Berlin Through the Lenses
View allAll Photos Tagged PHENOMENOLOGY
I mentioned yesterday the philosophical importance of seeing the world as a subject in relation to us. The camera becomes an extension of our body. Here is an example. I was taking some farm photographs when this beautiful creature came right up to me.
[Make sure you enlarge its beautiful face.]
Here is the final landscape shot which includes this beautiful white horse. When you've already established a relationship with the subject it somehow makes the photograph more "real" to the photographer. Viewers might not notice the difference, but for the photographer a relationship has been established. And that's a really nice feeling.
Malachi 3:12 “’And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land,’ saith the LORD of hosts.”
DHL462 is a Boeing 747-8 aircraft and flies for Lufthansa. Here it flew from Frankfurt to Miami. We stalk the planes above us! There were people sitting in the plane. People we'll never meet, but we see them on their way. Their lives not connected to ours, so different, but we see them and that is some kind of connection after all. It's probably too difficult for me, to describe my thoughts and feelings about this phenomenon in a language that isn't my mother tongue. I like phenomenology a lot. I used to study philosophy at the university of Bochum (but I have no degree). It's just one of my hobbies.
Fuji X-Pro3 plus Samyang wide-angle lens. In the phenomenology of gestures, this one is the little darling among failed politicians. The misery they themselves have caused for the many they will blame on an "enemy", inside or outside. Then, they will present themselves, the ones responsible for the misery, as the "strong man" offering prompt remedy.
Loris Cecchini’s sculptures and installations take inspiration from frameworks found in nature to suggest organic processes and transformation. At the same time they allude to science and phenomenology, encouraging us to view them through our various experiences and knowledge. “Waterbones” composed of nearly 2,000 steel modules resembles coral, yet also appears to realize cellular structures or mathematic formulae three-dimensionally. The sculpture seems to proliferate in the space before us, keeping both its natural and scientific connotations in play. Despite its elements of steel, “Waterbones” intimates a delicacy that echoes the fragility of the earth’s coral reefs, 75% of which are threatened by rising ocean temperatures, marine pollution , and fishing for sport. Its scientific overtones, on the other hand, imply our capacity to conceive solutions to safeguard our future.
Loris Cecchini’s sculptures and installations take inspiration from frameworks found in nature to suggest organic processes and transformation. At the same time they allude to science and phenomenology, encouraging us to view them through our various experiences and knowledge. “Waterbones” composed of nearly 2,000 steel modules resembles coral, yet also appears to realize cellular structures or mathematic formulae three-dimensionally. The sculpture seems to proliferate in the space before us, keeping both its natural and scientific connotations in play. Despite its elements of steel, “Waterbones” intimates a delicacy that echoes the fragility of the earth’s coral reefs, 75% of which are threatened by rising ocean temperatures, marine pollution , and fishing for sport. Its scientific overtones, on the other hand, imply our capacity to conceive solutions to safeguard our future.
For the phenomenology of religion the prophet represents a type sui generis. The pathos of God is upon him. It moves him. It breaks out in him like a storm in the soul, overwhelming his inner life, his thoughts, feelings, wishes, and hopes. It takes possession of his heart and mind, giving him the courage to act against the world.
---Abraham Joshua Heschel, Between God and Man, An Interpretation of Judaism, pg 124
Loris Cecchini’s sculptures and installations take inspiration from frameworks found in nature to suggest organic processes and transformation. At the same time they allude to science and phenomenology, encouraging us to view them through our various experiences and knowledge. “Waterbones” composed of nearly 2,000 steel modules resembles coral, yet also appears to realize cellular structures or mathematic formulae three-dimensionally. The sculpture seems to proliferate in the space before us, keeping both its natural and scientific connotations in play. Despite its elements of steel, “Waterbones” intimates a delicacy that echoes the fragility of the earth’s coral reefs, 75% of which are threatened by rising ocean temperatures, marine pollution , and fishing for sport. Its scientific overtones, on the other hand, imply our capacity to conceive solutions to safeguard our future.
Erin Dickson, born in South Shields, England, and Jeffrey Sarmiento, born in Chicago, are two artists based in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. Both are known for their use of glass and share a fascination with cultural and emotional connections to architecture and explore their experience of space from individual perspectives.
Dickson graduated from the Architectural Association in London, and completed her PhD combining architectural phenomenology, technology and glass at the University of Sunderland, in 2015. Sarmiento received his MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, in 2000, and PhD from The University of Sunderland, in 2011. Dickson was studio assistant to Sarmiento at the University of Sunderland (2010-2014). In his works, Sarmiento integrates glass with graphics, including words, images, artifacts and urban landscapes, to uncover hidden narratives. Dickson combines phenomenology with architecture and digital technology to create sculpture, installation, and performance that considers the emotional and sensorial qualities of spaces. In Emotional Leak (2011) they produced the physical manifestation of a slowly leaking roof. Inspired by water and realized in glass, the resulting form is a black monolithic sculpture, resembling a digital gothic architectural model. Dickson and Sarmiento have individually and collectively exhibited worldwide including, Saatchi Gallery (2013), London; Fondazione Berengo (2015), Venice; and Bullseye Gallery (2016), Portland. Sarmiento won a Fulbright scholarship to Denmark (2003-2004); a Research Councils UK Academic Fellowship at the University of Sunderland (2006-2011); and was honored with a mid-career retrospective at the National Glass Centre (2013), Sunderland. Dickson was awarded an inaugural Technology Advancing Glass grant from the Glass Art Society (2014).
A dream
I'm in my studio, taking a shower. Out of the shower I realise that I actually left the studio door wide open. what? Why would I do that? Doubts begin creeping in, as I step forward to close the door at once. I try to piece things together, but quickly everything falls apart: something bad happened. No! I turn around with horror, just to realise that the whole place, my home, my studio is actually completely empty. Stripped bare. They took everything. There is nothing left, nothing at all, they took absolutely everything. I'm terrified: that's it, I'm lost. I don't know if I want to cry or throw up or what; I breath heavily and my heart is pounding - it's a panic attack. Helpless, I feel vulnerable like a motherless child. I can't think straight, I don't understand, I can't understand. Please... There is only one possible way out of this, I think: I must wake up. Find the strength. This is a dream, this has to be a dream, it can't be real! I'm begging for mercy, for help. Please... please... please... And that's how I force myself out of sleep.
That morning I woke up at three o'clock, in tears. None of this was real, nothing but the fear. The fear was real.
The fear is always real.
Unfortunately, Flickr is not the best medium to produce any sort of serial ideas. Most people are looking for single images and never read the descriptions. Many people simply post their photos without so much as a title or any thought for context. Fair enough then, I am a fish out of water. By now you must have realised I am on about something much more than producing a "good shot".
But for those who do care about these things, and are not rushing to fave the next image that takes your fancy, let me share a few ideas from Susan Sontag about what photography can mean for us. I don't agree with all her conclusions in the book, but that said, "On Photography" (1971) and Roland Barthes' "Camera Lucida" (1980) still remain the best introductions to the meaning of photography in our modern age.
"In a world ruled by photographic images, all borders ('framing') seem arbitrary. Anything can be separated, can be made discontinuous from anything else, all that is necessary is to frame the subject differently. Photography reinforces a nominalist view of social reality as consisting of small units of an apparently infinite number - as the number of photographs that could be taken of anything is unlimited. Through photographs, the world becomes a series of unrelated, freestanding particles; and history, past and present, a set of anecdotes...The camera makes reality atomic, manageable and opaque. It is a view of the world which denies interconnectedness, continuity, but which confers on each moment the character of a mystery. Any photograph has multiple meanings..." (p.22-23).
Now this is where Sontag gets very interesting!
"The ultimate wisdom of the photographic image is to say: 'There is the surface. Now think - or rather feel, intuit - what is beyond it, what the reality must be like if it looks this way.' Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy." (p.23).
The problem most viewers of photographs have is that we have been so trained to think LITERALLY (this is a picture of graffiti), that we fail to make the necessary connections with deeper aspects of meaning.
- Why did I photograph this in fading light?
- Why has the building been abandoned?
- Is it beautiful?
- What was the graffitist trying to do?
The questions are endless.
But I've visited this sort of thinking before in discussing the Phenomenology of Photography.
www.flickr.com/photos/luminosity7/52536790756/in/datepost...
www.flickr.com/photos/luminosity7/52534433756/in/datepost...
The camera can be many things, but we often forget it can be a philosophical weapon to make us THINK.
“Since being in the transcendent dimension is not at stake, the sense of one’s own problematic nature is relativized and defused, and one does away with the metaphysical angst that the existentialist’ man, having a different internal constitution, feels, and indeed is bound to feel.” J. Evola
Looking at a corner in the blessed sacrament chapel in St. Ignatius by Steven Holl. It's beautiful how the orange light spills down the wall.
This website at Seattle University describes Holl's concept:
www2.seattleu.edu/missionministry/chapel/
It's wonderful to see on the University website how they show pride in the building!
“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_...
_____________________________________________________________________________
●"What we "normal" name, is a product of repression, denial, isolation, projection, introjection and other forms of destructive action against the experience."
Ronald D. Laing, a phenomenology of experience
______________________________________________________________________________