12x12"
Studies
~ Book Three ~
A Collection of 12x12" Inkjet prints, 2023
Introduction
This third blog collection of 12x12" Studies (inkjet printed) photographs has several "quirky" images within it, though when I first published this project (in December, 2023) I had intended it to have many more images in it from the early 1994-2000 3.5" silver gelatin "quirky" Studies projects in it. As I write this revised introduction (in March, 2024) I have moved many of those images into a separate 12x12" Inkjet Print PROJECT: The Early Studies Photographs (1994-2000). I intend to complete the project in March 2024.
All Eight of my Book Collections of 12x12" Studies projects are essentially those earliest versions of what I call the 1994-2000 Studies projects the second of which I dedicated to the great and quirky jazz composer and pianist, Thelonious Monk whose music was always unexpectedly spontaneously creative, honest and original. The early "Monk Studies" certainly was a powerful influence on all of the early and later Studies projects and when I am at my best and let the grace of my creative process takes over, I often feel in touch with Monks inexplicable genius. Thank you Monk.
Also, in this third collection of 12x12" inkjet Studies I tried more carefully to pay attention to the sequencing of the images, the way one image follows the last and anticipates the next, each impacting the way we see and feel about the others and perhaps the project as a whole as it unfolds within the blog's vertical scrolling mode of presentation. In this regard, the space between the images gain in meaning if you study the dynamics that occurs between any two images within the sequence. I feel there are, however, sections of the sequence that are not so impressive in this regard, due in part to several still life images I took out after the sequence was published. .
When I first started editing the images for inclusion in this project, I had wanted to emphasize the impact of Giorgio Morandi's still life painting upon my creative process with additional visual examples, despite the fact that I have previously mentioned and included various images that had been influenced by this great Italian painter within this rapidly growing series of 12x12" Studies Books. Because I wanted to be sure you saw a good number of images from my "Still Life" project inspired by Morandi, after I completed this project, I decided to devote an entire 12x12" Studies PROJECT to the theme: Still Life : 12x12" Images In Homage to Morandi. Thus, I moved many of the images I had planed to use in this project to the 12x12" Homage project. I have included here a few images from the four pages of Walkabout images which represent the last Chapter (#10) in the earliest Still Life blog project.
The Square Image
I wanted to include in my 12x12" Studies Inkjet Print collections as many of my most favorite images made over the the long history of my Creative Process in photographic picture-making, which includes over 150 projects created since the mid to late 1960's, but one of the restrictions I have placed on the 12x12"Studies project is that all the images must conform to the (12x12") square format. (I explain this in some detail in the first 12x12 Studies project.) Though many of the 12x12" images I've printed existed originally as square images, there were many other images that were longer in format (35mm, 4x5, the 4:3 ratio option on my digital camera, etc.) that had to adapt to the 12x12 square format. That eliminated several images I would have liked to include in the 12x12" series because certain long formatted images just cannot be turned into square images. On the other hand, as it turned out, I discovered that I like even better several of the 12x12" versions of the longer formatted images. My 2023-24 Inkjet Print Project does include a collection of longer--and LARGER sized--formatted inkjet print images.
(Note: The transformation of longer images into square images was made relatively easy for me using Photoshop software including some additional size adjusting tools besides the simple cropping off the image.)
It often seems to me the square image version of the longer formatted image gets me more directly and immediately into the essential quality that existed in the original, longer formatted images . . . images which sometimes have more peripheral information than necessary. The cropped (square) version of a longer image has often succeeded, in surprising ways, at achieving their own, new, unique (re-visualized, transformed) visual integrity.
The square format does excel in its natural ability to concentrate visual energy, and center the viewer "internally" in relation to the overall compositional elements and resonates between the various aspects of the transformed image. This is something that I have learned quite a lot about from working for many many years with the idea of the Thing Centered Photograph which dates back to the mid 1980's.
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If you've read the introductory material in the first two Books you probably would appreciate my not going over that material again. Whatever more I feel needs to be said I will include in the titles under the pictures and any commentary and links to other blog projects I have added beneath selected images.
I will repeat here my encouragement to you to read this blog link Regarding Some possible Options for Viewing My Blog Published Photographs. This applies expecially to those of you who are using a desktop or laptop computer, and to those of you who would like to know the more technical aspects of posting images on a blog.
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Welcome to Book Three of the 12x12" Studies project. I hope you will explore all of the other 12x12" Studies Inkjet Print BOOKS & PROJECTS and the LARGER PRINTS Collections. Now, on to this project's 12x12" photographs.
12x12" Studies Photographs
~ Book Three ~
12x12" Book THREE, Image #1 Bedpost & shadow of bedside lamp
12x12" Book THREE, Image #2 "Chromatic Field"
Visit my project Triadic Memories. "Chromatic Field" was a term used by
American composer Morton Feldman for the way sounds--sustained and
and suspended in space and time--resonated together as a unified field.
Triadic Memories was the title of one of Feldman's compositions
which inspired my photography project.
12x12" Book THREE, Image #3 Turtle & bubbles in backyard pond
12x12" Book THREE, Image #4 Bather, in Lake Michigan
The figure is looking at you.
12x12" Book THREE, Image #5 Puddle on snow covered driveway
(Visit my WATER / Puddle project)
12x12" Book THREE, Image #6 Symmetrical Photograph
The source image for this symmetrical photograph was a New Mexico landscape I made
in 1971-72 for my MFA Visual Thesis requirement. (click here to see more of the
New Mexico landscape images) I used many of those landscape images as
source images for a series of symmetrical photographs in homage to the
music of Federico Mompou. To learn more about "source" images
and how I make my symmetrical photographs click here.
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12x12" Book THREE, Image #7 Fence, shadow, red line and dot
12x12" Book THREE, Image #8 Hand Truck in parking lot in turkey, seen through a bus window
I took this picture while traveling in Turkey. It was a rainy day and I was in a tour bus
parked in a lot for buses only, at some very important historic Tour Stop. The windows
were quite dirty, and some rain drops had collected on the glass.
See my project "An Imaginary Book" which was inspired by
a series of remarkable experiences of Islamic Sacred Art
that had occurred during the tour.
I have created a three-part project regarding "the window" as a recurring subject and
conceptual theme in my photography. Visit: Window Pictures
12x12" Book THREE, Image #9 A Milwaukee boy looking for something by a fallen tree in water
From my 1983-84 project Images of Eden.
12x12" Book THREE, Image #10 Old railroad bridge, cement silos, smokestack, trees
From my 1984-85 project City Places, the project that followed Images of Eden.
The important concept Makom has to do with "Place" in a very special
way. Please visit my project Makom,"the Place"
12x12" Book THREE, Image #11 Bedroom Light Shapes
This photograph was made in Albuquerque, New Mexico while a graduate Student.
It is from a 1971-72 project Intimate Space-Interior House Photographs which
was inspired by Gaston Bachelard's wonderful book The Poetics of Space
which has been a life-long inspiration for my photography. The ideas
in Bachelard's book relate to the Makom concept, and
"interior space" is at the very heart of my project
The image above was solarized, a process I used in my work
between 1974-76 for three consecutive projects that
also involved multiple-exposure.
12x12" Book THREE, Image #12 "Walking Death Valley"
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12x12" Book THREE, Image #13 Symmetrical Photograph (snow drifts)
This important "blue" photograph has been published in several projects.
Visit: The Blue Pearl & Blue Angels
Most of my symmetrical photographs have (for me) a sacred presence and indeed
they are usually functioning for me as True, living Symbols. In this regard
I invite you to visit these three project links:
12x12" Book THREE, Image #14 Airplane taking off, Memphis Airport
This image, and the one that follows below, are part of my Walkabout series of three
projects which are part of my Morandi inspired Still Life project.
I read many many books about Morandi and there was in one of them a mention of
his daily walks through his beloved Bologna where he lived his entire life.
Writers speculated that the architecture in Bologna was an inspiration
for some of his still life compositions. I liked the idea of taking
walks and making Morandi inspired still life photographs in
places other than my own home. I invite you to
visit my three Walkabout Still Life projects.
12x12" Book THREE, Image #15 "Wire Book Stand " (in storefront window)
This image is part of my Walkabout Project.
Visit: Thing-Centered Photograph.
12x12" Book THREE, Image #16 "Basement corner & Pull String"
This image is from my large collection of Pandemic Inspired Photography Projects.
The Pandemic images tend to rather dark and moody interiors. I associate this
thing-centered image with a hangman's noose. There were so many stories
of people feeling depressed and suicidal coming out in the news all the
time. The angularity of the image also reminds me of large cranes used
in the construction of skyscrapers and other tall or large buildings.
12x12" Book THREE, Image #17 Cloths line Pole & Wind-drifted Snow
I took this picture from our picture window which looks out over our back yard to
the meadow beyond it. I love the contrasty light on the snow, revealing all the
textures, drift lines & footprints; I like the relationship between the dark pole
shadow and the pine tree shadows. I have made many many photographs
from our picture window. See The Meadow project which includes images
of the two ponds and tapering woods. I could not find many Meadow
images that could be successfully cropped into square images.
12x12" Book THREE, Image #18 Grasshopper on our front storm door
See my project Faint Photographs.
12x12" Book THREE, Image #19 Old Man in a hat & overcoat walking away
This negative image is the male counterpart to the image I just wrote about, above.
It has much of the same haunting quality I feel in the image of the woman.
This image was also made in the mid 1960's when I was a student at RIT
in Rochester, NY. Much of that early work was influenced by
Dave Heath's book Dialogues with Solitude.
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12x12" Book THREE, Image #20 "Mask" (from a sculpture I photographed in Italy)
12x12" Book THREE, Image #21 The Old Purse
I photographed this purse in Gloria's (my wife's) closet.
I think it was her mother's purse.
12x12" Book THREE, Image #22 Early Morning Birdsong
12x12" Book THREE, Image #23 Garlic (hung up to dry in our garage)
I see a bird, here, with its wings outspread and its head drooping.
Its one of my Pandemic Inspired photographs.
12x12" Book THREE, Image #24 "Chair Pranam"
I took this picture after participating in a live stream video meditation program honoring
Swami Muktananda, one of the Great Beings of India and founder of the Siddha Yoga
receiving her grace in a two day meditation Intensive with her.
Pranam is an act of worship in which one bows to the True teacher, such that the heart rises up
above the head. One of the primary teachings in Siddha Yoga is that everyone
shares the same One Heart, and that God, the divine Self of all, dwells
in every created thing, and most importantly, in every human heart.
Thus the right understanding about pranaming is that one is
honoring one's own divine Self as well as the True teacher.
Gloria and I were visiting her sister Florence in Vermont that Sunday morning when I took
the photograph immediately after the live stream program. Florence introduced us to
Siddha Yoga and Gurumayi, and we feel so grateful to her for that. The act
of pranam is also an expression of love and gratitude. I was amazed when
I saw the chair "pranaming" in the circle of light (which was coming
from the glass table top) . It was how I was feeling after having
just experienced the program's heart-opening conclusion.
Photography became a form of meditation for me after I met Gurumayi and began
practicing Siddha Yoga, and it remains a form of worship, now; a way
of honoring the divine Self which, the Great Beings teach, "pervades
everything visible and invisible."
12x12" Book THREE, Image #25 Wooden pegged coat rack with a touch of blue light
This coat rack was near the back entrance to my brother-in-law's house.
The blue is the daylight coming into the hallway near the back door's window.
See my Walkabout III Project
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12x12" Book THREE, Image #26 Symmetrical Photograph Rosehips, Shadows & Flies
12x12" Book THREE, Image #27 A young man and woman inside a circle of light
I have written about this image which was included in my
new project Silent Dialogues
12x12" Book THREE, Image #28 "The gray cloud."
This image, and the next two images are from my Negative print series. I titled the image
after a piano composition written by Franz Liszt, Nuages Gris (Gray Clouds)
12x12" Book THREE, Image #29 Negative Print Series (Memories from Childhood)
My inspiration for the 1978-80 Negative Prints series was some snapshots I found in a box
in my mom's coat closet in her house trailer. The ones that attracted me most were the
light toned ("washed out") images of sheets hanging on the cloths lines in our
backyard, in Piqua, Ohio. Before my dad died (when I was nearly 10 years old)
my mom was living the American Dream. After his death she became very
depressed. In these (Memories of Childhood) images the white space
(usually) represents the bliss of childhood, a divine presence.
12x12" Book THREE, Image #30 "Man leaning against his garage"
This image from the Negative Print Series is the only photograph that has a human being in it.
He could be looking at something he planted; he could be dispairing about something.
The white space looks menacing, like a void one could fall into.
For this project I made black and white film positives, which I processed myself,
rather than negatives. When I printed the positives they came out negative.
I wanted to see if I could learn to pre-visualize the images when I was out
photographing. The key to the whole project was that all things dark
would be light and all things light would be dark in the finished
print. I wanted the white in the image to merge with the white
border that surrounding the image. For the 12x12" Studies
prints I wanted the border tone luminous silvery gray.
12x12" Book THREE, Image #31 Symmetrical Photograph : White paper plate with a black hole
The hard edges on the left and right sides of the plate and the square space
at the center of the image, are surprising odd echoing reminders
of the presence of the square in the 12x12" project.
12x12" Book THREE, Image #32 White extension cord in black space
I have mentioned the Thing Centered Photographs earlier, above. For the
digital print versions of this idea, it was easy to suspend objects in black
space which represented for me Silence. For this 12x12" Studies print
I wanted a slightly off black tone to provide a border and define the
image space within it. I'm not sure why.
I have been influenced by the dark alternate viewing
space I like to see my published blog images presented in, the
way the dark tone of the viewing space is always slightly
different than the darkest tone within the image.
12x12" Book THREE, Image #33 "Hammer in a saw shaped puddle"
12x12" Book THREE, Image #34 The United States Map
12x12" Book THREE, Image #35 The Light on the stalk of corn (in a corn field)
12x12" Book THREE, Image #36 Brick on a dark heavy material
I love this image. It is as compact and perfect as the object at the center
of our attention. Solid Gold. I have photographed so many bricks in my
life, but never so "right" as this one before us now in the 12x12" Studies format.
12x12" Book THREE, Image #37 Ruin fragment, Turkey, sacred site.
I love the egg (in its "womb"), and the way the white (slightly blue) snail-like
ancient fragment of stone floats in a sea of darker tonalities.
And I like the energetic brush-like swatch of darker tones that runs diagonally
across the entire form, from the left edge, through egg, and then on past the
center point of the spiral to the far right edge. And, its interesting the
way the bottom edge of the swatch aligns with the top edge of the
darker stone underneath and behind it.
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12x12" Book THREE, Image #38 Suspended ladder and falling man in star-filled the night sky
This Studies image was first published (without the border tone) as an
18x18" image in the project Silent Dialogues, 2023.
12x12" Book THREE, Image #39 Negative/Positive Swan with suspended point of light
12x12" Book THREE, Image #40 Triangulated, Circled Chromatic Field
This image began as a Chromatic Field, then I "Triangulated" it and "Circled" it and
inversed it multiple times. Anyways, visit my Triadic Memories project
which includes multiple project sections related to this image.
12x12" Book THREE, Image #41 Symmetrical Thing Photograph (plastic coated wire)
I like parenthetically identifying the source image (the subject matter)
photographed for some of the Symmetrical Photographs.
I think, because I take a certain pleasure in the
transformation that manifests in the
process of making the symmetrical images.
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12x12" Book THREE, Image #42 Symmetrical Photograph (Snow Drift forms)
See my project : Snow : Photographs from the Silver World
12x12" Book THREE, Image #43 Symmetrical Photograph (blue branches, red ground)
I have used variations on this inversed image in several projects: visit
The Rising Sun, a sequence of twelve symmetrical photographs
&
Blue Angels A photography project abut Death, Angels, & a Blue Pearl
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2x12" Book THREE, Image #44 Symmetrical Photograph (Broad Brook / Death Project)
Visit the first published project in which this image was presented:
In the "Death" project the image is much darker.
This 12x12" version of the image is a celebration, the birth of Light,
a resurrection of the original darker version of the image.
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12x12" Book THREE, Image #45 Symmetrical Photograph (Maple leaves in blue sky)
I have concluded this project with five symmetrical photographs. I seldom
if ever title the symmetrical images, for they almost always are about
something not sayable, that is to say, they are almost always about
transformation and the Sacred. In this regard, they are True,
living Symbols, images pervaded by the transforming energy of grace.
This particular image reminds me of a bird in flight, not soaring
flight, but the sort flying I associate with a helicopter. A vertical rising up.
My friend John, who was also long ago one of earliest students at
UW-Milwaukee and now the director of the gallery that represents my
my work . . . when he first saw this image (in a much larger printed
format) he said something like "I never saw anything like this before."
He seemed serious and what he said sounded rather humorous to
me, I guess because to me this image is (strangely) humorous,
awkwardly, mysteriously Iconic.
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This project was published and announced
on my blog's Welcome Page July 25, 2023
then it was revised again in
December 2023
March, 2024
Related Blog Photography Projects
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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