This revised blog project was published September 12, 2024
Things In Their Place
Thing-Centered Photographs : Part I
A 12x12" Inkjet Print PROJECT ~ May 2024 ; revised September 12, 2024
%20%20%20D%20255-18%20%20%20.jpg)
Introduction
The phrase "Thing-Centered Photographs" has multiple meanings for me, and in that regard I have decided to revise the original version of this project (published back On May 15, 2024) and re-publish this new version of the project with a different title, placing emphasis on the idea of Place as it impacts some essential meaning inherent in the things I have photographed and the images I have chosen to include in the 12x12" inkjet print PROJECT before you now.
I have also identified this project, as Part I of the Thing-Centered Photographs concept. Part two will be entitled Things Suspended In Black space; White Space & Inversed Space).
*
Thing-Centered Photographs could mean many things, of course. For example, it could mean I have placed images in the center of my 12x12" square-formatted images. Or I have placed things at the very center of my heartfelt and my most fully conscious-possible attention.
Then, as my part two project title makes clear, Thing-Centered Photographs could mean isolating (or suspending) a thing in the center of nothing but black space, or white space . . . in other words, space without a sense of Place as we might ordinarily think of space photographically.
*
Since this is a 12x12" inkjet print PROJECT the format of these pictures are square, a format to which I have become fully committed since beginning my 2023-2024 Inkjet Print Project which now consists of ten 12x12 Inkjet Print Books (collections of favorite images from my huge inventory of blog projects and digital images made since 2011), and twenty-one 12x12" Inkjet Print PROJECTS (collections of images that relate to each other in some defined thematic way, including subject matter, formal issues, conceptual ideas, etc.).
The square format makes the most sense visually for me in relation to the concept Thing-Centered Photographs because all sides of the frame are equal, and this will intuitively direct (almost force) a viewer to the center of the space where visual energy naturally will build up and out of the center with greatest intensity. Indeed, my thing-centered photographs often look very simple and straightforwardly centered on a thing which has been placed in the center of the square frame. In trying to honor a thing, its most essential nature, quality, meaning . . . placing a thing in the center of the frame makes the most visual sense. Most other formal options would place more emphasis on the photographer's decision to do otherwise and thus draw attention to his or her self.
*
In this project I am placing emphasis on the way a thing's meaning is intimately related to the space in which I have "found" or discovered the thing. In other words, the visual context in which the thing is photographed (pictured) becomes essentially an extension of the thing itself. In special rare cases the thing and the space it existed in at the time I took the picture becomes merged, One and the same, an image that celebrates the Oneness of Being which is always a goal I have as a central intention of my creative process, and which can only be achieved by an image that functions for me as a True, living Symbol, or Symbolic Photograph.
The concept of Place is thus obvious central to the meaning I am interested in articulating in the photographs, and I have a very particular way of trying to define Place that I have devoted two earlier project to. Rather than write in any detail about it here, please visit those project directly. The earliest project is entitled Makom, the Place which was published in 2019 /2022 in regards to a series of project I created in Milwaukee. The more recent project is a 12x12" inkjet print PROJECT entitled MAKOM.
At the heart of the MAKOM concept is the idea that every Thing in this world has something important to say to us, and that every Things is what it is and means the way it means because of the Context or Place in which we experience them. This context of course can be visual or any other kind of context that manifests in one's own personal experience. In this regard I have strived in many instances below to add written verbal context where appropriate in the titles I have provided or perhaps additional text besides that which is included in the title and will be found below the title as additional elaboration in regards to the image, the subject photographed, etc. At times I will surrender to the impulse to be metaphoric or poetic in my titles, but in most cases you will find the titles to be essentially descriptive.
*
The phrase Thing-centered Photographs also mean (for me) that, at the very center or heart of any Thing there is a living presence, an essential aura or meaning that is shared equally by every created thing because of its all pervasive sacred or divine Nature. In the yoga I practice the primary teaching is that nothing exists that is not Shiva; nothing exists that is not God; nothing exits that is not a form of the divine, Supreme Self or Universal Consciousness (i.e., Kundalini Shakti, the Creative Power of the Universe). In other words, Shiva, Shakti, God, one's own Self are One and the same:
Kundalini Shakti is a great power. She is the secret of the universe . . . [She] is so deft in Her own creation. No only does She create but She creates everything upon Her own being. A potter makes pots using clay, but She creates everything out of Her own being, and upon Her own being. Therefore, She is called both transcendent and immanent. She is in the universe, She is also beyond the universe. She is within everything, yet She transcends everything also. She is both the womb and the child. What an incredible, infinite play this is! Gurumayi Chidvilasanda, from the book Resonate With Stillness (a SYDA publication)
This way of understanding the True nature of Creation is essentially aligned with the concept of MAKOM and "the Oneness of Being." Thus, for me, when I present a Thing in the center of my photograph, and in the center of its Place (in the sense of MAKOM) the act represents a form of acknowledgment, act of honoring or worshiping the sacredness of the thing and simultaneously the sacredness of my own divine Self, that creative energy of the universe which dwells within all things in this created world we live in. The great yogic sages teach that God is present in every human being, and most particularly, they say that God (Shiva, Shakti, the divine Self) dwells in the center of one's Being which is Human Heart (which is more than a physical place; it is an energy center or chakra, and thus a transcendent or "spiritual" Place).
Edward Weston #30 Pepper (1930)
In the mid-1960's, as a young student of photography, I discovered Edward Weston's photograph, the #30 Pepper, on the walls of George Eastman House. I mean, I was really drawn to it. I read Weston's Daybooks in which he describes his experience of making that photograph and his ideas about his creative process. I was so deeply moved, inspired, by what he wrote and by the #30 Pepper photograph he made that he became my primary model as an artist. The image remains for me today as an image radiant and alive with a magical, spiritual energy. I see (as many others have as well) two lovers merged into one another; I experience a kind of "seeing energy" that Weston somehow concentrated in the image; and I feel (and perceive) that it has eyes and is looking at me!
I felt, intuitively--even back then--that Weston was absolutely right about Things having an inner essence which was somehow expressed by its visual form, or perhaps the visual form of the photograph itself. And that essence could also be extended and amplified by the context that the thing existed within. In this regard, then, the sense of Place is for me an essential part of the Pepper #30 photograph. Weston had placed the pepper in a large metal funnel, a round space that echos the forms of the pepper and helps illuminate and reveal the forms of the pepper. This placement of the pepper in the funnel celebrates the the very idea of the Oneness of Being. It took me many years to truly understand what this "essence of a thing" was really about, but I am grateful to Edward Weston (and my destiny) for leading me in that direction.
*
In 1982 I read the book News of the Universe, authored by the American poet Robert Bly (published in 1980 by Sierra Club). It was for me (and continues to be) one of the most important books I ever read. The whole book resonated for me, but most especially it was Bly's chapter devoted to what he called the Thing or Object or "Seeing" Poem that awakened in me a profound Truth. What Bly wrote in that chapter, and the poems he included in that chapter--by Rilke, Francis Ponge--and particularly by Charles Simic-- really "knocked my socks off."
Five years later, in 1987, I had met Gurumayi Chivilasananda and received her grace and began to study and contemplate her yogic teachings. I was astonished to recognize how the ideas Weston wrote about, and which Bly wrote about in his News of the Universe were closely aligned with Gurumayi's teachings.
I started making Thing-centered Photographs in a very deliberate, conscious way after I read News of the Universe. My 1985-88 photography project Family Life was the first project in which thing-centered images appeared; and then in 1992-93 I devoted an entire project to Thing-Centered Photographs. Then in 1994 I began a six year-long project entitled Studies 1994-2000, which were miniature silver gelatin square prints (3.5" x 3.5"). Many of those little snapshot-like images* were Thing-Centered photographs.
(*Note: see also my 12x12" Inkjet Print PROJECT: The 12x12" Early Studies Photographs)
All of the early Studies photographs were black and white silver gelatin prints, and I still feel that black and white is a perfect medium for Thing-Centered Photographs, just as I feel that the square is their perfect format. Even when I transitioned into digital camera work and printing (with the support of Photoshop software) and gradually transitioned into color photography, I never stopped making Thing Photographs. I have included many recent examples of color-digital Thing-centered photographs in my collection of images here, below.
Also, in 2003, after I began transitioning to digital imaging cameras and making inkjet prints, I began scanning many of my favorite Thing Photograph negatives so I could make inkjet prints of those earlier b&w images. (In 2010, after initiating my blog, I was able to use those digital files for publishing the images on my blog as well.) I have mentioned this because you will probably notice (especially if you enlarge them) that several of the images I've included in this project have a "grainy" surface appearance. This texture is the grains of silver that existed in the original silver gelatin-based black & white negatives I had made and then later scanned. I like the grain, especially when it adds a certain presence of light--a silvery illumination--to the inkjet printed images.
Several of the images in this 12x12 project were printed specifically for this project from photographs I had published in the following blog projects:
The remaining images in this collection were drawn from my recently published 12x12" Inkjet Print Books and Projects.
* * *
I want to get back again to the idea of Place in my Thing-Centered Photographs, and in this regard I would like once again to encourage you to visit my first blog project that explains the concept of Makom, the Place, and the more recent 12x12" inkjet print MAKOM PROJECT.
In the very first photograph I have presented in this project (copied immediately above) the warm color of the light from the setting sun is an important part of the visual context in which I found the spider plant. Of course, the glass bowl, filled with water, is another important part of the visual context in which I found the primary subject, the spider plant (in a glass bowl filled with water). Also, the reflection of the bowl, and the dark granite kitchen counter (in which the bowl is reflected) is important in the way they contribute to the sense of place in the photograph and the overall essential, pictorial gestalt of the image. All these different elements of Place and their relationship to the Thing situated in the picture's center celebrate not only the thing itself, but a greater essential Truth: the Oneness of Being.
It seems to me in the image of the spider plant, the Thing and the Place (and all of its complex relationships) have merged together; I cannot separate--in the way I see the image--the things pictured, and how they all coexist in a meaningful way together in the frame. And, in this regard, I must again briefly mention, as I always do in my blog projects, that images which invoke this kind of visual-sacred revelation of the Unity of All Things . . . are what I call True, living Symbols, or Symbolic Photographs.
*
A brief note about "How to Best View My Online Blog Images"
If you are viewing this project on a desktop computer or a laptop, I encourage you to read my blog explanation regarding How to Best View My Online Blog Images. In brief, click on the images once, then once again; this will (hopefully) enlarge the image and present it in a dark tonal environment at its maximum viewing quality in terms of image sharpness, luminance, tonal gradations, etc. Once you have entered this alternate viewing space you can then use your zoom-in & zoom-out keyboard (or menu) options to adjust the image size, and darken or lighten your computer's screen brightness to suit your equipment and viewing preferences.
* * *
The Photographs
Image #1 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
Spider plant (in a bowl of water with golden light from the setting sun)
Image #2 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
A stone & its shadow sliding to a standstill
I have made many, many photographs of stones. This image has
a quality of joy and enthusiasm in the way that the stone appears
to be sliding to a silent standstill, locked into a posture of
stillness and closeness with its own deep shadow.
See my blog Collection of Stone Photographs
Image #3 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
A limbless tree, enveloped in fog in a city park
This photograph is from my Images of Eden project about park Places
Image #4 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
A shadow "portrait of the artist" inside a driveway puddle
(A Pandemic inspired photograph)
See my Puddle Photographs project
Image #5 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
Miniature Pony & its reflection in a puddle
Image #6 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
A cluster of plants in the Meadow after a snow storm
A roll of paper towels in my basement studio
Image #8 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
A Glass table in a corner under a basement window
Image #9 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
A young boy sitting on the edge of an ocean
from my Family Life 1985-88 blog project
Image #10 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
"River Sprite" (near the Milwaukee River's dam) Visit my River Songs blog project
Image #11 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
Bedpost--in late afternoon light--in front of a shadow of a bedside lamp
Image #12 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
Turtle & three bubbles in a backyard pond
Image #13 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
A Snow Puddle in our driveway, next to a leafless bush & falling snow
Image #14 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
An Empty Book Stand and its shadow (in a storefront window in late afternoon light)
Image #15 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
A ring, suspended from a pull string next to a corner in my basement studio
This image (and a few others in this collection) is from my large collection of
Pandemic Inspired Photography Projects. Many of my Pandemic images
tend to be rather dark and moody interiors. I associate this "thing" image
with a hangman's noose, I think because of the many stories I had heard
in the news of people feeling depressed and suicidal. ~ The electric
wire and the hanging circle also reminds me of large cranes
used in construction sites for large buildings.
Image #16 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
A Grasshopper on our front storm door sliding window and screen
See my Faint Photographs project
Image #17 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
Old Purse (on a high closet shelf)
I photographed this purse in my wife's closet. I think it was her mother's purse.
Image #18 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
Garlics (hung up to dry in our garage)
I see a bird, here, with its wings outspread and its head drooping.
Yes, its one of my Pandemic Inspired photographs.
Image #19 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
"A Chair Pranaming in a circle of light"
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.
I took the photograph in Vermont on a Sunday morning following the yoga program.
We were visiting Florence, Gloria's sister, who had introduced us to Siddha yoga
and Gurumayi. We feel so grateful to her for that. and the act of pranaming
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
a nearby glass table top). It was expressing for me how I was feeling
after I had 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 in 1987.
Image #20 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
Hammer in a shadowed saw-shaped puddle reflection of the sky"
%20.jpg)
Image #21 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
Illuminated corn stalk in a field of corn
Image #22 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
A brick placed upon on a dark roofing material
This image is my favorite brick photograph. I have tried photographing bricks all my life!
but none have been as perfect, as "golden" as this one is for me.
Image #23 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
Ruin fragment with egg and spiral
I took this photograph in a sacred ruin in turkey. I love the egg in its womb,
and the way the white (slightly blue) snail-like ancient fragment floats in a
sea of darker textured tonalities. I like the energetic brush-like swatch
of darker tones that run diagonally across the entire form from the left
edge, through the egg, and then on past the center point of the spiral
to the far right edge. And, it' is interesting the way the bottom
edge of the swatch aligns with the top edge of a darker stone
beneath and behind the lighter stone fragment.
%20snow%20covered%20shiva%20rock%20IMG_4763%20%20copy.jpg)
Image #24 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
Snow Covered Rock, early morning, after the storm
I took this picture twice, in a way. The night before the snowstorm
I took a picture of the same rock from the same angle and distance without the snow.
See both versions in my project:
Image #25 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
Child's foot, purple skirt, blue tape on a table . . .
The "thing" next to the blue tape, (?) I don't know what it is. An object? Some hair?
Perhaps a scribble left on the table? The foot belongs to our grand daughter. Every
thing here is in its own right space in relation to each other, including the two
leaves next to the turquoise garden hose: eyes which are watching it all . . .
Image #26 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
Foot print left in the blue nocturnal snow
I took this photo late at night after arriving home from a trip out of town. Gloria had been
getting responses from the local police about 911 calls they were getting from Gloria's
mobil phone with no explanation. They felt obligated to check out our house, so
when we arrived pulled into our driveway, we saw footprints in the snow all
around the house and on our back deck. We got freaked out by the whole
misunderstanding. I took some "documentary photographs" as evidence
of a break-in before we called the police and learned from them all
about the "butt calls" and their search of our house. We all had a
good laugh about, but this picture always haunted me. The
blue snow had something to with the light from our front
porch, and the way my camera had been set for a
very different kind of light source.
Image #27 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
An Old, cracked bar of soap in a chipped ceramic oval dish
There is, for me, a pleasure in briefly describing what one sees in a photograph.
My descriptive title did not include mention of the "eclipsed moon" above
and to the right of the soap dish, nor the reflection of the underside of
the soap dish in the granite surface, nor those unknown presences
lurking in the darkness of the background, nor the strange
nocturnal-moonlit-feeling tone of the picture as a whole.
I will never stop making "thing centered photographs."
Many of my thing photographs have stories
that I associate with the images.
Image #28 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
Plastic drinking cup, Alaska hotel
Visit my Alaska project
Image #29 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
"Helium Birthday Balloon Ribbon"
from Part viii, Zen Practice, of my Silver World project
Image #30 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
Hand with a bandaged finger & 4th of July sparkler
Image #31 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
"The white garden hat" (worn by our grand daughter crouching in our garden looking for cucumbers)
Image #32 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
House plant in front of a window looking out toward a winter landscape
Image #33 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
Eraser, chalk board & chalk
(Note: many of my "thing" images might better qualify as a "Still Life" image
rather than a "Thing Photograph" though usually both kinds of images
share a similar straight-forwardness in their pictorial presentation. ~
The primary subjects in this photograph form a visual constellation
consisting of of "chalk related things" (though I can't help but
wonder why the piece of calk is in the trough below a
white-board designed for dry markers.)
Image #34 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
Plastic flowers in a black square on a white dish . . .
(or is the white dish in front of the black square sitting on the horizon line? Morandi
played with tricky spatial relationships in many of his Still Life paintings.)
This image is from my Still Life project in homage to Morandi.
Also visit my 12x12" inkjet PROJECT : "Still Life"
Image #35 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
Dried Flowers in a small vase in front of a sun dappled
curtained window, and behind the curtain a green leafed bush
Image #36 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
A rotted burlap bag full of stones laying on a stone floor
in the half-light of an old neglected warehouse
Image #37 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
Illuminated ice water in a plastic glass
sitting on a smooth surfaced light reflecting table
Image #38 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
Aluminum covered night night with a shadow and blue under-glow
Image #39 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
Mr. Blue (our cat) between the curtain & window looking at me
(or is he looking out the window?)
Image #40 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
Snow covered shovel hanging on a wood plank
The gray tone beneath the shovel is not a shadow; it's an indentation or shallow hole in the snow.
Image #41 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
Hanging leaf with a sunlit cloud behind it
This photograph was included in my early Studies project (1994-2000)
It was printed as a miniature gelatin silver print 3.5" square.
Image #42 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
Bird Bath, with a stone and leaf reflections in the water
Image #43 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
Metal Serving tray with reflections of a tea kettle & a golden glowing lamp in its surface
from my Still Life project in homage to Morandi
Image #44 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
Black & White Peach and its shadow on a sunlit table and its"leaf" line
This image seems particularly black and white to me, in part, I think because
of the illuminated gray textural tones in the top of the peach and in
the similar gray tones on the edges of its shadow.
Fish swimming in a "starlit" pond
(not really; I'm take some poetic license here))
%20D%2050-18%20%20%20copy.jpg)
Image #46 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
(Inversed) Telephone Pole in a field & fog
Inversion is a photoshop tool that allows me to reverse the tonal range in an image:
black becomes white; white becomes black; grays become their counterpart tone.
Misted window & tears with a styrofoam cup on the floor next to a wall
Image #48 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
Ink covered soap bottle on a glass covered table in a printmaking studio
Chalk lines on an athletic field with footprints all about
Opened letter on a sunlit picnic bench with a constellation of illuminated nailheads
Image #51 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
The edge of a large bush or perhaps the wall of a building covered with ivy
A potted plant shadow & cross form behind a drawn window shade
Shadow bird image in a piece of sunlit cracked plaster wall with lines
Bicycle rim suspended by a cord against an the wall of an old garage
Image #55 12x12" inkjet PROJECT: Thing-centered Photographs (Things in their Place)
Early morning light illuminating the top of a Mountain and surrounding clouds,
and below, the dark waters of a Lake
*
This project was first announced on
my bog's Welcome Page on
May 15, 2024
Revised September 7 & 12, 2024
Related Blog Project Links
(Watch for my next 12x12" Inkjet PROJECT, which will be Part II of my Thing Centered Photographs Project which will include my photographs of things (and photographs of people) suspended in black space, white space, and inverted tonalities.)
How to Best View My Online Blog Images with your desktop or laptop computer.
MAKOM, the Place (the earlier blog project)
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.
