Portraits
& Faces
12x12" inkjet printed photographs
A 12x12" Inkjet Print blog PROJECT
Introduction
This collection of "portrait" images which has been drawn from my still-growing archive of 12x12" inkjet prints (dated 2023-24) includes images that play with the historical convention of the head & shoulder photographic portrait; and then there are some images with pay homage to Alfred Stieglitz and his abstract cloud equivalents. Some of the images are sharp, some are out-of-focus (O.F.), some have been transformed in any number of ways.
Regarding the question: What is the difference between a "Portrait" and a "Face"? . . . I will leave that open for you to contemplate.
I am not a purist, but, truly speaking, any photograph that functions for me as a True living Symbol is a "Self-Portrait" in regard to the way Symbols give visual form to the transcendent idea of The Oneness of Being. In the yoga that I have been practicing (since 1987) the ancient teachings say that everything in our created universe is pervaded by God (or Guru, or the divine Self). This ancient yogic philosophy feels right to me and I have experienced the Truth of this idea enough times to believe in its essential transcendental meaning.
On the other hand, there is a personal embodied self as well, and it's presence is equally a part of the Great Play of Consciousness in which each one of us perform our necessary roles. When the personal and transpersonal conjoin in the form of a photograph I am awakened to its innate power, manifested simultaneously by its visual and invisible creative energy and the feelings that energy invokes in me. Such is the nature, the magical wonder of the Oneness of Being and the grace of my Creative Process which transforms a photographic image into a True, living Symbol.
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I have written comments under many of the images included below, thus I feel I have said more than enough in this brief introduction. I do however want to bring your attention to how best to view my blog published 12x12" inkjet printed photographs, especially for those of you who are viewing this project with a desktop or laptop computer.
If you are viewing this blog project on a desktop or laptop computer, I encourage you to try to access what I assure you is a preferable, alternate blog viewing mode that presents the image in a darkened viewing environment, enlarged, and with a much sharper, luminous and tonally more accurate rendering of the image compared to that which first appears in the blog's default, published viewing mode.
Please read the brief statement below and, if you would like more technical information, I encourage you to click on the blue hyperlinked blog page title How to Best View My Online Blog Images.
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 you can darken or lighten your computer's screen brightness to suit your equipment and viewing preferences.
The Photographs
12x12" inkjet printed
Portraits
& Faces
A 12x12" Inkjet Print PROJECT, November, 2024
Circled, Lined Abstract Portrait
Image # 2 PORTRAITS (A 12x12" Inkjet Print PROJECT)
A shadow "portrait "of the artist"
I have made so many puddle photographs. In this instance I saw
an image of myself inside a luminous puddle on our driveway.
Visit my Puddle Photographs project
Gloria, my wife, August 1969
We had just gotten married in August, she with a concussion from a car accident in May.
I took this photography at a water reserve in Oklahoma while we were on or way to
Albuquerque, New Mexico where we would be studying art for 3 years at UNM
where I had received a teaching fellowship in their Photography program.
Larry, (O.F.) blind-sided by light
(O.F. stands for "Out-of-Focus")
Face (O.F.) with Triangles & Circles--lines & shapes--within a Square gray tonal matte
Gloria, 2017, Reading under a floor lamp in our rocking chair
The image is a reflection, in our picture window, which I photographed one evening.
A Portrait of Jessica (our daughter) as Persephone, Queen of the Underworld.
Visit my Persephone project
A portrait of my young nephew, Luke, contemplating the Universe.
Self-Portrait : lying dead in the Wisconsin River
I took this picture (of a friend) sun bathing in the Wisconsin River just a few weeks
after I had taken our children Shaun and Jessica on a camping trip on the River.
During our camping trip I hit my head on a tree invisible under the water and
nearly went unconscious. See my more detailed account of the accident and
my near-death encounter in Story #18, Death, Art, Writing
Portrait of a River Sprite near a small water fall in the Milwaukee River.
Visit my River Songs project
Portrait of a Snow Sprite
Visit my project Photographs from the Silver World
Image # 12 PORTRAITS (A 12x12" Inkjet Print PROJECT)
(O.F.) Sculptural Portrait / Death Mask
I took this photograph in one of the many churches Gloria and I visited while traveling in Italy
Gloria, sun bathing on a large New Mexico stone in a secluded valley
Portrait of a turtle (with three bubbles)
The turtle's head had emerged from under the water and seemed to be asking, posing, to be
photographed. It was being kept in our daughter's back yard pool. One day
it got out of the pool, disappeared, and was never to be seen again.
Image # 15 PORTRAITS (A 12x12" Inkjet Print PROJECT)
A veiled portrait of our cat, Mr. Blue.
Portrait of a grasshopper posing on the window ledge of our front storm door
See my Faint Photographs project
Portrait of a mythic bird (from my project In the Woods)
Image # 18 PORTRAITS (A 12x12" Inkjet Print PROJECT)
(Eye : Centered in Shadows)
This image holds great mystery for me. I did not see it coming as I worked
with the source image using the four-fold symmetrical process. It is in a way an image
of myself looking at myself. ~ The gold color in the horizontal line that points
toward the eye is itself worthy of wonder.
(Published first in mu Epilogue to the Giacometti project)
Image # 19 PORTRAITS (A 12x12" Inkjet Print PROJECT)
Symmetrical Photograph: Portrait, or Face, constructed from New Mexico Stones
I took the source image for this four-fold constructed symmetrical image in New Mexico, while
I was an MFA student at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. I see four stone birds
eating a vertical stone form that as a total gestalt becomes a face with dark eye sockets in
which linear "drawings" serves as eyeballs returning our gaze. Like so many of my
symmetrical photographs, this is a circular image--in a way--set within a square
format that is surrounded by a dark tonal matte. ~ This symmetrical image
is from a Photography Project in which I have tried to pay homage to the
wonderful Spanish composer, Federico Mompou.
Water Figure with colorful eyes and a dark mask
Gloria, a frightened look, her left hand touching the side of her face
I took this photograph (I think) when Gloria was undergoing intense chemo therapy.
(If I didn't take it then, this image has always been about that, to me.)
Portrait of a stone on a wooden plank in the snow (with a red branch over its face).
I have given this image another title: "Seeing with the eye of the Heart"
a phrase spoken once by my meditation teacher
This image is a 12x12" square version of the title photograph I used for a photography project inspired
by a book Soul Fury authored by Coleman Barks, the well known translator of the poems of Rumi,
the great Sufi Poet Saint. As you will see, below, I have taken some poetic license in the way I
changed Barks translated words of a Rumi poem which was published by Barks in Soul Fury.
As a young child I went eagerly to school
and loved listening to the teacher.
Growing up, I was so happy
to see my friends' faces.
But something different is happening
here further along in my story.
I came in visible form, a cloud.
Now I leave invisible, as wind.
The wind-blown Face of a Blue Angel . . . merging back into the invisible world
This photograph of a sculpted head was taken in Italy, in a church, I think; perhaps in the Vatican.
Vine Garage
My project The Garage Series began as a "character study" of the garages that
lined (both sides) of Milwaukee's working class alley ways. The facades
seemed like personalities, perhaps mirroring the people who owned
and cared for the simple humble buildings.
Negative/Positive (O.F.) Soap Face
The title's (out-of-focus) Soap Face is a reference to the source image I used along with
the transforming tools of photoshop: the inversion and blur tools. We humans live in
dualistic modes of being that have to do with our minds, our egos. Consequently
our vision of ourselves and others is quite significantly muddled, and skewed.
My photographs which function for me as True, living Symbols has been
a powerful antidote to dualism. I define the Symbolic Photograph
as the visual embodiment of the Oneness of Being. I have spent
much of my blogging life trying to write about this. I'm not
about to try to do it all here in this tapered block of text.
Portrait of a Broad Brook Stone with red lips
I have photographed many rocks and stones. This is the first and so far only image of a stone
with red lips. Broad Brook is a magical lively brook that flows down through southern
Vermont past the house in which my brother-and-sister-in-law) live. Some of my
most important work has made in Broad Brook and the Vermont Woods.
Portrait of a man reflecting on his life
Image # 29 PORTRAITS (A 12x12" Inkjet Print PROJECT)
Portrait of a fisherman, fishing in the fog
I very much identify with this image. Looking for things to photograph is very much
like fishing; one persists, patiently waiting for the feeling of something alive on
the other end of the line that serves as a call to action. I photograph in a state
very much like meditation: silent, receptive, and all the time consciously
preparing for that magical luminous moment . . . I consider every
photograph I make a Self-Portrait, but most especially those
images which function for me as a True, living Symbol.
Khidr : (Black & white) Snow Angel
Image # 31 PORTRAITS (A 12x12" Inkjet Print PROJECT)
Khidr, Earth Angel; the "Green Man"
After traveling to Turkey in 2011, I became fascinated by Islamic Sacred Art. ~ This image
was inspired by a wealth of research I did regarding the Sacred Art of Islam. My reading
led me to the work of Henry Corbin and Tom Cheetham who writes about Corbin's work.
See Cheetham's book Green Man, Earth Angel; The World Turned Inside Out;
After Prophesy; All the World an Icon
Gloria (O.F.) with both of her little fingers next to her nose & near her eyes
A Vatican Sculpted Head Transformed, by Wind, into an image of an Elephant
Elephants are remarkable beings, beyond our imaginations.
A Face (O.F.) with eyes closed
This could be a portrait (interpretive) of the person I photographed, but being out of focus
and the fact that the eyes are closed, the image is for me a "Face" and more than that
a photography that functions for me as a Symbol. True, living symbols cannot be
defined in a particular way for they transcend the limits of human language
and thus their meanings are unknown and open ended.
Animal Face (O.F.)
(The Presence or Spirit, or Soul of a Person)
The classic head and shoulder portrait is often my point of departure in this collection
of "portraits" made over a lifetime. In this case, I have never come closer at giving
visual form to a person's soul. In the yoga I practice, in which the Oneness of
Being is the dominate teaching, there is the understanding that everything
is pervaded by the same soul, the same one inner divine presence. This
picture for me is about That. I did have an experience once in which
I saw something like this image late one night while we both were
asleep. I saw Gloria's luminous presence looking down at me
laying on the bed and, at the same time, I could feel her
body, next to me, also asleep on the bed.
Circular Lined (O.F.) Negative/Positive Skeleton Face
Ganesh, with his hands over his face moving either toward or away from his eyes.
those who remember, honor and invoke his presence. This symmetrical image is (for me) alive
with his spirit which removes obstacles, and, in some cases creates obstacles by which one
can advance in their spiritual practice. The image was spontaneously given to me
via my creative process. I share it with you, with gratitude.
Looking over the North Meadow, Woods & Pond at sunset (Version 4; a Self-portrait)
This is a new version of an image which I have always experienced as being filled with
divine/Angelic presence. At the same time it invokes the remembrance--with great
respect and gratitude--of Alfred Stieglitz, an early mentor of mine when I was a
young college student studying photography. His series of cloud photographs,
which he called Equivalents (and Songs of the Sky) filled me with wonder,
the feeling I experience with this image. The dark matte tone has been
difficult for me to get just right. My idea I is that the matte should
resonate with the darker clouds within the image which hint of a
coming or passing storm. ~ I have always believed that I am
a picture-maker, and thus free to do what I must to get an
image to resonate for me in a way that is in synch with
what I feel is alive within the depths of my heart or
soul. When I succeed I get in touch with a calm
sense of silence. This Self-portrait is, for me
an appropriate image with which to
conclude this project.
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This project was first announced on
my bog's Welcome Page on
November 1, 2024
Related Blog Project Links
How to Best View My Online Blog Images with your desktop or laptop computer.
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.
