have been doing throughout the two years of the Pandemic:
In a study of of images of intimacy we shall pose the problem
of the poetics of the house. . . With the house image we are
in possession of a veritable principle of psychological
integration. . . . The house image would appear
to have become the topography of our intimate
being. . . . Our soul is an abode. . . . The
house images move in both directions:
they are in us as much as
we are are in them.
Gaston Bachelard, his Introduction
Every object invested with intimate space
becomes the center of all space.
Gaston Bachelard, from the chapter "Intimate Immensity"
"I am the space where I am."
Bachelard quoting Noel Aranaud
Dick Knapp also introduced me to the writings of C.G. Jung which also influenced Bachelard's writing. I devoted my 1972 MFA written thesis to Jung's ideas about the symbol, the Self, the alchemical creative process, and synchronicity. I have summarized the key ideas in the thesis in this blog project: The Symbolic Photograph : A Means To Self Knowledge.
In 1975, I left my first teaching job, at Georgia State University, Atlanta, to initiate a photography program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the Art Department. In 1978 I came across the concept Makom in a book about the New York School painter, Barnett Newman authored by Thomas Hess. Makom is a secret Jewish name for God. Hess writes that the word means "the Place" (where God is present). For example, if one experienced God's Presence in a place, one would say "the Place spoke to me" so as to avoid speaking the name of God. I became so inspired by the Makom concept that I created a series of photography projects in Milwaukee dedicated to the idea. (See my blog project : Makom : "the Place".) The essential spirit of the Makom idea has lived on in my photography to this very today, including of course the Pandemic projects.
In 1984 I read a book edited and introduced by Robert Bly, News of the Universe. The entire book is wonderful, and I became particularly inspired by his chapter on "The Object Poem" which awakened me to the idea of the life, the "consciousness" that exists in things. I had gained that intuitive understand before I read Bly's book through Edward Weston's photographs and writings about the inner essence of a green pepper, or a shell, for example; and the writings in Bachelard's Poetics of Space are also about this. After reading Bly's book I started making what I call the Thing-Centered Photographs which has remained a constant preoccupation within my Creative Process, and especially through the years of the Pandemic which was spent mostly in the seclusion of my house.
Intimately related to the "Thing-Centered photographs" and the Makom idea is my love of Giorgio Morandi's Still Life and Landscape paintings. His vision and sensibility has been a constant, inspiring presence in the Pandemic projects. See in particular these two recent blog Morandi-inspired projects, The Light of Memory & The Letter, and the earlier multi-chaptered blog project inspired by Morandi's Still Life paintings.
Regarding Darkness & "Finding Light In the Darkness"
The prints I have made for The Pandemic Inkjet Print project are all 16" high x 2o" wide on a white paper base of 2o"x 24." Many of the photographs in project are dark in tonality, emblematic of the suffering and grieving, the fear and frustrations, the sadness, anger and political corruption that has pervaded this 2-3 year period of American history. We are of course continuing to see many different kinds of suffering around the world; in the US the focus has shifted to Putin's war on the people of Ukraine. The economic impact of Putin's war is affecting so many others throughout the world, not to mention the terror Putin's threats of nuclear retaliation inflict upon not only the people of Ukraine . . . but all of who live on this planet called Earth. .
According to Hindu traditions, we are now living in the fourth--the worst and darkest--of the four "world ages" or yugas in the Yuga Cycle. This fourth yuga is known as Kali Yuga, which is characterized by "strife," "discord," "quarrel," "contention;" it is an age "full of conflict and sin." The presidency of Donald Trump, the rise of White Suprematism, the lack of attention paid to Climate Change by our world's most powerful political leaders, the proliferation of bold, arrogant, in-your-face acts of violence, corruption, greed and meanness we have seen even among some of our country's top governmental officials, plus the ravages of extraordinarily devastating storms, floods, droughts, fires, the melting of glaciers, the rising of sea levels, the pollution of our oceans . . . all of these things (and more) are signs of Kali Yuga.
Despite all this "darkness," the "light of the inner Self" remains untouched, unchanged and radiant, say the Great Yogic Beings, the Siddhas and Sadgurus like Swami Muktananda and Gurumayi Chivilasananda . . . though to most eyes this Light is hidden by the veils of Maya, her great power of illusion. When I am photographing and meditating I do become very aware of that interior light, and I experience that subtle light in the photographs that function for me as True, living symbols, including those darkest of images in this project.
The road signs I saw at the beginning of the pandemic which said STAY HOME reminded me of the scene in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy click's her red shoes together and repeats over and over again : "There's no place like home . . . There's no place like home . . . " These words remind me of another popular phrase: Home is where the Heart is. And that phrase reminds me of several related teachings often repeated by Gurumayi and her beloved Muktananda which goes something like this: God (the divine Self) dwells within the Heart of every human being, and within every Created thing in the Universe.
Regarding the Dark Borders Surrounding the Photographs
Though the 18 Pandemic Inspired blog projects generally present the images and the texts against a white background, which is the blog's default presentation mode, the actual inkjet prints present each of the images with a dark gray border surrounding them. I consider the dark borders an integral part of the printed image, and of course there are many possible ways to understand how the borders function visually and how they could be interpreted in terms of meaning. Thus I invite you to contemplate these issues on your own. I will say this: the experience of the images in print form will undoubtedly be different for each viewer, compared to their experience of the images seen on a computer screen. The conscious recognition of those differences has provided me with important new insights about particular images, and I believe that could be the case for you and other viewers as well if ever you get a chance to see the inkjet prints.
*
After the presentation of the Pandemic Inkjet Print images, below, I invite you to continue on to my Afterword and a brief Epilogue which brings the project to a close.
The Pandemic Inkjet Prints
Selected images from the "Pandemic Series" Photography Projects
Each photographic image is printed 16x20" on 18x24" Epson Enhanced Matte Paper.
Below each image is its title, the title of the blog project in which the image was
first published, the image identification number, the print's edition
number (1/5), and the date it was printed and signed.
#1 "House of Light"
(The curtain which covers the back garage door window)
from the Pandemic-inspired project:
That Ineffable Invisible Interior Presence
IMG 9355 16x20" inkjet print 1/5
printed March, 2023
Steven D Foster
#2 "Stone on newspaper"
from the Pandemic-inspired project:
That Ineffable Invisible Interior Presence
IMG 9402 16x20" inkjet print 1/5
printed March, 2023
Steven D Foster
#3 "Still life"
(Ghost ship)
from the Pandemic-inspired project:
Elegy ~ The Messenger
IMG 8757 16x20" inkjet print 1/5
printed March, 2023
Steven D Foster
#4 "Cutting Boards, Toaster Oven Handle, Red Oven Mitts"
from the Pandemic-inspired project:
The Light of Memory
IMG 9121 16x20" inkjet print 1/5
printed March, 2023
Steven D Foster
#5 "Closet Still life with spools of colored thread"
from the Pandemic-inspired project:
Elegy~The Messenger
IMG 8705 16x20" inkjet print 1/5
printed April, 2023
Steven D Foster
#6 "Bionic Arm"
from the Pandemic-inspired project:
The Letter Monk Wrote to Morandi
IMG 8705 16x20" inkjet print 1/5
printed April, 2023
Steven D Foster
#7 "Mr. Blue" (just after we adopted him)
from the Pandemic-inspired project:
The Splendor of That Auspicious Light
IMG 9545 16x20" inkjet print 1/5
printed March, 2023
Steven D Foster
#8 "Early morning fog, SW Meadow and Pond"
from The Meadow project
IMG #25 16x20" inkjet print 1/5
printed April, 2023
Steven D Foster
#9 (Symmetrical Photograph: Picture frame & House Plant)
from the Pandemic-inspired project:
The Light of Memory
IMG 9126 16x20" inkjet print 1/5
printed March, 2023
Steven D Foster
#10 "South Meadow, neighbors' lawn, little trees in fog"
from the Pandemic-inspired project:
The Light of Memory
IMG 9074 16x20" inkjet print 1/5
printed March, 2023
Steven D Foster
#11 "Shroud"
from the Pandemic-inspired project:
Elegy ~ The Messenger
IMG 8674 16x20" inkjet print 1/5
printed March, 2023
Steven D Foster
#12 "Illuminated Stone"
from the Pandemic-inspired project:
The Conference of the Birds Part II : Teachings of the Hoopoe Bird
IMG 8126 16x20" inkjet print 1/5
printed March, 2023
Steven D Foster
_________________
"There is an invisible sun
hidden inside us all.
The day will come when the veil falls away
and that sun is revealed and shines,
and in its resplendent light
all virtues and corruption vanish."
Attar: The Conference of the Birds, Teachings of the Hoopoe Bird
#13 "Two Birds: One soaring, One about to land"
from the Pandemic-inspired project:
The Conference of the Birds & Their Flight To Union
IMG 7468 16x20" inkjet print 1/5
printed March, 2023
Steven D Foster
#14 "North Meadow & Pond, early evening, lights in some peoples' houses"
from The Meadow project:
IMG 6147 16x20" inkjet print 1/5
printed May, 2023
Steven D Foster
#15 "The Light Behind Maya's Veils"
from the Pandemic-inspired project:
Maya's Veils of Illusion & The Truth Which Lies Behind Them
IMG 9679 16x20" inkjet print 1/5
printed March, 2023
Steven D Foster
#16 "Morning light on the curtain and green bush behind "
from the Pandemic-inspired project:
The Sacred in Things, Places & Photographs
IMG 0228 16x20" inkjet print 1/5
printed March, 2022
Steven D Foster
#17 "Mr. Blue's shadow in the sunlit laundry room"
from the Pandemic-inspired project:
The Sacred in Things, Places & Photographs
IMG 0210 16x20" inkjet print 1/5
printed March, 2022
Steven D Foster*
#19 "Symmetrical Photograph" (Snow Drift & Wood Plank)
from the Pandemic-inspired project:
The Great Wonder In Simple Things
IMG 8612 16x20" inkjet print 1/5
printed March, 2023
Steven D Foster
#21 "The Bird, the Angel of Tears, the Rain of Grace"
(Symmetrical Photograph : moisture on our picture window)
from the Pandemic-inspired project:
The Bird, the Angel of Tears, the Rain of Grace
IMG 7870 16x20" inkjet print 1/5
printed March, 2023
Steven D Foster
#22 "North Meadow & pond, orange stormy sky"
from The Meadow project
IMG #33 16x20" inkjet print 1/5
printed April, 2023
Steven D Foster
#23 "Thunderstorm windblown bird feeder"
from the Pandemic-inspired project:
The Bird, the Angel of Tears, the Rain of Grace
IMG 7847 16x20" inkjet print 1/5
printed April, 2023
Steven D Foster
#24 "South Meadow light after a morning storm"
from the Pandemic-inspired project:
The Light of Memory
IMG 9260 16x20" inkjet print 1/5
printed April, 2023
Steven D Foster
#25 "Steam on Window after a summer evening storm"
from the Pandemic-inspired project:
Nocturn (Homage to Chopin)
IMG 0178 16x20" inkjet print 1/5
printed June, 2023
Steven D Foster
*
Afterword
__________________________________________________
Regarding the relation between making Inkjet Prints & Blogging
I enjoy seeing my photographs in print form, however making the prints is quite another matter compared to publishing the digital images on a blog. It can sometimes be very challenging, frustrating, time consuming (and expensive) to get the digital image I'm used to seeing on my computer screen onto a piece of paper with a set of black, gray and color inks. Once I started blogging, in November 2010, I made very few inkjet prints of my digital camera-made image files or the digital files I made by scanning some of my earlier black & white and color negatives.
I began making digital prints in 2003. I was resistant to the idea of digital cameras, Photoshop software, printing with inks, etc. I had been making silver gelatin prints my entire life, beginning in 1955 when I was ten years old. But as a teacher of photography in the rapidly changing and unfolding age of digital technology, although the silver gelatin print remained an important learning experience for the students in our photography program in year 2ooo and beyond, they also clearly needed for me to know more about the technical aspects of digital photography in both the camerawork and printing aspects. Between 2003-2007 I gradually transitioned completely from making black & white silver gelatin prints from negatives, to scanning my negatives and making inkjet prints from their digital files and then finally buying a digital camera and photographing in color.
I made a lot of inkjet prints between 2003 and 2004 for an important exhibition I presented at the Michale Lord Gallery. Visit see my first major digital project Triadic Memories 2003-2007 which includes many of the images I presented in that exhibition.
*
About a year after I retired from teaching in 2007 Gloria and I moved to Canandaigua, NY. It took a few years for us to get settled into our new house and get our basement finished so I could at last get my digital lab and Epson 7600 printer set up and running. For the first year and a half we lived in Canandaigua, I mostly photographed The meadow behind our house, its two ponds and the lovely tapering woods that runs all along the back, west side of the meadow. I also spent a lot of time looking for places in the Rochester and Buffalo areas of New York that might be interested in exhibiting my work.
I soon lost interest in schlepping my work around. It's not easy having been an established artist in one area for over thirty years (Chicago and Milwaukee) and then moving into a new territory where nobody knows your work. Fortunately my son Shaun saw my frustration and suggested that I try creating a web site, or perhaps a blog for my photography as a way of presenting my work to a larger audience. I found Google's blogger.com to be relatively easy to navigate and set up after getting though some of the initial technical glitches, and I launched my Departing Landscape photography blog/website in November, 2010.
I published all my new digital photographs in the form of blog projects with thematic titles, such as The Meadow and The Departing Landscape. And as I became proficient at publishing my new work on my blog, I also began digitizing images from my earlier black & white silver print and color print projects and publishing blog versions of those earlier print projects.
(Note: to digitize existing print images I used a flat-bed scanner or photographed my prints with a digital camera and then adjusted the copy images with Photoshop software. As of 2022 I had pretty much finished getting my entire collection of early photography print projects-- going back to the mid 1960's--published on my blog.)
Publishing my photography projects on my blog transformed my creative process in many ways, but most importantly it allowed me to work more quickly and spontaneously, with a new found sense of freedom I hadn't known since my 1994-2000 project entitled Studies. Because of blog publishing I made practically no exhibition size inkjet prints after 2010; this freed up lots of time for me to focus on making, and publishing new projects on my blog. I discovered I enjoyed making rather small, quickly made projects on a particular visual or conceptual theme. When it used to take me over one or two years working on my earlier silver or color print projects, I am now usually able to complete blog projects within a period of four to six weeks.
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In January, 2012 The Spectrum Gallery, in Rochester, NY presented a mini retrospective of my work that consisted of both silver gelatin prints and recent digital prints. Then in 2015 I was approached by John Sobczak, director of a new contemporary art gallery in Milwaukee, the Alice Wilds, with an offer to represent my work. In 2018 the gallery presented a mini retrospective of my work that was much larger and more comprehensive than the Spectrum Gallery show. I made lots of inkjet prints for the Alice Wilds gallery and for the retrospective. I then did practically no printing of my work until I initiated the The Pandemic Inkjet Prints project in 2022 with my old Epson 7600 printer.
About the new prints & My experiences viewing them
All of the Pandemic Inkjet Prints that now exist in the collection were made in 2003 with the Epson P6000 printer and the UltraChrome HD inks. I have continued to use, as in the past, Epson Enhanced Matte paper and the UltraChrome HD Matte Black ink which is required for the Matte paper.
Though most of the prints at first appear and feel dark--and especially so because there are no surface reflections coming off the matte paper--nonetheless the prints are, upon closer scrutiny, indeed alive with a radiant creative energy which transforms the photographs (for me) into True, living symbols. In other words the "light of grace" is operative for me in each of the Pandemic Inkjet Prints, and each of the images in the collection functions for me as a True Symbol.
The darker print tonalities often contain a very subtle presence of light and color that existed in the place or thing I had photographed. Perhaps the light I sense emerging from within certain dark tones of the print has to do with the way the viewing light falls upon the surface of the matte paper and then spreads--in a subtle, diffused way--over the darker tones in the image. Sometimes, when I am viewing the darker toned prints, I feel as if I am confronted with a visual space that is both "there" and "not there;" both visible and invisible; both embedded deep within the matte paper's surface and yet, at the same time, suspended in a space above the print's surface. These nuances of my viewing experience are unique to the prints alone, the quality of the viewing light I use, and--very importantly--being able to see the print's surface directly, without glass and its reflections interfering with my seeing experience of the print and its matte surface.
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I continue to enjoy seeing my photographs published on my blog, and especially when I click on the images and view them in the dark-toned alternative viewing space. There is, however, no comparison to seeing the actual prints directly. And, just as viewing my blog photographs on different computers will yield different viewing experiences because of all kinds of mechanical and electronic-digital variables--including perhaps some ambient light in the computer room--similarly my prints will look different depending on the viewing light source, its brightness level and color temperature* . . . and even the color of the walls in the viewing room can influence how the printed image looks.
(*Note: when I am viewing my prints, I view them under a constant, uncontaminated light source consisting of 5,000K LED bulbs. The number 5,000 K indicates a color temperature--Kelvin--that is a slightly cool white vs. 3,000K which is a warm white.)
Regarding certain recurring visual & conceptual themes
I have selected twenty-five images to print for this project many of which were made in low light levels both inside my house and outside my house. (Note: see my text for the project Returning Home - Interiorization in which I have written about my basement photographs.) All of the Pandemic inspired images feel like they are about interiority though perhaps in varying ways, and even if the images are apparently about things or places, and even if they were made outside our house. In keeping with my past 36 years of practicing and studying the yogic teachings associated with the Siddha Yoga Path, the images in this project are, ultimately for me, about Sacred presence. The most basic teaching in Siddha Yoga is this: "See God in everything," and similarly "Nothing exists that is not Shiva, God, the divine Self." In my prints I sense the divine presence especially in a subtle kind of light that graces the image which inside the image.
Regarding important influences by other artists and writers
I want to mention again the importance of Giorgio Morandi's influence upon the Pandemic series of projects as a whole. My experience of practically all of Morandi's work, both his Still Lifes and this landscapes, are, for me, about interiority, the "The Light of Memory" and a presence that pervades his pictorial spaces.
(See my project The Light of Memory in which I write about Morandi's experiences of Fascism and his experiences of painting the landscapes he loved so much, just outside of Bologna, during the Second World War as bombs were exploding nearby.)
Amongst the images I have printed and included in this project there are, in addition to Still Lifes, many Thing-Centered photographs; and almost always the picture space and the quality of light in the images invoke a feeling of Intimacy, something that Bachelard writes about beautifully in his book The Poetics of Space. Associated with this feeling of intimacy there is for me the subtle presence of mystery, silence, and of course the Sacred. (See my blog project: Makom, "the Place".)
Death has been a constant thematic presence in my photography, dating back to the 1960's. How could it not be a presence in my Pandemic projects and their images. At least six million Covid related deaths occurred globally in the past two-three years? I invite you to see my collection of Death Themed photography projects.
It is difficult to speak of death in relation to my Pandemic projects. Even now, as the Pandemic appears to be winding down, still too many people are dying from Covid, especially among people above age 65 and those who have not been vaccinated. I am reading about new variant strains of the virus occurring in many countries, though not so much in the United States yet. Part of the darkness that pervades my Pandemic photographs is the abundance of grieving that pervades this entire planet for innumerable reasons, including the news that we continue to hear coming out of Putin's war on Ukraine. I have mentioned death in several of my projects, for example in Elegy ~ The Messenger ~ Finding Light In the Darkness. Here is an excerpt from that project:
"The photographs in this project [Elegy] are about opposing things--after all, we do live in a dualistic world. Thus they are about about light & darkness; the seen & the unseen; the inside & the outside; life & death; separation & union. However, because most of the photographs in this project function for me as True, living symbols, the images are also about finding light in the darkness and the Oneness of Being."
Other recurring themes
The Meadow (landscape) images, and the backyard photographs included in my Pandemic projects are generally as moody, atmospheric, and most often dark in both tonally and in feeling as the photographs made inside our house. I very much like the Meadow images and their presence within my Pandemic projects, especially in the way they provide continuity--both visually and in terms of feeling--between the the outside (natural) world and the "inner world" of our basement, the garage, and the various rooms and places in our house.
I have loved the meadow behind our house from the moment I first saw it, and it constantly invokes for me the memory of Morandi's landscape paintings and drawings. I imaginatively inhabit the meadow spaces with intimacy . . . even the space above the meadow which often seems to me charged with a feeling of closeness, as if it has become "rounded" in some inexplicable way in an attempt to contain and interiorize the vertical space. The arching quality of the space over the meadow is like a rainbow that connects the heavens with the earth.
And then there are the meadow's two ponds, which are like eyes that are constantly "looking up" into the heavens, and reflecting the light of the sky in all its forms into my own eyes. Sometimes when I look at the ponds they appear to be looking at me.
In the springtime, the tapering woods bordering the back edge of the meadow seems to function like the back walls of a huge amphitheater. The woods seems to reflect and amplify the sounds coming from inside the woods and inside the meadow and its ponds toward the back side of our house and the deck which extends off the back (west) side of our house. In the spring, when the sounds of the birds and the sounds of the peepers around the ponds begin to sing together in unison in the early evening hours, it's as if Gloria and I are being showered with the most mysterious music--the "music of the spheres"--as we stand out on back deck under the stars and listen . . .
Speaking of birds: There are lots of pictures of birds within the 19 Pandemic projects, and two of the inkjet prints in this project contain bird imagery (and at least two other images have bird-like presences). Three of the 19 Pandemic projects include the word Bird in their titles:
The Bird, The Angel of Tears . . . the Rain of Grace Sept 9, 2020 Pandemic Project III
The Conference of the Birds & Their Flight To Union Nov. 2, 2020Pandemic Project V
The Conference of the Birds II : Selected Teachings of the Hoopoe Bird Dec. 11, 2020 Project VI
The Conference of the Birds & Their Flight To Union is a collection of bird images from the history of my Creative Process. I seldom have been able to photograph real birds, but I've constantly found other ways of including bird imagery or bird presence in my photographs. Birds represent "spirit" for me. And in the yoga that I practice birds are often mentioned as symbols of the goal of yoga, Union with God, which is experienced as unbridled freedom, the fearless soaring of a great bird: the Bird of Liberation. Here is one version of the traditional teaching:
Self-effort and Grace are the two wings of the bird of Liberation.
The two snow photographs included in this collection of inkjet prints provide some visual and emotional relief from the darker toned images. All were made in our backyard and in the meadow. Since 2015 I have made over a dozen blog projects which contain an abundance of snow photographs. Of those projects, four were published during the two years I was working on the Pandemic series of projects. I have not created a snow project during the last two winters. The weather, my age, my knees, my eyes . . . all have made it very difficult to navigate in the snow covered meadow.
Regarding the Symmetrical Photographs
I have included four symmetrical photographs in this collection of twenty-four inkjet prints. When Gloria and I traveled to Turkey in 2011 I became enthralled with the symmetrical imagery I encountered in various visual forms of Islamic Sacred Art; indeed I was graced with several different kinds of extraordinary experiences of the sacred while traveling through Turkey. I was able to watch the meditative sacred dance of the Whirling Sufis of Konya to astounding sacred music; and we also visited the holy shrine of Rumi, one of the greatest poet saints of all times. We visited many Mosques, and we saw amazing sacred rugs and early handmade illuminated Qur'ans. I had wonderful experiences during the Call to Prayer that was broadcast throughout the towns we were visiting. And one of my most truly magical experiences of the sacred occurred while I was viewing an exhibition of ancient illuminated Qur'ans on display in an art museum in Istanbul. (See my project Prayer Stones which is the first Chapter in my large multi-chaptered project "An Imaginary Book" for detailed accounts of of this and other encounters of Islamic Sacred Art in Turkey).
My experiences of Islamic Sacred Art were transformative; indeed they inspired me to begin transforming some of my "straight" photographs into "symmetrical images" similar to what I had seen so often in Turkey. I most often use a four-fold constructing process in which four identical images are conjoined together at the very center of the constructed image such that each separate image is reflected in one of the others both vertically and horizontally. One of the symmetrical inkjet prints in this collection was constructed with the simpler two-fold version of the symmetrical process. At their very best the symmetrical photographs are both the literal visual embodiment of the sacred concept "The Oneness of Being" and a powerful visual carrier of grace. (I invite you to visit my blog page "The Straight Photograph" & Constructing the Four-fold Symmetrical Photographs which is dedicated to defining "straight" photographs, and demonstrating how I construct the "symmetrical" images.)
Symmetrical Photograph : "The Face (or Ritual Mask) of Maya, Goddess of Illusion"
(click on the image once, twice, to enlarge it)
Epilogue
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Finding Light In the Darkness
In Swami Muktananda's book The Perfect Relationship he quotes a great being, a saint, a Siddha, a True Guru, who warns:
"O dear one, awake! . . . The net of maya has been cast. Flee from it. Give up the company of desire . . . and [the] ego. See your own true Self."
Muktananda then follows the quote with these comments:
The [True] Gurus tell us again and again, "Awake! Perceive
your own Self. That which you are seeing now
is a magic show, a carnival of maya.
Darkness is nothing new in this world; it is familiar and ancient.
Equally ancient is our search for light. The more we are
steeped in darkness, the less we are able to find light.
But at the same time . . . the desire to find light
in the primordial darkness is ageless.
Only after knowing darkness is it possible to find light.
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This project was first announced on my blog's
Welcome Page on March 12, 2022 then
Revised in May & June, 2023.
Related Blog Project Links
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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