View allAll Photos Tagged PHENOMENOLOGICAL
There is an almost ethereal presence of light in this Infra Red shot. Shooting into the sun produces some great results.
In darkness we cannot see, but when light fills the void real illumination takes place. Shadows are only possible where there is light to cast them. Darkness is emptiness and void. Light is fullness and revelatory.
These statements are not just "phenomenological" (concentrating on the study of our consciousness of things and the objects of direct experience - in this case light), they are also "metaphysical" (fundamental to the nature of reality). It was the early Greek philosophers who taught us to think in such ways.
But it is also significant that many stories of creation, especially in the Book of Genesis, make similar statements about beginnings:
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness." (Genesis 1:1-4).
I don't like much to heavily post-process my pictures. While on the subtle unavoidable verge between photography and digital art, I try to stay on the first side. I'm not a purist either; I claim no one should be: Our very sense of situation is now articulated by the camera's interventions (Susan Sontag, On Photograpy). Add the camera's engineers' taste and lenses features to that and RAW post-processing becomes just a photographer's claim over what inherently belongs to her/him. Which is a mere illusion, truth to tell, since once you press the shutter, the image is not longer yours. It's just another preposterous and unavailing intent to catch a grasp of reality in Plato's cave, while barely getting a phenomenological reflection of our own inner personal world... until we share it. Sharing overcomes our personal limitations. Sharing on the Internet is one of the most incredible sociological experiments we've been performing over the past few decades.
Postprocessing technical specs LR 5: auto profile lens correction. Heavily edited with Color Effex Pro 4 (only global adjustments, no U-points): Tonal Contrast (5/80/35/0) + Detail Extractor (25/75/0; shadows & highlights adjusted separately) + Reflector Effex (Gold source; 27/58/80/189) + manual adjustments on camera RGB levels and curves + Colorize (method 6, strength 13%). Define 2: manual noise measure and reduction.
Alberto Giacometti was one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century. His work was particularly influenced by artistic styles such as Cubism and Surrealism. Philosophical questions about the human condition, as well as existential and phenomenological debates played a significant role in his work. Around 1935 he gave up on his Surrealistic influences in order to pursue a more deepened analysis of figurative compositions.
Between 1938 and 1944 Giacometti's sculptures had a maximum height of seven centimeters (2.75 inches).[7] Their small size reflected the actual distance between the artist's position and his model. In this context he self-critically stated: "But wanting to create from memory what I had seen, to my terror the sculptures became smaller and smaller". After World War II, Giacometti created his most famous sculptures: his extremely tall and slender figurines. These sculptures were subject to his individual viewing experience—between an imaginary yet real, a tangible yet inaccessible space.
UNESCO World Heritage - Loss of a duneside - In the course of its growth, the beach grass roots through the habitat on which it grows on several levels within a radius of five meters. In total, the root system of a plant, including the fine roots, can be several kilometers long.
The incidence of stormy weather is constantly increasing at the coast. The dunes (not only) on the North-Sea-Islands suffer. Beach grass is often the reason for the development of a dune and it slows down the destruction.
_NYC1841_pa2
Buckminster Fuller hated the word sunrise. He suggested that it disorients people. Intellectually, we are taught that Earth rotates which controls the visibility and non-visibility of the sun. The term sunrise suggests that we are still and the sun is rising. Fuller thinks that terms like this should be replaced by something that better resembles our phenomenological experience, something like sunsight for sunrise and sunclipse for sunset. Fuller argues that for 500 years we have known that the Earth is revolving on its own axis, but our vocabulary hasn't caught up with our knowledge.
The last five months (May-September 2023) required me to move a lot for a variety of professional and personal reasons. It was the first time in several years that I entered airplanes without carrying my DSLR camera. This resulted in me tinkering and thinking with my mobile phone camera, surpassing my snobbish attitude towards it as means of photographic expression. Visiting an old favourite antique store of mine, I was exposed to wallet-sized black and white pictures, very fashionable in the 1920s-1960s. Phenomenologically, I thought, these little pictures carried significance similar to the one carried by the myriads of photos nowadays stored on mobile phones. I tried to combine the sensory experience of black and white with the ease of mobile phone shooting, itself resembling certain types of pinhole cameras. Themes are the same as in my earlier photography: decayed and rusty patterns of disintegration, emptiness of spaces, outlier figures of the everyday, street signs and letters, nonhuman friends, naturecultures, and psychopolitically haunted scenes. Places include: Canada (Toronto), Greece (Athens, Thessaloniki, Alonnisos, Aghia, Larissa, Eleftheroupoli, Kavala), Scotland (Edinburgh), England (Manchester), France (Paris), Belgium (Brussels).
[Update] I have continued collecting such images throughout 2024. New places visited: Dublin, Rotterdam, Glasgow, Copenhagen, London, Stirling, Peebles, Amsterdam, Dundee, Madrid.
Revelator, acrylic on panel, 13" X 10"
private collection, New York City.
This painting is finished, although if you compare this photo with the two from earlier states (see images in comments below) you might wonder since this one seems more abraded... more unmade than made. Because it is.
The first two color states that I've include give a sense of a primary way I paint: using dry brush. Working on an image like this, simulating a blur, is generally very labor intensive. Part of what interests me about this method is the phenomenological tension between an image (the source photo) that is the product of a very brief moment (perhaps a one second exposure) and the painted "replication) that gives evidence of many many seconds.
But then sometimes I sand a painting. As much as with any painting I've made the sanding of this painting radically upended the tension just mentioned. The evidence of the brush's caress just spoken of is gone. Suddenly I'm holding something that, seemingly, I didn't make. That is, there is a curious psychological shift that the sanding of the surface—largely eradicating brush marks—produces.
One thing the sanding emphasizes is the horizontal seam marking the meeting of the two parts of the underlying, long gone acrylic transfer. The resulting line has various potential readings: a border of some sort.
“Everyone knows the usefulness of what is useful, but few know the usefulness of what is useless.”
- Zhuang Zi (Chinese philosopher, died 286 BCE).
Did you know that everything we see is the product of reflected light? We don’t actually see the things-in-themselves, just their reflected light. In my recent series of infrared photographs I hope I made this point visible and clear. We cannot see infrared with the naked eye (in fact the visible light spectrum is just a tiny fraction of the entire electromagnetic spectrum in our universe). So just because we can’t see something with the naked eye, does not mean it is not real. Seeing infrared photographs however, enlightens us to this reality beyond our limited sense of Being. Radio waves is another example. Sure we can’t see them, but if we have an instrument to detect them and “tune in”, we can listen to wonderful music. The ancients would have seen this as pure magic. It is also analogous to spirituality.
In my posting yesterday, “Being Present in the World”, I opened that discussion with the concept of non-duality. We find the world and ourselves most real when we lose ourselves in the present moment and sense what it is to experience Being. The technical term for this philosophical approach is Phenomenology:
“...phenomenology studies the structure of various types of experience ranging from perception, thought, memory, imagination, emotion, desire, and volition to bodily awareness, embodied action, and social activity, including linguistic activity. The structure of these forms of experience typically involves what (Edmund) Husserl called ‘intentionality”, that is, the directedness of experience toward things in the world, the property of consciousness that it is a consciousness of or about something.” plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/
Long books of arcane philosophy have been written on these questions of the meaning of existence and how we understand our place in the world. Is it really possible to know anything about the world apart from our senses? Can we even trust our senses as a guide to what is true? Surely the world really exists “out-there”? Are there worlds we cannot see? But what phenomenology tells us is that it is pointless to look for a completely objectified ready-made world “out-there”, what we must do is understand that our consciousness of the world is what makes the world “real” to us. In perhaps the most influential phenomenological book of all time, “Phenomenology of Perception” (1945), the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, grounds our understanding of the world in our body. Through our body and senses we participate in the world, and what we learn through this gives us insight into the reality of Being.
So how does all this relate to photography? Or is it in fact just “useless” knowledge?
Let me put this question several different ways. Why do we love taking photographs? What are we trying to achieve? Is it to impress others with our life experiences (as in our latest holiday snaps in Majorca)? Is it to create our own subjective and artistic view of the world? Is it to share the beauty of Nature? Is it to awaken consciences over social issues? Is it a way of impressing ourselves upon the world through taking selfies and sharing them on social media (both go together by the way)? Are we just collectors of image-experiences? Is photography a form of therapy? The list is really endless if we are looking for individual justifications of why we photograph.
But what if we begin by examining our own photographs to see if there are some clues there about our “intentions” (Husserl’s word) when we go out with a camera in hand? Because you can be sure that the kind of photographs we produce will shape our understanding of the world and vice versa. The very fact we talk about “composing a photograph” is a sure sign that we are not merely reproducing an external world. The clearest example of this that I have ever consciously produced is my slide show called “Suburban Dreams 65 Photographs”. www.flickr.com/photos/luminosity7/52275162056/in/dateposted/
But the photograph I’ve chosen to discuss here is of the Low Head Lighthouse at dusk. In fact it is one of the first photographs I took when I bought my Nikon D850. I had decided to make a return to photography after many years, having previously used film cameras. Perhaps these questions might give you some examples of how you can interrogate your own approach to taking photographs. It is also important that these questions are framed in the first person. “I” see it this way, “others” may not. These questions are in fact more important than the specific answers.
* Why did I frame this picture in a portrait or vertical orientation?
* What was the significance of this time of day for me?
* Why did I choose a lighthouse?
* Why did I wait until the light was on to make the photograph?
* What made me decide for colour and not black and white?
* Why did I take the photograph from a beach?
* What was so appealing about the sky that made me give it so much room in my frame?
* Why did I choose to emphasize the various layers in the photograph from the sand, rocks and grass in the foreground to the various layers of light and cloud above the lighthouse?
* What sort of mood am I creating?
We could go on, but the more questions like this we ask of ourselves, the better we will come to understand the role photography plays in helping us to see the world the way we do.
“The Art of Making Photos: Some Phenomenological Reflections”
www.alexandria.unisg.ch/228184/1/Eberle_Thomas_2014a_The_...
The last five months (May-September 2023) required me to move a lot for a variety of professional and personal reasons. It was the first time in several years that I entered airplanes without carrying my DSLR camera. This resulted in me tinkering and thinking with my mobile phone camera, surpassing my snobbish attitude towards it as means of photographic expression. Visiting an old favourite antique store of mine, I was exposed to wallet-sized black and white pictures, very fashionable in the 1920s-1960s. Phenomenologically, I thought, these little pictures carried significance similar to the one carried by the myriads of photos nowadays stored on mobile phones. I tried to combine the sensory experience of black and white with the ease of mobile phone shooting, itself resembling certain types of pinhole cameras. Themes are the same as in my earlier photography: decayed and rusty patterns of disintegration, emptiness of spaces, outlier figures of the everyday, street signs and letters, nonhuman friends, naturecultures, and psychopolitically haunted scenes. Places include: Canada (Toronto), Greece (Athens, Thessaloniki, Aghia, Larissa, Eleftheroupoli, Kavala), Scotland (Edinburgh), France (Paris), Belgium (Brussels).
The last five months (May-September 2023) required me to move a lot for a variety of professional and personal reasons. It was the first time in several years that I entered airplanes without carrying my DSLR camera. This resulted in me tinkering and thinking with my mobile phone camera, surpassing my snobbish attitude towards it as means of photographic expression. Visiting an old favourite antique store of mine, I was exposed to wallet-sized black and white pictures, very fashionable in the 1920s-1960s. Phenomenologically, I thought, these little pictures carried significance similar to the one carried by the myriads of photos nowadays stored on mobile phones. I tried to combine the sensory experience of black and white with the ease of mobile phone shooting, itself resembling certain types of pinhole cameras. Themes are the same as in my earlier photography: decayed and rusty patterns of disintegration, emptiness of spaces, outlier figures of the everyday, street signs and letters, nonhuman friends, naturecultures, and psychopolitically haunted scenes. Places include: Canada (Toronto), Greece (Athens, Thessaloniki, Alonnisos, Aghia, Larissa, Eleftheroupoli, Kavala), Scotland (Edinburgh), England (Manchester), France (Paris), Belgium (Brussels).
[Update] I have continued collecting such images throughout 2024. New places visited: Dublin, Rotterdam, Glasgow, Copenhagen, London, Stirling, Peebles, Amsterdam, Dundee, Madrid.
The last five months (May-September 2023) required me to move a lot for a variety of professional and personal reasons. It was the first time in several years that I entered airplanes without carrying my DSLR camera. This resulted in me tinkering and thinking with my mobile phone camera, surpassing my snobbish attitude towards it as means of photographic expression. Visiting an old favourite antique store of mine, I was exposed to wallet-sized black and white pictures, very fashionable in the 1920s-1960s. Phenomenologically, I thought, these little pictures carried significance similar to the one carried by the myriads of photos nowadays stored on mobile phones. I tried to combine the sensory experience of black and white with the ease of mobile phone shooting, itself resembling certain types of pinhole cameras. Themes are the same as in my earlier photography: decayed and rusty patterns of disintegration, emptiness of spaces, outlier figures of the everyday, street signs and letters, nonhuman friends, naturecultures, and psychopolitically haunted scenes. Places include: Canada (Toronto), Greece (Athens, Thessaloniki, Aghia, Larissa, Eleftheroupoli, Kavala), Scotland (Edinburgh), France (Paris), Belgium (Brussels).
The last five months (May-September 2023) required me to move a lot for a variety of professional and personal reasons. It was the first time in several years that I entered airplanes without carrying my DSLR camera. This resulted in me tinkering and thinking with my mobile phone camera, surpassing my snobbish attitude towards it as means of photographic expression. Visiting an old favourite antique store of mine, I was exposed to wallet-sized black and white pictures, very fashionable in the 1920s-1960s. Phenomenologically, I thought, these little pictures carried significance similar to the one carried by the myriads of photos nowadays stored on mobile phones. I tried to combine the sensory experience of black and white with the ease of mobile phone shooting, itself resembling certain types of pinhole cameras. Themes are the same as in my earlier photography: decayed and rusty patterns of disintegration, emptiness of spaces, outlier figures of the everyday, street signs and letters, nonhuman friends, naturecultures, and psychopolitically haunted scenes. Places include: Canada (Toronto), Greece (Athens, Thessaloniki, Aghia, Larissa, Eleftheroupoli, Kavala), Scotland (Edinburgh), France (Paris), Belgium (Brussels).
The last five months (May-September 2023) required me to move a lot for a variety of professional and personal reasons. It was the first time in several years that I entered airplanes without carrying my DSLR camera. This resulted in me tinkering and thinking with my mobile phone camera, surpassing my snobbish attitude towards it as means of photographic expression. Visiting an old favourite antique store of mine, I was exposed to wallet-sized black and white pictures, very fashionable in the 1920s-1960s. Phenomenologically, I thought, these little pictures carried significance similar to the one carried by the myriads of photos nowadays stored on mobile phones. I tried to combine the sensory experience of black and white with the ease of mobile phone shooting, itself resembling certain types of pinhole cameras. Themes are the same as in my earlier photography: decayed and rusty patterns of disintegration, emptiness of spaces, outlier figures of the everyday, street signs and letters, nonhuman friends, naturecultures, and psychopolitically haunted scenes. Places include: Canada (Toronto), Greece (Athens, Thessaloniki, Alonnisos, Aghia, Larissa, Eleftheroupoli, Kavala), Scotland (Edinburgh), England (Manchester), France (Paris), Belgium (Brussels).
[Update] I have continued collecting such images throughout 2024. New places visited: Dublin, Rotterdam, Glasgow, Copenhagen, London, Stirling, Peebles, Amsterdam, Dundee, Madrid.
The last five months (May-September 2023) required me to move a lot for a variety of professional and personal reasons. It was the first time in several years that I entered airplanes without carrying my DSLR camera. This resulted in me tinkering and thinking with my mobile phone camera, surpassing my snobbish attitude towards it as means of photographic expression. Visiting an old favourite antique store of mine, I was exposed to wallet-sized black and white pictures, very fashionable in the 1920s-1960s. Phenomenologically, I thought, these little pictures carried significance similar to the one carried by the myriads of photos nowadays stored on mobile phones. I tried to combine the sensory experience of black and white with the ease of mobile phone shooting, itself resembling certain types of pinhole cameras. Themes are the same as in my earlier photography: decayed and rusty patterns of disintegration, emptiness of spaces, outlier figures of the everyday, street signs and letters, nonhuman friends, naturecultures, and psychopolitically haunted scenes. Places include: Canada (Toronto), Greece (Athens, Thessaloniki, Aghia, Larissa, Eleftheroupoli, Kavala), Scotland (Edinburgh), France (Paris), Belgium (Brussels).
The last five months (May-September 2023) required me to move a lot for a variety of professional and personal reasons. It was the first time in several years that I entered airplanes without carrying my DSLR camera. This resulted in me tinkering and thinking with my mobile phone camera, surpassing my snobbish attitude towards it as means of photographic expression. Visiting an old favourite antique store of mine, I was exposed to wallet-sized black and white pictures, very fashionable in the 1920s-1960s. Phenomenologically, I thought, these little pictures carried significance similar to the one carried by the myriads of photos nowadays stored on mobile phones. I tried to combine the sensory experience of black and white with the ease of mobile phone shooting, itself resembling certain types of pinhole cameras. Themes are the same as in my earlier photography: decayed and rusty patterns of disintegration, emptiness of spaces, outlier figures of the everyday, street signs and letters, nonhuman friends, naturecultures, and psychopolitically haunted scenes. Places include: Canada (Toronto), Greece (Athens, Thessaloniki, Aghia, Larissa, Eleftheroupoli, Kavala), Scotland (Edinburgh), France (Paris), Belgium (Brussels).
2020
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The last five months (May-September 2023) required me to move a lot for a variety of professional and personal reasons. It was the first time in several years that I entered airplanes without carrying my DSLR camera. This resulted in me tinkering and thinking with my mobile phone camera, surpassing my snobbish attitude towards it as means of photographic expression. Visiting an old favourite antique store of mine, I was exposed to wallet-sized black and white pictures, very fashionable in the 1920s-1960s. Phenomenologically, I thought, these little pictures carried significance similar to the one carried by the myriads of photos nowadays stored on mobile phones. I tried to combine the sensory experience of black and white with the ease of mobile phone shooting, itself resembling certain types of pinhole cameras. Themes are the same as in my earlier photography: decayed and rusty patterns of disintegration, emptiness of spaces, outlier figures of the everyday, street signs and letters, nonhuman friends, naturecultures, and psychopolitically haunted scenes. Places include: Canada (Toronto), Greece (Athens, Thessaloniki, Aghia, Larissa, Eleftheroupoli, Kavala), Scotland (Edinburgh), France (Paris), Belgium (Brussels).
The last five months (May-September 2023) required me to move a lot for a variety of professional and personal reasons. It was the first time in several years that I entered airplanes without carrying my DSLR camera. This resulted in me tinkering and thinking with my mobile phone camera, surpassing my snobbish attitude towards it as means of photographic expression. Visiting an old favourite antique store of mine, I was exposed to wallet-sized black and white pictures, very fashionable in the 1920s-1960s. Phenomenologically, I thought, these little pictures carried significance similar to the one carried by the myriads of photos nowadays stored on mobile phones. I tried to combine the sensory experience of black and white with the ease of mobile phone shooting, itself resembling certain types of pinhole cameras. Themes are the same as in my earlier photography: decayed and rusty patterns of disintegration, emptiness of spaces, outlier figures of the everyday, street signs and letters, nonhuman friends, naturecultures, and psychopolitically haunted scenes. Places include: Canada (Toronto), Greece (Athens, Thessaloniki, Aghia, Larissa, Eleftheroupoli, Kavala), Scotland (Edinburgh), France (Paris), Belgium (Brussels).
Awe is difficult to define, and the meaning of the word has changed over time. Related concepts are wonder, admiration, elevation, and the sublime. In Awe: The Delights and Dangers of Our Eleventh Emotion, neuropsychologist and positive psychology guru Pearsall presents a phenomenological study of awe. He defines awe as an "overwhelming and bewildering sense of connection with a startling universe that is usually far beyond the narrow band of our consciousness." Pearsall sees awe as the 11th emotion, beyond those now scientifically accepted (i.e., love, fear, sadness, embarrassment, curiosity, pride, enjoyment, despair, guilt, and anger).
Most definitions allow for awe to be a positive or a negative experience, but when asked to describe events that elicit awe, most people only cite positive experiences.
It was never discussed what Willem’s opinion/emotion was. Personally, as usual, there were works I like, works I did not like, a lot I did NOT understand?
Art is so very subjective!
What I like here is, two men, in black with headgear, not looking at each other…
Thanks, M, (*_*)
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The last five months (May-September 2023) required me to move a lot for a variety of professional and personal reasons. It was the first time in several years that I entered airplanes without carrying my DSLR camera. This resulted in me tinkering and thinking with my mobile phone camera, surpassing my snobbish attitude towards it as means of photographic expression. Visiting an old favourite antique store of mine, I was exposed to wallet-sized black and white pictures, very fashionable in the 1920s-1960s. Phenomenologically, I thought, these little pictures carried significance similar to the one carried by the myriads of photos nowadays stored on mobile phones. I tried to combine the sensory experience of black and white with the ease of mobile phone shooting, itself resembling certain types of pinhole cameras. Themes are the same as in my earlier photography: decayed and rusty patterns of disintegration, emptiness of spaces, outlier figures of the everyday, street signs and letters, nonhuman friends, naturecultures, and psychopolitically haunted scenes. Places include: Canada (Toronto), Greece (Athens, Thessaloniki, Aghia, Larissa, Eleftheroupoli, Kavala), Scotland (Edinburgh), France (Paris), Belgium (Brussels).
Ground-truthing the Neolithic enclosure of Masseria Rizza. Between Foggia and Lucera. Puglia, Italy. Between 2003 and 2013, the UCL Institute of Archaeology Tavoliere-Gargano Prehistory Project visited the sites of 180-odd Neolithic ditched enclosures (villaggi trincerati), the majority identified from cropmarks visible in photos in the John Bradford Archive of Aerial photographs. The objectives of these visits were to ground-truth the cropmarks—confirm that they were indeed Neolithic sites—and to characterize the sites phenomenologically. "Neolithic Spaces", a two volume report generated by our work, was published in December 2020. This photograph appears in both volumes.
The last five months (May-September 2023) required me to move a lot for a variety of professional and personal reasons. It was the first time in several years that I entered airplanes without carrying my DSLR camera. This resulted in me tinkering and thinking with my mobile phone camera, surpassing my snobbish attitude towards it as means of photographic expression. Visiting an old favourite antique store of mine, I was exposed to wallet-sized black and white pictures, very fashionable in the 1920s-1960s. Phenomenologically, I thought, these little pictures carried significance similar to the one carried by the myriads of photos nowadays stored on mobile phones. I tried to combine the sensory experience of black and white with the ease of mobile phone shooting, itself resembling certain types of pinhole cameras. Themes are the same as in my earlier photography: decayed and rusty patterns of disintegration, emptiness of spaces, outlier figures of the everyday, street signs and letters, nonhuman friends, naturecultures, and psychopolitically haunted scenes. Places include: Canada (Toronto), Greece (Athens, Thessaloniki, Aghia, Larissa, Eleftheroupoli, Kavala), Scotland (Edinburgh), France (Paris), Belgium (Brussels).
The last five months (May-September 2023) required me to move a lot for a variety of professional and personal reasons. It was the first time in several years that I entered airplanes without carrying my DSLR camera. This resulted in me tinkering and thinking with my mobile phone camera, surpassing my snobbish attitude towards it as means of photographic expression. Visiting an old favourite antique store of mine, I was exposed to wallet-sized black and white pictures, very fashionable in the 1920s-1960s. Phenomenologically, I thought, these little pictures carried significance similar to the one carried by the myriads of photos nowadays stored on mobile phones. I tried to combine the sensory experience of black and white with the ease of mobile phone shooting, itself resembling certain types of pinhole cameras. Themes are the same as in my earlier photography: decayed and rusty patterns of disintegration, emptiness of spaces, outlier figures of the everyday, street signs and letters, nonhuman friends, naturecultures, and psychopolitically haunted scenes. Places include: Canada (Toronto), Greece (Athens, Thessaloniki, Alonnisos, Aghia, Larissa, Eleftheroupoli, Kavala), Scotland (Edinburgh), England (Manchester), France (Paris), Belgium (Brussels).
[Update] I have continued collecting such images throughout 2024. New places visited: Dublin, Rotterdam, Glasgow, Copenhagen, London, Stirling, Peebles, Amsterdam, Dundee, Madrid.
The last five months (May-September 2023) required me to move a lot for a variety of professional and personal reasons. It was the first time in several years that I entered airplanes without carrying my DSLR camera. This resulted in me tinkering and thinking with my mobile phone camera, surpassing my snobbish attitude towards it as means of photographic expression. Visiting an old favourite antique store of mine, I was exposed to wallet-sized black and white pictures, very fashionable in the 1920s-1960s. Phenomenologically, I thought, these little pictures carried significance similar to the one carried by the myriads of photos nowadays stored on mobile phones. I tried to combine the sensory experience of black and white with the ease of mobile phone shooting, itself resembling certain types of pinhole cameras. Themes are the same as in my earlier photography: decayed and rusty patterns of disintegration, emptiness of spaces, outlier figures of the everyday, street signs and letters, nonhuman friends, naturecultures, and psychopolitically haunted scenes. Places include: Canada (Toronto), Greece (Athens, Thessaloniki, Aghia, Larissa, Eleftheroupoli, Kavala), Scotland (Edinburgh), France (Paris), Belgium (Brussels).
[Please take the time to read this reflection. In memory of Walter Benjamin.]
As we end this series looking at life in death at the Melbourne General Cemetery, I have focused on three impressive statues. In my previous photograph "Precious Angel" I mentioned one Jewish genius. In this one I wish to discuss another, Walter Benjamin (1892-1940).
Early in the series I showed you some memories of Shoah (the Holocaust), in which 6 million Jews were put to death in a singularly evil genocide. In history, what meaning is left to life after this event?
The great Italian writer and Holocaust survivor, Primo Levi (1919-1987) was so haunted by it all he took his own life in Turin. Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) also a Jewish scholar, is regarded by many as a prophet of post-modernism, and strongly anti-foundationalist (i.e. there is no ultimate ground of meaning), and yet late in his career he took a distinctly mystical turn as he tried to recapture a sense of purpose in the face of loss. For those scholars among you, try reading John Caputo's "The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion" (Indiana University Press, 1997).
But back to Walter Benjamin. "(He) was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist. An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish mysticism, Benjamin made enduring and influential contributions to aesthetic theory, literary criticism, and historical materialism." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Benjamin
Benjamin's collection of essays, "Illuminations" had an immediate impression on me when I discovered them in 1990. I was moved immediately by his phenomenological piece called, "Unpacking my Library". But there was more, much more. You see Benjamin was a marked man as soon as the Nazis rolled into Paris. His scholarship was well known in Germany, and was the very antithesis of Nazi doctrine itself. In January 1940 he wrote his seminal "Theses on the Philosophy of History". On June 13 he and his sister escaped to Lourdes as the Nazi tanks rolled into the city. Sure enough, they raided his Parisian flat, but he was gone.
In August he was able to obtain a US visa as a refugee and had plans of travelling to neutral Portugal, and at Lisbon to embark for the safety of America (yes, the movie "Casablanca" was based on facts). The Gestapo were everywhere. When Benjamin arrived in the Catalonian town of Portbou (then controlled by Francoist Spain), he was stopped by the border police. Orders were made to return all refugees to France, and Benjamin knew this would mean into the hands of the Gestapo. Benjamin killed himself with an overdose of morphine tablets on the night of September 26, 1940. His brother Georg was killed at the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in 1942. The details are numbing. How could rational humanity be reduced to such barbarism?
So what did Walter Benjamin make of this development as the world marched headlong into an abyss? Well, let's just focus on his "Ninth Thesis of History" as Benjamin struggles with the notion of Progress and the ensuing chaos:
"A (Paul) Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress."
You can see immediately where my inspiration came from for this photograph. The Angelus Novus is the angel of history who surveys the wreckage we leave behind, as Paradise after Paradise is lost. Even the missing left hand of this statue seems to have a very distinct meaning: The angel of history is himself injured by the catastrophe we leave behind us. If faith means anything at all after Auschwitz, then it must be because God also partakes of the universal suffering. All our neat conceptual images of God must go, and we are left with nothing but sheer Faith on which to rest our hopes. But the German mystic and priest Meister Eckhart was saying this in the early 14th century.
Another Jewish philosopher who fled the Nazis, Ernst Bloch (1885-1977), believed this and it formed the basis of his great work, "The Principle of Hope". In turn the German theologian Jürgen Moltmann (b.1926), made it the basis of his entire theological work. For Moltmann the meaning of history lies in a "Crucified God". But far from being an end, this is the true beginning of an eternal hope that lies beyond the vicissitudes of a failed universe. The death of Death is the beginning of New Life.
The last five months (May-September 2023) required me to move a lot for a variety of professional and personal reasons. It was the first time in several years that I entered airplanes without carrying my DSLR camera. This resulted in me tinkering and thinking with my mobile phone camera, surpassing my snobbish attitude towards it as means of photographic expression. Visiting an old favourite antique store of mine, I was exposed to wallet-sized black and white pictures, very fashionable in the 1920s-1960s. Phenomenologically, I thought, these little pictures carried significance similar to the one carried by the myriads of photos nowadays stored on mobile phones. I tried to combine the sensory experience of black and white with the ease of mobile phone shooting, itself resembling certain types of pinhole cameras. Themes are the same as in my earlier photography: decayed and rusty patterns of disintegration, emptiness of spaces, outlier figures of the everyday, street signs and letters, nonhuman friends, naturecultures, and psychopolitically haunted scenes. Places include: Canada (Toronto), Greece (Athens, Thessaloniki, Aghia, Larissa, Eleftheroupoli, Kavala), Scotland (Edinburgh), France (Paris), Belgium (Brussels).
The last five months (May-September 2023) required me to move a lot for a variety of professional and personal reasons. It was the first time in several years that I entered airplanes without carrying my DSLR camera. This resulted in me tinkering and thinking with my mobile phone camera, surpassing my snobbish attitude towards it as means of photographic expression. Visiting an old favourite antique store of mine, I was exposed to wallet-sized black and white pictures, very fashionable in the 1920s-1960s. Phenomenologically, I thought, these little pictures carried significance similar to the one carried by the myriads of photos nowadays stored on mobile phones. I tried to combine the sensory experience of black and white with the ease of mobile phone shooting, itself resembling certain types of pinhole cameras. Themes are the same as in my earlier photography: decayed and rusty patterns of disintegration, emptiness of spaces, outlier figures of the everyday, street signs and letters, nonhuman friends, naturecultures, and psychopolitically haunted scenes. Places include: Canada (Toronto), Greece (Athens, Thessaloniki, Aghia, Larissa, Eleftheroupoli, Kavala), Scotland (Edinburgh), France (Paris), Belgium (Brussels).
"So where is the Xth Dimension? And why do they want to invade us...?"
"It's not a really a question of where... More a question of - without getting into some heavy mathematics - "whenever/wherever". It has also been argued that it is more appropriately expressed linguistically as 'whenwhereverever'."
"Whenwhereverever?!? WTF? Is that a joke?"
"Well, no. The Xth extends in all directions and times simultaneously, including those times that run backwards and those that kind of, well, stand still and also some that loop and knot in on themselves. It gets pretty complicated as you can imagine. As for why? Well, we think they want our time, our simple unidirectional time's arrow that defines our own limited four dimensional phenomenological framework."
"Our TIME? Why? What use is that to them?"
"Our time runs in one direction, a line from past to future. We inhabit an ever-moving floating point on that line we call "the present" that allows us to understand and define entropy. The cosmology of the Xth Dimension's universe, so far as we can theorize, does not allow entropy of any kind... Thermodynamics work a little differently in the Xth Dimension. But in short, they want our time so that they can feel and know entropy."
"But... Entropy is bad, right? It's decay, it's the inevitable descent of order into chaos, the heat-death of the universe, of life, of everything. What's good about it? What use is it to them?"
"We've been asking ourselves the same kinds question of course. To an Xth-Dimensional being our version of linear time, with its phenomenon of entropy, would be a rather limiting, claustrophobic and probably very unpleasant experience. But these beings, their society, like ours probably has many of the same social issues and conflicts and I guess, bad folk. We think they want it as a cell. A prison. A torture chamber perhaps. And entropy is a unique feature of the dimensional set in our universe. It would be the ultimate punishment to an Xth-Dimensional."
"Oh. Right. Great. So they are going to fill our existence with their... Criminal elements? The Xth Dimension sees us merely as a naughty corner for all their psychopaths who are all going to be mighty annoyed at being shoved into what they'll see as a dark little box where everything decays and rots and fades to heat death and chaos?"
"Yes. That's what we think is the most logical reason for these incursions we've been seeing. All those evil-looking red and black fighters that appear and just scream through our cities and military installations. They are testing us, a reconnaissance perhaps to see if we happen to have any power or technology that might present a threat or risk to their plans".
"Huh. That's not exactly the best news I've heard all day. Where does that leave us then?"
"In a world of pain, I think. A universe of pain in fact. Another Scotch? You practically inhaled that last one."
"Please. Better make it a triple this time."
*** Built for the Starfighter Telephone Game, with the team "Invaders from the Xth Dimension". ***
Between 2004 and 2008, the UCL Institute of Archaeology Tavoliere-Gargano Prehistory Project conducted extensive surface finds and phenomenological landscape surveys across the Puglian (Apulian) Iron Age "towns" of Arpi, Masseria Finizio, Ordona and Tiati. The surveys consisted of randomly selected grid squares, 69 at Arpi, 68 at Ordona and smaller numbers at the other two sites. Their aim was to characterize materially and phenomenologically, and to date, the settlement of the four sites. Here our 2006 team is fieldwalking Ordona survey station 11, to the southeast of the Roman amphitheatre, possibly on a former rampart. The results of these surveys have been plotted and analysed but they have not yet been written up for publication. Two books on the Neolithic archaeology of the Plain generated by the Project were published in 2020.
The last five months (May-September 2023) required me to move a lot for a variety of professional and personal reasons. It was the first time in several years that I entered airplanes without carrying my DSLR camera. This resulted in me tinkering and thinking with my mobile phone camera, surpassing my snobbish attitude towards it as means of photographic expression. Visiting an old favourite antique store of mine, I was exposed to wallet-sized black and white pictures, very fashionable in the 1920s-1960s. Phenomenologically, I thought, these little pictures carried significance similar to the one carried by the myriads of photos nowadays stored on mobile phones. I tried to combine the sensory experience of black and white with the ease of mobile phone shooting, itself resembling certain types of pinhole cameras. Themes are the same as in my earlier photography: decayed and rusty patterns of disintegration, emptiness of spaces, outlier figures of the everyday, street signs and letters, nonhuman friends, naturecultures, and psychopolitically haunted scenes. Places include: Canada (Toronto), Greece (Athens, Thessaloniki, Aghia, Larissa, Eleftheroupoli, Kavala), Scotland (Edinburgh), France (Paris), Belgium (Brussels).
Shift, Tim Lowly, 2002, 40" x 60", acrylic on panel
One of eight works of mine that are currently in the exhibition "The Poetry of Content: Five Representational Artists" which is now at the Kalamazoo Institute of Art in Michigan.
In the series of paintings this work is from I was interested in restricting the scope of the images to ones to ones depicting my wife Sherrie with our daughter Temma on a couch. Most of the paintings are based on photographs that play with photographic phenomena (in this case a blur produced by swinging the camera side to side while taking the photograph). That is, I was interested in how such photographic phenomena might metaphorically shape the meaning / reading of the image. Further, I'm always interested in the phenomenological pas de deux that takes place in a painting based on a photograph: in this case the tug between an image produced by a camera in a fraction of a second and a painting that took many many hours to produce.
The last five months (May-September 2023) required me to move a lot for a variety of professional and personal reasons. It was the first time in several years that I entered airplanes without carrying my DSLR camera. This resulted in me tinkering and thinking with my mobile phone camera, surpassing my snobbish attitude towards it as means of photographic expression. Visiting an old favourite antique store of mine, I was exposed to wallet-sized black and white pictures, very fashionable in the 1920s-1960s. Phenomenologically, I thought, these little pictures carried significance similar to the one carried by the myriads of photos nowadays stored on mobile phones. I tried to combine the sensory experience of black and white with the ease of mobile phone shooting, itself resembling certain types of pinhole cameras. Themes are the same as in my earlier photography: decayed and rusty patterns of disintegration, emptiness of spaces, outlier figures of the everyday, street signs and letters, nonhuman friends, naturecultures, and psychopolitically haunted scenes. Places include: Canada (Toronto), Greece (Athens, Thessaloniki, Aghia, Larissa, Eleftheroupoli, Kavala), Scotland (Edinburgh), France (Paris), Belgium (Brussels).
2020
**This design won the 2020 Walton Book Cover Design Competition
More artwork at: www.permiandesigns.com/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/permiandesigns/
Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/permiandesigns.bsky.social
**INTERESTED IN A CUSTOM COMMISSION? If so, please feel free to contact me at permiandesigns@gmail.com
NOTE: All works featured here are completely original creations. None are made with the assistance of any form of AI technology in any fashion whatsoever.
2020
More artwork at: www.permiandesigns.com/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/permiandesigns/
Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/permiandesigns.bsky.social
**INTERESTED IN A CUSTOM COMMISSION? If so, please feel free to contact me at permiandesigns@gmail.com
NOTE: All works featured here are completely original creations. None are made with the assistance of any form of AI technology in any fashion whatsoever.
The last five months (May-September 2023) required me to move a lot for a variety of professional and personal reasons. It was the first time in several years that I entered airplanes without carrying my DSLR camera. This resulted in me tinkering and thinking with my mobile phone camera, surpassing my snobbish attitude towards it as means of photographic expression. Visiting an old favourite antique store of mine, I was exposed to wallet-sized black and white pictures, very fashionable in the 1920s-1960s. Phenomenologically, I thought, these little pictures carried significance similar to the one carried by the myriads of photos nowadays stored on mobile phones. I tried to combine the sensory experience of black and white with the ease of mobile phone shooting, itself resembling certain types of pinhole cameras. Themes are the same as in my earlier photography: decayed and rusty patterns of disintegration, emptiness of spaces, outlier figures of the everyday, street signs and letters, nonhuman friends, naturecultures, and psychopolitically haunted scenes. Places include: Canada (Toronto), Greece (Athens, Thessaloniki, Aghia, Larissa, Eleftheroupoli, Kavala), Scotland (Edinburgh), France (Paris), Belgium (Brussels).
I thought that my work is different from others? This is certainly better than the inside. Logical arguments should have been associated with color photographs, which were not typical (for the whole photograph as a whole). Just like a starting point for definitions? Understanding that speculative games no longer work here, for some time I was looking for answers in the phenomenological aspects of the process! Many schools, but they did not agree on what PROCESS itself is! (Yes, experts will forgive me for simplification)
I just started casting off in the oriental way - everything that’s not necessary or of little interest to me ... A compact base.
Today in profile header- «Photo without poses!»
I would like to hear your opinion!
Never yield to remorse, but at once tell yourself: remorse would
simply mean adding to the first act of stupidity a second.1
The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin2 follows the protagonist’s attempts to
correct his mistakes when given a chance to relive his past. He
discovers that human choices tend to be mechanical, and to change
the outcome of one’s actions is extremely difficult. Are we doomed to
repeat the same mistakes over and over? In the final chapter the
shocking realization of the nature of existence, and its consequences,
alludes to Nietzsche’s theory of eternal recurrence, and is the
platform for It’s closing time for gardens of the west.
It’s closing time for gardens of the west presents a blueprint to a
possible future world... We are taken out of the everyday and enter
into a disruptive phenomenological space, that offers a reflection on
the long term effects of human behavior in relation to a global
environment with dwindling natural resources.
Our installation is ironic and evasive, reflecting on the underlying
dualities and ambivalences that influence decisions and actions. It
has both associative utopian and dystopia references, and presents
conflicting notions of continuity and rupture, stability, collapse,
suspension, preservation, transience, time and materiality.
We have a working relationship that shares a curiosity in archetypes
that have an aspirational historical context and precedent; and are par-
ticularly interested in the currency of the tower, the wing and the knot.
To Matthew Wells tall towers are built with an idealism and a
symbolic value; an aspect of the sublime. 3 Historically the tower,
minaret and spire have stretched buildings skyward. The contempo-
rary version, a seemingly weightless skyscraper, can simultaneously
invoke contrary senses of timelessness, awe and progress. But
skyscrapers are greedy. Supported on massive foundations; they are
resource heavy monoliths that use vast amounts of steel, concrete
and glass, with a high end utilities upkeep that suck resources dry.
The wing is an irresistible motif, it propels us into the future, whatever
that future might be. Rapture? Apocalypse? the wing plunges us
headlong somewhere, and time, progress, history are forces that we
cannot halt or perhaps even adequately represent.
Think of an intractable problem. Imagine ways to disentangle this impos-
sible knot. To ‘cut the Gordian knot’ means discovering a bold solution to
a complicated problem. What if the knot remains steadfastly intact....?
This century has a peculiar resonance, akin to a discordant music score.
Notions of pure form that embody the fundamental characteristics of a
thing; or a collectively-inherited unconscious idea or pattern of thought
just don’t hold water as structures are built to fall apart, borders are
increasingly ambiguous and nature is pushed to the point of dissolution,
and at its extreme, destruction. We ask: is human endeavour engineered
to fail? Consider a skewed tower, an odd, almost mutant wing form, an
inexplicable sliver of pure white light, an unwieldy knot, strange tubes
that spew unidentified but darkly uncomfortable things—as we reflect
on our implicated relationship with an increasingly frail environment.
1. Friedrich Nietzche, The Wanderer and his Shadow, 1880, p323
2. P. D. Ouspensky, The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin, 1915
3. Matthew Wells, Skyscrapers: structure and design, 2005
Art In Residence, founded by Nathaniel Ancheta and David Edward Martin, is an open-air alternative exhibition space for site-specific installations. A.I.R. showcases work that explores what it means to be “in residence.” Using the high desert as a backdrop, we invite artists to consider the social, political, historical, and phenomenological aspects of the surroundings.
Free to the public, A.I.R. is located in Antelope Acres, CA at the foot of of the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve. 34°43’39.0″N 118°22’12.7″W
The last five months (May-September 2023) required me to move a lot for a variety of professional and personal reasons. It was the first time in several years that I entered airplanes without carrying my DSLR camera. This resulted in me tinkering and thinking with my mobile phone camera, surpassing my snobbish attitude towards it as means of photographic expression. Visiting an old favourite antique store of mine, I was exposed to wallet-sized black and white pictures, very fashionable in the 1920s-1960s. Phenomenologically, I thought, these little pictures carried significance similar to the one carried by the myriads of photos nowadays stored on mobile phones. I tried to combine the sensory experience of black and white with the ease of mobile phone shooting, itself resembling certain types of pinhole cameras. Themes are the same as in my earlier photography: decayed and rusty patterns of disintegration, emptiness of spaces, outlier figures of the everyday, street signs and letters, nonhuman friends, naturecultures, and psychopolitically haunted scenes. Places include: Canada (Toronto), Greece (Athens, Thessaloniki, Aghia, Larissa, Eleftheroupoli, Kavala), Scotland (Edinburgh), France (Paris), Belgium (Brussels).
"once the body is recognizable as the substrate -precondition of experience, then one is immediately compelled to accept the phenomenological dualism, precisely because experience and its substrate can be separated" , mechanical pencil on bfk, 15inx11in, 2020
The last five months (May-September 2023) required me to move a lot for a variety of professional and personal reasons. It was the first time in several years that I entered airplanes without carrying my DSLR camera. This resulted in me tinkering and thinking with my mobile phone camera, surpassing my snobbish attitude towards it as means of photographic expression. Visiting an old favourite antique store of mine, I was exposed to wallet-sized black and white pictures, very fashionable in the 1920s-1960s. Phenomenologically, I thought, these little pictures carried significance similar to the one carried by the myriads of photos nowadays stored on mobile phones. I tried to combine the sensory experience of black and white with the ease of mobile phone shooting, itself resembling certain types of pinhole cameras. Themes are the same as in my earlier photography: decayed and rusty patterns of disintegration, emptiness of spaces, outlier figures of the everyday, street signs and letters, nonhuman friends, naturecultures, and psychopolitically haunted scenes. Places include: Canada (Toronto), Greece (Athens, Thessaloniki, Alonnisos, Aghia, Larissa, Eleftheroupoli, Kavala), Scotland (Edinburgh), England (Manchester), France (Paris), Belgium (Brussels).
[Update] I have continued collecting such images throughout 2024. New places visited: Dublin, Rotterdam, Glasgow, Copenhagen, London, Stirling, Peebles, Amsterdam, Dundee, Madrid.
The limestone karst of the Pedegargano, north of Monte Granata. Puglia, Italy.
Conducting Phenomenological Site Catchment Analysis—in this case recording the landscape along a transect walked out of Bronze Age Monte Granata—during the UCL Institute of Archaeology Tavoliere-Gargano Prehistory Project.
This aspect of the project remains unpublished.