Category: Uncategorized

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photography Uncategorized

edges

Because I usually prefer a square print and work with rectangular negatives, I have to pay particular attention to cropping. I hardly ever see the edge of my image through the lens. When I shoot I am drawn to an element of light and I place it within the lens frame where I think it might eventually be in the print, but I’m not fanatical about it. Cropping in the dark room adds another stage to the creative process. It can be done with a degree of deliberation not possible when shooting in the field in ambient light that is always changing.

In determining the edge of an image I consider three options: closed frame, open frame, and broken frame. Which option I choose isn’t just a matter of where I place the edge of the image. It’s really a matter of how the edge interacts with the overall composition of the photo.

Closed Frame Rocky River 111
A closed frame implies nothing outside the frame has any particular relevance to the image. The image is complete unto itself. In general, such images are carefully composed with the attention of the viewer directed toward specific elements. In complex images if the eye is tempted to explore, there are elements to direct it away from the edge and back into the center of the image. Such framing is the most conventional type and is the mainstay of studio work and commercial photography. Closed frame pictures are the closest to pure artifice, creating a reality sufficient unto itself that may or may not have anything to do with the real world the viewer occupies.

Open Frame Rocky River 94
An open frame creates the impression that the subject of the image is only part of a larger reality beyond the edge of the picture, as though one is watching life unfold through the arbitrary constriction of a window. It allows for the possibility that the focus of the viewer’s attention may be anywhere within the image, even–in the extreme–outside the image itself. Open frame compositions may appear more chaotic than closed frame compositions and have the effect of making the viewer consider the relationship of the image to the real world of which it is only a limited reflection.

Broken Frame
An image with a broken frame both has and doesn’t have an edge. This is accomplished by printing an image with some white space at the edge so there is nothing to mark the boundary between that part of the image and the paper it is printed on. Such images are rare. When I first began printing in this way, I met with resistance from viewers disconcerted by their inability to tell where the image ended or began. To requests that I reprint such photographs, burning the white sections until a clear edge appeared, I politely declined. It is important to me, in such photographs, that the paper isn’t just a surface on which the image rested but is itself an integral part of the image.

Over time I have become more interested in broken frame, particularly in the photo abstractions of the series Obsessive Emulsion Disorder. Without a clear and complete edge, an image seems not entirely artifice but actually fuses with the world of which it is an assumed reflection. When looking at such an image, we are not only looking at the world through art, we are looking at the world itself. Such images also serve to remind the viewer that when we look at the world itself, we are looking at art of which our consciousness is an essential part.eyelids

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cleveland photography spirituality Uncategorized

toward the light

Toward the Light is my experience exploring the distinctive qualities of light in Cleveland, Ohio, where I live.
I know very little about the physics of light, and I am a self-trained photographer, so I can’t speak technically about it. But in my experience Cleveland light has its own character perhaps shared somewhat with other parts of the Great Lakes region.
It may have something to do with the latitude, though I doubt it, because the light in San Francisco, where I spend part of my year, is also of the same latitude but seems sharper.
I suspect it has to do with the humidity caused by lake Erie. The evaporation over the lake and drifting condensation over the land produce what locals know as a Cleveland sky, dense and lowering in the winter, high and soft and sculptural in the summer—a sky unseen anywhere else I have traveled. The resulting environment is a narrow rain forest along the lakeshore that fades away into the drier climate of central Ohio. Near the lake, the lambency of a humid August morning bathes the air with a light that rises from the ground, and Spring fog swaddles new foliage with a pale florescent glow as it floats in the air. Throughout the seasons, Cleveland light is always soft and forgiving.
Apart from the lake, there is so much water in the Cleveland environment—puddles, ponds, streams, rivers, marshes–that light is always rising from reflective sources to surprise the eye as it moves through the landscape. Even in deep woods, trees can be momentarily foot-lighted by pools of stagnant water as beams of passing light shoot through gaps in the foliage overhead.Rocky River 113
What light falls on or passes through has much to do with how the quality of light expresses itself. Forest City was Cleveland’s original name and remains its nickname today, a testament to the density and extent of woods that cover the sinuous moraines deposited by the glaciers that formed the Great Lakes. It is possible, of course, thanks to architecture and agriculture, to escapes the woods and gaze directly at the sky, but the characteristic Cleveland experience—urban, suburban, exurban and rural—is still the walk under foliage or, in winter, its vast skeletal framework.
One thing I’ve learned photographing Cleveland is that leaves are always translucent. They can be almost opaque when plump with moisture and green with chlorophyll, but by Fall they have become thin, veiny, even lacy with only their ribs impeding the passage of light. The vast majority of Cleveland’s trees are deciduous, and the variety is unrivaled, meaning the shapes and colors of leaves seem infinitely varied. And the colors are in constant change, from the first lime-green buds of April to the last tan oak leaves clinging to bare limbs in January. Every variety has its distinctive palette throughout the seasons, so Cleveland autumn displays are distinct, if not for their brightness at least for their range of color. Light is constantly being filtered and colored by foliage through most of the year. And if that isn’t enough variety, the foliage, for the most part, is in steady, delicate motion. To the black and white photographer, this means the tonal range in a landscape can be so subtle that edges often blur.
Whatever the reasons, the light in Cleveland is alive, and the eye must be fully present to witness it.

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fiber art inspiration Uncategorized

mindfulness and craft

“Non-thinking repetition of mechanical forms allows one to concentrate simply on being without the distraction of having to make decisions, artistic or otherwise.” (Leonard Koren, Wabi Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers , p.35)

Those in the artistic community who derogate certain kinds of craft sometimes call it mindless repetition. There is, though, an important difference between mindless repetition and, as Koren says, “non-thinking repetition.”
If one values the practice of craft for its qualities as a meditative activity, as I do, then to call it mindless is simply incorrect, for the essence of any truly meditative act is mindfulness. Certainly this must be what Koren means. Non-thinking repetition is mindful repetition. The meditative crafter seeks to be fully present in the moment by transcending the distraction posed by thoughts, detaching from them so as not to be drawn away from the present reality by following them.
Mindlessness, on the other hand, is not just thoughtlessness, but unconsciousness, as though one practices a craft in one’s sleep. It is possible, I suppose, for crafters to practice mindlessly, producing in a sort of mental blackout. But crafters I know who are passionate about their mediums describe to me a state of total engagement, not trance-like disengagement.
If we agree that all thought is the product of ego, then the goal of meditative, or mindful craft is ego-lessness. And this I think is the reason western art insists on relegating cblue tiesraft to the fringes of the artistic community. Truly, western art seems too often to be all about ego.
So what happens when one practices non-thinking craft? What role is consciousness playing in the act? Is the mind really, as Koren suggests, making decisions?
Being fully present means opening one’s consciousness to the experience of what is arising. When I cross stitch, I work on blank aida cloth with as few preconceptions as possible. In the beginning years, I tried to work with motifs or realize complex patterns that had suggested themselves to me in my dreams or during sitting meditation. Over time I learned to free myself from such preconceptions and now stitch with as little intent as I am capable of. The simple x pattern is the ritual form that initiates the meditative state. As each stich completes itself, options present themselves: up/down, left/right on the cloth. The needle is called to one of them and repeats the ritual pattern. Immediately form emerges: lines, squares, curves, angles. If one stitches with colored thread, as many do, colors call for other colors, color and form begin to interact, complex patterns arise. The mindful worker responds by plying the needle as the emerging image directs it. The reward is the realization that the mind is a co-equal participant in the arising.
So what is really happening? The only decision the crafter makes is whether to be the emerging image or detach from it in order to try to control it. The mind practicing the craft collaborates with the medium and the potential in the emptiness of the blank canvas to bring the image forth. The mind is a midwife of sorts, a useful, even necessary facilitator of the process of becoming.
The ego’s only role is to ply the needle.