14
New Inkjet Prints
~ September 2026 ~
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Introduction
The fourteen images published here have been presented below in groups of two or three because the images in each group--and in some cases in more that one group--share something in common that I will be writing comments on. All of these images come from my blog projects, and the images I have chosen to print and publish in this series of new "mini" inkjet print projects had not been made into inkjet prints until this September, 2026 and become part of my growing 2023 - 2026+ Inkjet Print Project. There are a few images in this project that had printed earlier in the 12x12" size, and here you will those images in larger print formats (15x15" 18x18" or 21x21")
As in my past project, the images chosen to be printed were determined simply by reviewing quickly my collection of digital images used in each of my blog projects. When the images attracted my attention, if I considered them worthy of being looked at more carefully, and if I felt they needed to printed in a larger format, I made the necessary changes both for printing and for adding to my digital archive of my photography which goes as far back in time to the middle and late 1960's.
I have been enjoying seeing my blog images in print form,* and in some cases in the larger size formats. Working and revising old work with new printings provides me with new ways of seeing and understanding the work. The more I work with an image, the more I learn about the image and myself. In a way, reprinting older work is a form of image contemplation; it inspires looking more deeply into an image and getting in touch with latent meanings when allowed--through the contemplation process--to surface into consciousness.
(*Note: when I started creating projects for my newly initiated blog in November, 2010 I had decided to NOT print the images (at least at the time I made them) since they would be available to everyone via my blog. I am now feeling and enjoying the longing to make more and more prints of favorite images now that I have gotten into a wonderful work flow with the my Inkjet 2023 - 2026 Inkjet Print Project.)
When selecting images to print for this project (this is #8 of an ongoing series of "mini" inkjet print projects) I was not thinking about the relationships between the images I chose to print. But once I had the images all printed, and made copy files of the images for publishing the images on this blog page, I could not help but organize and sequence the images in a way theat felt right for me. Then, finally I decided to group the images that that shared some kind of visual or conceptual meaning for me. I have written some brief comments for each group in an attempt to share with you some of my insights.
The Photographs
with Commentaries
Group One (3 images)
Image #1 Inkjet print 18x18"
A Screaming (Stone) Face behind a (stone) window in a hidden underground city in Turkey
Image #2 Inkjet print 15x15"
An Earth Mound, in Death Valley, and the road that passes by it and through the Valley
Image #3 Inkjet print 15x15"
Death Valley: a second view of the road that passes through the valley
Of this first grouping of three images, the second and third images are together for pretty obvious reasons. During a visit to Death Valley many years ago, I became fascinated with the road that runs through the valley. It had a very strong presence for me and I think I felt comforted by knowing it could help me get out of the valley in a hurry if necessary. ~ It was very very hot and dry when my wife and I were there, and during one of our rather long hikes --through an area with high walls of stone--we became panicked by a feeling that we may have lost track of our way back to our car! ~ The name Death Valley was not only NOT lost on me, but it gained real, personal significance!
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So, how does the screaming rock photograph, made in Turkey, in one of their underground cities, relate to the two Death Valley road photographs?
I felt claustrophobic in the underground caves, and when I walked by the stone "window" that looks into one of the "city's" rooms or living spaces, and saw that screaming "face" . . . I was reminded of movies I had seen as a young person in which people who had been buried alive were screaming to get out of their coffins . . . which had been buried under the ground.
While walking through the underground city, our guide was telling us stories of why people were living in these hidden caves that had been turned into real living spaces for large numbers of people, and why they were trying to hide from their enemies; and some they told us of the many awful things their enemies did to them once they were discovered hiding underground.
I encourage you to visit this link underground city to learn more about Turkey's underground cities.
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Group Two (3 images)
Image #4 Inkjet print 15x15"
Gloria, Illuminated and pregnant with Shaun (in our bedroom, Albuquerque, New Mexico 1972)
Image #5 Inkjet print 15x15"
(A Ghost?) or "Spirit?" looking down at a plastic bag left laying on our bed in Georgia.
This is an inkjet print copy of a 1972 solarized silver gelatin print
These two images were made perhaps a year apart in two different cities: Albuquerque, New Mexico, where I was a graduate student seeking an MFA degree with a teaching fellowship the Art Department at UNM had granted me for the years 1969-1972; the other, Decatur, Georgia, a few miles outside of Atlanta, where I took my first teaching job in the Art Department at Georgia State University-Atlanta. For many years I thought image #5 was made in Albuquerque--I think I was fooled by the bedspread's recurring appearance, and perhaps the similar walls, and surely by the strange solarization effects in the image that looks to me like a ghost of faint luminous spirit bending over a plastic bag. I had been making solarized images in the little house we were living in Albuquerque, in 1972, when Shaun was born in April of that year. Then in June I graduated with my MFA (teaching) degree and I had been offered the teaching positing in Atlanta.
I used solarization techniques in many of my MFA thesis exhibition photographs presented at the UNM Art Museum in 1972.* And I continued that work in the years I taught in Atlanta, Georgia (1972-75).*
(*Visit these four related links: New Mexico Photographs & Intimate Space-New Mexico Interiors, then In the (Georgia) Woods Series and The Atlanta City Series.)
When my wife Gloria and I first moved to Albuquerque for my MFA studies we had been married for only a few weeks; and about six few weeks before we were married Gloria was in a horrible accident in Brooklyn, where she had been going to school at Pratt. She was badly hurt by a rapidly moving car--it's mirror blind-sided her, which among the many injuries she received, she also suffered a very severe concussion which took her over a year to recover from.
We we arrived in Albuquerque we decided to rent a small house near the university rather than stay in an apartment. The first night after moving our mattress et.al. into the house we were faced with the dilemma of how to sleep our our now environment. In Brookly Gloria had been used to sleeping with me on her right side; but in Albuquerque she felt it might work better for her to try sleeping with me on her left side. That night (what I am about to tell you) really happened:
In the middle of the night I woke up and saw Gloria standing next to me; I was on the edge of the mattress and she was looking down at me. She was glowing with a beautiful soft light that I assumed came from the street lights outside diffused by the shades covering our bedroom window. As I moved over to let her get into bed next to me (thinking she wanted to cuddle up with me) I felt her body! --next to me-- on the other side of the bed!! When I looked up again, she (her Spirit? a Ghost?) had disappeared.
The title under the #5 image, made in Georgia, mentions a "Ghost" or "Spirit" . . . looking down at a plastic bag on the bed (with the same bedspread as in image #4, upon which we see Gloria, glowingly pregnant with our first child, Shaun, who was born in Albuquerque a few months before I graduated.
Now, if we could briefly visit image #6 below, the third image in this second group (of three images). I see it related to image #5 only in terms of the subject matter being scrutinized by the Ghost or Spirit: namely the relationship of the two kinds of bags pictured in the two images. Like the "Ghost" or "Spirit," I (the photographer) am looking down at the paper bag that was laying on our ping pong table in Canandaigua, NY in 2017.
(Note: In 1982 I read a very important book by Robert Bly, News of the Universe, which got me very interested in making Thing-Centered Photographs. Image #6 is an example of my more recent (2017 and ongoing) "Thing-Centered photographs." )
Everything is connected, it seems to me. Interestingly, this pair of "bag" images constitutes --for me--what I would call an experience of synchronicity which was one of the major themes in my required MFA written thesis. I have pointed out many instances of synchronicity in my collection of blog projects. It is a concept that is as important to me today as it was back in 1972 when I discovered in my research on the important work of C.G. Jung, father of modern day psychoanalysis.
Image #6 Inkjet print 15x15"
A paper bag on our ping pong table, Canandaigua, NY 2017 (A Thing-Centered Photograph)
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Group Three (3 images)
Image #7 A Symmetrical inkjet print 18x18"
An "Illuminated Butterfly"
(a symmetrical image constructed with four images of luminous plastic bucket full of laundry powder)
Image #8 A Symmetrical inkjet print 21x21"
A "Stone Butterfly"
(A symmetrical image of the stones on the hillside that runs next to Broad Brook Road, VT)
Visit my 12x12" Project Broad Brook Road
Image #9 A Symmetrical inkjet print 21x21"
A Symmetrical photograph of illuminated Stones in Broad Brook
constellated in the form of an Imaginal ritual site.
Each of the three images in this third grouping is a Four-fold constructed Symmetrical Photograph. Image #7 was constructed with four identical images of a dramatically illuminated plastic container of laundry powder.
Image #8 was constructed with an image of stones I photographed on the side of a hill in Southern Vermont that runs along a dirt road named Broad Brook Road; and on the other side of the road runs the mountain brook of the same name. The symmetrical transformation of the source image created a form that appeared to me as a butterfly--as I have indicated in my title. In fact these particular stones along the road has generated a small series of "Butterfly" symmetrical photographs.
The third symmetrical image, #9 was constructed with a photograph of stones that were actually in the mountain stream, named Broad Brook, that runs through Southern Vermont. The image has a magical quality for me, one that invokes a feeling of a ritual site consisting of a circular constellation of large brightly lit stones surround by dark water and blue-colored Broad Brook stones. (The blue comes from being softly illuminated within shadows falling over the brook. You will have to enlarge the image to see the blue color really well.)
Broad Brook has become a good friend of mine since I started photographing it in 2015, a few years after my good friends (and my wife's sister Phyllis, and her husband Jim) moved from Rochester, NY to their new home in Vermont, situated just across the road that runs along the brook.
Note: Visit my project Broad Brook Road to see my list of photography projects based in Vermont and the Brook.
My symmetrical construction process has generated several images of varying subject matter in the form of butterflies, and in this group (above) you can see two very different variations on that theme.
In the first picture (below) of the fourth group consisting of two images, we see several blue stones on the hillside that runs next to Broad Brook Road. Also of interest, you will note that my title for the image includes a word that also appears in the title of the photograph immediately above (#9). It is not the word "blue" though that is correct; rather, the word I am looking at is what I will be writing about next.
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Group Four (2 images)
Image #10 Inkjet print 18x18"
A constellation of blue stones on the hillside next to Broad Brook Road, VT
Image #11 Inkjet print 18x18"
A constellation of meadow plants in light-blue snow after an early morning winter storm
(the image is from a Covid Pandemic project The Great Wonder In Simple Things)
The word constellation almost always invokes in me an image of lines that connects brilliant stars in a clear evening sky.
I have a fascination with the idea of constellations, and have often made photographs of various kinds of constellations of differing subject matter, as in images numbered #9, 10, 11 and #12 (below), the first of the two images in Group Five.
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Group Five (2 images)
Image #12 Inkjet print 15x15"
Still Life: this photograph was made in my basement during the Covid Pandemic
When I fell in love with the painting of Giorgio Morandi in 2012-13 I created a multi-chaptered blog project inspired by his work entitled Still Life. Morandi constructed his own still life compositions, and that is something I was never very good at; instead, I enjoy finding things in the real world that have visual structures and spatial relationships that invoke a remembrance of Morandi and his paintings. In image #12 (above) and image #13 (below), I made straight photographs of an "already ordered universe."
(Please visit my Morandi inspired Still Life Project)
You'll have to take my word for it right now, but these two still life photographs (above and below) have characteristics related to Morandi's paintings, and my vision represented here in these photographs are in part an acknowledgment-celebration of my appreciation of his work.
Images #12 & #13 are good examples of two different kinds of "found" still life pictures I made of existing constellations of objects. Image #13 (below) is an example of a "found Morandi StillLife" I saw it staring me in the face on a restaurant table I was sitting at. ~ Image #12 was made during the "dark and lonely days" of the Covid-Pandemic. I had left all the things pictured on my basement studio table which were illuminated only by one small window far away, in another part of the basement. The image is a kind of metaphor for my dark and isolated feelings regarding the two year period we all suffered as a nation because of the Pandemic. I was fortunate in being able to take refuge from the pandemic by making lots of photographs.*
(*Please visit this link to see all of my Covid-Pandaemic related projects)
Image #13 Inkjet print 15x15"
A Still Life with flowers, salt shaker, water bottle and a slice of lemon
(This photograph was made before the Covid Pandemic and was
inspired by the painter Morandi--visit my project Still Life)
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Epilogue (1 image)
I am concluding this project with one last image (see below). It is a digital blog-published image of a 15x15" inkjet copy print I made of a 10x10" silver gelatin photograph that is to be on display in what I think may be an important group exhibition of photographs presented in Chicago, opening this September . . . on my birthday! The exhibition will include the image below and one other of my photographs from my 1983-84 project entitled Images of Eden. All of the photographs in that project were originally black & white silver gelatin prints made from black and white 2 1/4" square black & white film negatives. (Note: if you would like to know the techniques I use to make inkjet copy prints from gelatin silver prints, click here.
Image #14 Inkjet print 15x15"
A Flowering Bush on a foggy day in a Milwaukee County Park
from my 1983-84 project Images of Eden.
The original 10x10" sliver gelatin print of this image is being exhibited in Chicago at the
Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College-Chicago along with
one other image from the Eden project. The title of the exhibition is:
"If Emmett Till Lived : Freedom On American Ground" curated by
Sarah Elizabeth Lewis and Rev. Wheller Parker, Jr. The exhibit
will run open September 10, 2026 and run through December 19.
A catalogue is being printed, and there are plans in the
works to make an online version of the exhibition
so more people will have access to the images
and texts being presented in the exhibition.
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"In the wake of what would have been Till's 85th birthday our project engages
individuals and institutions around the country as we ask "What would
Emmett Till's life have been had he safely boarded the train back
to Chicago? What would that life have required of us all?
Have we made good on his sacrifice?"
* * *
This project was published on my blog's
Welcome Page on September 10, 2026
It is Project #8 in an ongoing
series of mini Inkjet Print
Thematic Projects.
Here is the list of the Eight 2026 mini Inkjet Print Thematic projects published so far:
"It Is Always ONE" June 5, 2026
"Seeing Things" June 19, 2026 =
Seven Windswept Symmetrical Photographs July 19, 2026
"Nine Quirky Photographs" July 23, 2026
"Six Thing-Centered Photographs" with An Exercise in Reading Image Juxtapositions August 11, 2026
"Ten New Inkjet Prints, August 2026: a MAKOM project" August 24, 2026
"14 New Inkjet Prints, September 2026" September 10, 2026
Related Blog Projects:
Welcome Page to The Departing Landscape blog-website which includes the complete hyperlinked listing of my online photography blog projects dating back to the 1960's, my resume, contact information, Introductory texts, and more.
