Light Throughout the History of Photography

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Instead of writing today, I want to post a few of my favorite images that capture moments of natural light made throughout the history of photography.

From left to right, top to bottom:

  1. Abstraction, Twin Lakes, Connecticut, 1916, Paul Strand.

  2. From the series Equivalents, 1929, Alfred Stieglitz.

  3. Untitled, b. 1946, Frank Dituri.

  4. Windowsill Daydreaming- Rochester, New York, 1958, Minor White.

  5. ... and of time (Untitled 00.4), 2000, Uta Barth.

  6. Colors of Shadow C1022, 2006, Hiroshi Sugimoto.

  7. West Concord, Massachusetts, 2008, Nicholas Nixon.

Ordinary Revelations

 

At every moment of our lives, there are countless visual revelations unassumingly surrounding us. Perhaps these beautiful visuals are so plentiful that it makes it difficult for us to see them. Aside from that, we tend to be ‘too busy’ with chores and to-do lists to stop and silently take in the world around us. It’s for this reason that I do not see art as simply a physical object hung nicely on the white wall of a museum. It’s easy to recognize something as ‘art’ when it is situated with in a predetermined art context. It is an entirely different thing to see the artful in daily life. In this way, art is not an object but a way of seeing. To become aware of the beauty hidden in plain sight is the greatest art form of all.

The daily transitory moments of light don’t need us, they go on living whether we notice them or not. There is much we can learn from these visual phenomena: they do not cling, but gently surrender to the eternal current of change. They desire nothing, perfectly content with how they are. They have no self-critique about their forms, they have nothing in their way from being absolutely intertwined with the present. In fact, they are so intertwined with the present that we perceive the two as one in the same.

Perhaps natural light itself is the most ancient guru of them all.

Meaninglessness = Divine Freedom

The world tends to view the idea of something being ‘meaningless’ in a negative light. Why is that? Why does something have to be full of meaning in order for it to be appreciated or valued? Isn’t meaning a construct designed by the mind? If it is, then meaning is nothing more than a mental filter veiling ones perception from seeing it (whether ‘it’ refers to an object like a piece of art or something as abstract as a feeling) for what it is. Any mental veil, no matter how good (think rose-tinted glasses) or bad (think paranoia), is distorting one from experiencing the present moment for what it is. I would posit that this desire for meaning stems from the human desire for structure and control. Ideas and perceptions give one a sense of security, of assuredness about how one views the world. Questioning our desire for meaning eventually ends in the destruction of our meaning-based constructs, something that is quite catastrophic to our personal world. It is not a simple task to get free from meaning, much of our beliefs and ideas have been with us since childhood. While this endeavor will certainly cause a collapse of ones personal world, it is the most liberating journey one can take. If you can risk that comfortable place of thoughts and beliefs you have created for yourself in your mind, if you can surrender into the void of emptiness, the infinite nature of the present moment will reveal itself to you in transcendent clarity. Just like the Phoenix or the Ouroboros, we must be willing to die to ourselves before we are able to be re-born into eternity.

Paradoxes

When it comes to putting certain realizations into words, it often takes the form of a paradox:

If you are asking a question you will never find the answer. To find the answer you have to stop asking the question.

A concrete example of this is the question ‘who am I?’. If you are searching for the answer, you will never find it. So long as you are looking, the answer will inately evade you. Why? Because what you are searching for is too busy with the act of searching. You are too caught up in looking for your identity to be able to see it. The answer is not an answer at all, but a state of being. It is only in stillness, when there is no seeker, that the ‘answer’ emerges.

A bit more different of an example would be the quest for meaning in ones life. To me, meaning is not fundamental in nature, it is a perceptual belief created by an individual that gives one a sense of purpose. For me, meaning lies in being, and being has no meaning. 

In the end it always boils down to this: what is worth saying can’t be said. It lies in an ephemeral state of being that exists beyond the threshold of ordinary consciousness. In this state there are neither questions nor answers, only the light of absolute being.

Living Beyond the Limits of Language

It seems only right to recognize the role language plays at the beginning of this blog adventure. Whether spoken or written, language is a dominant bridge in human culture on this planet. Language is so deeply integrated into our lives that it is all to easy to avoid questioning its role during our time on earth. The following is an excerpt from my Master’s Thesis, titled ‘The Role of Language’. This excerpt is focussed on the role language plays in respect to my photography series Luminous Visions but also relates to the general role language plays in our daily lives.

The limits of language are reached when it comes to the nonverbal experience of present looking that is essential to Luminous Visions, so it is important to begin by clarifying how the words comprising this paper function. The very nature of looking cannot be fully expressed through language as looking is an experience that “comes before words” (Berger 1987, 8). Relating Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language to visual art, Kate Rennebohm (2020) quoted him as saying “large realms of human understanding exist independently from verbal articulation” (64). This suggests that not only is looking a non-verbal experience but that it is also one that affords new modes of understanding. The absence of language that is foundational to Luminous Visions means that the academic nature of this paper does not and cannot semantically deduce the experience of silent looking (Massumi 1995, 87). Massumi stated that “matter-of- factness dampens intensity,” which is to say grammatical structures are incompatible with the experience of present looking that is graspable by neither words nor intellect (Ibid., 86). The words comprising this paper exist at the peripheries of looking, hovering around the indefinite edges of the state of presence they refer to. Therefore, we must remember the experience of the visual work is ultimately intended to be a silent one, for “approaches to the [visual work] in its relation to language are incomplete if they operate only on the semantic or semiotic level...” (Ibid., 87).

References:

1. Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation; Penguin, 1987.
2. Massumi, Brian. “The Autonomy of Affect.” Cultural Critique, No. 31, The Politics of Systems and Environments, Part II (1995): 83-109.
3. Rennebohm, Kate. “Wittgenstein on Moving-Image Media and the Ethics of Re- viewing.” October 171 (2020): 47-76.

The Eternal Present

The present moment does not exist in the same way the past or future does. The past does not exist without the future, the future does not exist without the past. We know the one because of the other. But the present, it operates on no polarity, no distinction. In fact, the present unites the past and future into one harmonious thread, a singular moment of eternity. We are actively living out eternity. It is all right here and now. But the present moment does not slip away into the past. The present extends into the past and into the future simultaneously. And when one follows those two illusions back to their ends, we find that they both merge into one until there is no distinction between them. We are destined to live eternally, here and now. We will change and evolve, appearances will change, yet eternity will remain. We have decorated eternity so well we forget it’s underlying nature, we forget our underlying nature. What a beautiful, incredible experience. I only wonder what the rest of the universe is like. I wonder if it is all like this: to live on eternally, living through change to the point that all appearances become completely unrecognizable to what was known before, including our very own selves, that we forget all the universe is one, except for brief glimpses of clarity such as these.