View allAll Photos Tagged existential
iPhoneography on iPhone 7 Plus.
This and the two to the right all featured together on "in explore" this morning; March 22, 2019.
The latest blog. Full of existential musings, scattered photos, and skill-testing questions. Plus LARPing and jokes!
mikeambach.substack.com/p/staying-on-the-ship
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Sometimes the water seems wide, impossibly so, stretching out like an endless mirror reflecting a surreal dreamscape where the horizon blurs and bends, where the water seems to hold the secrets of the universe in its glassy depths.
Image imagined in MidJourney AI and finished with Topaz Studio and Lightroom Classic.
corporate poetry (noun)
/ˈkɔːrp(ə)rət ˈpoʊɪtri/
1. The art of transforming ordinary marketing copy into sweeping emotional verse about the human condition even when selling something with zippers.
2. A literary genre pioneered by brands who believe a backpack can heal the world.
Example: “I’m not just a water bottle. I’m a vessel for your journey.”
Synonyms: aspirational branding, brand myth-making, emotional copywriting, existential capitalism.
See also: soul-washing, adventure-washing, inspirational inflation.
I get those late winter blues when I stare into the abyss of a snowstorm and ponder the futility of shoveling my driveway, knowing I'll have to do it again tomorrow.
Image imagined in MidJourney AI and finished with Topaz Studio and Lightroom Classic.
"I was conscious, and that's all. Beyond my consciousness, there was nothing else.
More time passed. I waited for something to happen. Nothing happened.
I was calm. Or frozen. I felt as if I was on the verge of the most terrifying thought in the world, but I wasn't having it quite yet.
Then I had it."
- Alex Garland, The Coma
"As long as one person still lives..." "..it will be eternal proof that Mankind ever existed."
So, as you would be able to tell from my last few descriptions, I'm having an existential crisis. When you're in such a mental state, your views of the world become skewed.
As I look at the shot of this horrible grey industrial block, I wonder if this is the true legacy of the human race. When we're all dead and gone, it feels like these structures will sum up our contribution entirely.
The reality of this shot involved peeing at the side of the road, having to get the tripod out for the 50th time and lots of shivering.
I thought she was going on a deep sea journey, but in reading the write-up, it sounds more like a journey to human connection..
Apparently that helmet is made from an old furnace..
"Lost 5 – Signal" is a sculpture by artist Karl Mattson, displayed in Penticton as part of the city's Public Sculpture Exhibition from May 2024 to April 2025. This 14-foot-tall piece, constructed from new and salvaged steel, depicts a figure extending an arm skyward, symbolizing an attempt to send or receive a signal, reflecting humanity's search for connection in uncertain times.
The sculpture is installed at the Front Street roundabout, a prominent location that ensures visibility to both residents and visitors. This placement continues Penticton's tradition of showcasing impactful public art, following the display of Mattson's earlier work, "Lost," in the same location during the 2020-2021 exhibition.
Mattson's "Lost" series serves as a commentary on humanity's complacent progression into an uncertain future, with each piece exploring themes of environmental decline and existential struggle. "Lost 5 – Signal" emphasizes communication and the human desire for connection amidst these challenges.
There are many generic kinds of time. Each field of gravity in the
Universe has its own specific time, determined by the mass contained
in that field. There are no two points on Earth which at the same
moment of astronomical time would remain in the same relation to
the Sun, even though the practical convention of time zones imposes
consistency on all local clocks.
These thoughts formulated by Jarosław Kozłowski in 1978 amazingly
correspond with many of his installations. The artist’s obsession with
time is present both in his utterances and in specific actions. Alarm
clocks, watches, temporal manipulation—that’s a frequent motif in
his practice. He used watches for the first time in 1968 in his
environment Situation. Then they returned in the eighties when he
started smashing alarm clocks in Continuum, series of drawing
performances. During the nineties Kozłowski began to create
large-scale installations, in which he deconstructs time and space as
a basic categories of description of the world.
Time Archive is a site-specific installation, inscribed in given space.
Row of shelves is filled with clocks previously owned by real people
and indicating different times of day. Going each by their own time,
with references to their owners/users, the clocks represent personal
time or, in other words, history in its individual dimension. In this
archive, the hundreds of alarm clocks—individual meters of time—
drown out the authority of ‘monumental time’, associated with sym-
bols of power and compared to Nietzsche’s ‘monumental history’.
Indicating different hours, minutes and seconds, the clocks relativise
official measures of time and divisions into geographical zones. As a
space of experiencing time, the archive becomes a place of cultural
experiences, where the simple question about time (what time is it?)
refers to questions about the philosophical and political foundations
of the place of its presentation.
The sound of the ticking clocks is an integral part of the project. The
accumulative aesthetics of a collection of alarm clocks, each looking
differently and showing a different time, have an extension in the
ticking sounds, overlapping and merging into a drone. Despite the
proverbial silence of archives, the space of the Time Archive is
enlivened with its sounds.
The Time Archive project expands on themes tackled in many of
Jarosław Kozłowski’s earlier works, including in spectacular installations
such as Personal Files (1993) in a former archive in the Hague,
Personal Files II (1997) at the National Museum in Poznań, Time
Vacuum (1999) at the Arbäaer Museum in Reykjavik, Time Cistern
(2006) at the CCA Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, or Time Library (2007)
in the Kalisz Museum, previously the municipal archive. In all those
projects, time was considered in its various categories: biological,
existential, metaphysical, astronomic, institutional, and in relation to
the given place, its history, philosophy and politics.
Strictly speaking doctrinal knowledge is independent of the individual. But its actualization is not independent of the human capacity to act as a vehicle for it. He who possesses truth must none the less merit it although it is a free gift. Truth is immutable in itself, but in us it lives, because we live.
If we want truth to live in us we must live in it.
Knowledge only saves us on condition that it enlists all that we are, only when it is a way and when it works and transforms and wounds our nature even as the plough wounds the soil.
To say this is to say that intelligence and metaphysical certainty alone do not save; of themselves they do not prevent titans from falling. This is what explains the psychological and other precautions with which every tradition surrounds the gift of the doctrine.
When metaphysical knowledge is effective it produces love and destroys presumption. It produces love, that is to say the spontaneous directing of the will towards God and the perception of "myself" - and of God - in one's neighbour. It destroys presumption, for knowledge does not allow a man to overestimate himself or to underestimate others. By reducing to ashes all that is not God it orders all things.
All St. Paul says of charity concerns effective knowledge, for the latter is love, and he opposes it to theory inasmuch as theory is human concept. The Apostle desires that truth should be contemplated with our whole being and he calls this totality of contemplation "love".
Metaphysical knowledge is sacred. It is the right of sacred things to require of man all that he is.
Intelligence, since it distinguishes, perceives, as one might put
it, proportions. The spiritual man integrates these proportions into his will, into his soul and into his life.
All defects are defects of proportion; they are errors that are lived. To be spiritual means not denying at any point with one's "being" what one affirms with one's knowledge, that is, what one accepts with the intelligence.
Truth lived: incorruptibility and generosity. Since ignorance is all that we are and not merely our thinking, knowledge will also be all that we are to the extent to which our existential modalities are by their nature able to participate in truth.
Human nature contains dark elements which no intellectual
certainty could, ipso facto, eliminate...
Pure intellectuality is as serene as a summer sky - serene with a serenity that is at once infinitely incorruptible and infinitely generous.
Intellectualism which "dries up the heart" has no connection
with intellectuality.
The incorruptibility - or inviolability - of truth is bound up neither with contempt nor with avarice.
What is man's certainty? On the level of ideas it may be perfect, but on the level of life it but rarely pierces through illusion.
Everything is ephemeral and every man must die. No man is
ignorant of this and no one knows it.
Man does not always accept truth because he understands it; often he believes he understands it because he is anxious to accept it.
People often discuss truths whereas they should limit themselves to discussing tastes and tendencies ...
Acuteness of intelligence is only a blessing when it is compensated by greatness and sweetness of the soul. It should not appear as a rupture of the equilibrium or as an excess which splits man in two. A gift of nature requires complementary qualities which allow of its harmonious manifestation; otherwise there is a risk of the lights becoming mingled with darkness.
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Frithjof Schuon: Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts
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Quoted in: The Essential Frithjof Schuon (edited by Seyyed Hossein Nasr)
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Image: Descent from the Cross, Novgorod school (late 15th c.)
My friend and I had a conversation today over lunch about how her husband, who will turn forty next year, has been going through an existential crisis lately that ends each weekend with overeating pastries. After we parted and I was freezing, I went to eat alone because I was the only one in our party of two who was starving. I was alone at the bar, caught in my teenage comfort foods—matzah ball soup, French fries, coffee, and cheesecake—staring at the windows in front of me. For a split second, I had my own crisis—unsure if it was truly existential or just a typical New York City “romantic” moment many have experienced before me. I didn’t really think of myself; I thought of New York City and its magic. As I finished my second cup of coffee, melancholy and nostalgia took over me, but I can't say that feeling was sadness entirely. No, it was a “romantic” NYC moment, as if that's how one is supposed to feel after an amazing day in the city. I felt as if I was part of “You’ve Got Mail,” with Tom Hanks just around the corner. Then I thought, maybe New York City really is the best place to be if you give it a chance. I will not question if that feeling is just an illusion. Not tonight.
Law’s notes: 9-30-XX
I change more with each passing day. I feel that when I first sprang into being, the birthchild of decades old memories and something funky in the water of Midian, I was a completely different person.
It’s probably a matter of the experience of this transformation process. Cluster of memories > Brain tape > Clone = … I dunno… existential crisis? Most likely. The hole is there.
I spoke to D at length this evening, after a grueling 18 hours of free running… and spilled it. Told her how I felt something was missing in my essence. Something core. I told her it was probably my soul. She said it was probably purpose.
Volpe said exactly the same thing, the other night.
Soul… what is a soul? Is a soul simply purpose? D said it’s easier to define. Yes, purpose is… but is that what I’m missing? Purpose. I didn’t feel this way before the transbeing process.. but I was a cocky young pilot, moving into a training programming that I excelled at. I was about to be liberated from my parents, put into a school where I could do the things I loved – I had it all.
Now my parents have been dead for almost a year. My training program ended fifteen years ago, and I’d moved on… and became Laz. Hero. Loving husbanesque thing. All around nice guy.
Not me though. I’m not a Hero. Not a husbandesque thing. And definitely not an all around nice guy… or am I? Maybe that’s what’s missing. That purpose. Apparently the Old Man knew that. He found it. He didn’t feel something was missing.
But he wasn’t a clone of a man he isn’t.
I need to lay him to rest in my own head. Truly made a division somehow…
But have a made a mistake contacting all of his old friends? Was that the crucial turning point where I went wrong – coming back here, to Midian? Or is this the first step in finding purpose… and, God Willing… a soul?
digital art 2008.
a friend of mine was telling me about a person who had been going to a psychiatrist for about 2 years.she eventually asked him if he had arrived at a diagnosis to which he delivered a rambling monologue of which the only thing she remembered was the phrase "existential ambivalence".
i wondered what that looked like!
So the sun disappears. Under the weight of the gravitational pull. Pushed by this deep sense of existential emptiness. If you think about it, there is only a sun that shines on us. The same that we share. Without it, we feel blind and disappeared.
Hasselblad 501 CM
Zeiss Planar 80mm f/2,8
Foma 100 120mm b/w film
R09 (1 + 37)
20° stand
Through transparent curtains I sense the world going by,
Outside the earth is hushed--as if holding its breath,
Time envelopes the room like a beggar's ragged coat,
I'm a witness to life's transient sigh.
Image imagined in MidJourney AI and finished with Topaz Studio and Lightroom Classic.
Upon entering "Yummy Restaurant," the laws of logic appeared to unravel. The waiter, dressed in a tuxedo made of live eels, welcomed me with a grin that revealed a set of carnivorous teeth. The menu, written in a language unknown to mankind, presented dishes with names like "Existential Enigma" and "Metaphysical Morsel." As I attempted to savor the first bite, my spoon transformed into a wriggling millipede, leaving me pondering the true meaning of gastronomic absurdity.
The sun is a generous lord | It shares its light |
With all things Great or Small.
Straight out of the Camera. A camera is a receptacle of light. A photographer is a gatherer of light. A camera can capture infinite attributes and hues of light. Attributes and hues which can be manipulated but (perhaps) never enhanced by post processing on a computer. Personally I believe that a mild tweaking of exposure or white balance may be necessary at times but extensive processing sucks out the meditative and emotionally charged component of an image leaving behind something which is unreal and lifeless. To PP or not to PP? An existential dilemma which every photographer has to solve for him-her-self.
.... I can't choose between these two editions! lol What is your opinion??? Which do you prefer? xD Thanks in advance for the opinions! greetings and happy week!
....así es, no puedo decidirme por ninguna de las ediciones de esta foto!! jajaja Cuál es vuestra opinión??? Cuál os gusta más u os disgusta menos?? xD Gracias desde ya por las opiniones!! un saludo y feliz semana!
Whatever had caught the attention of this little mantis within the bush, it was of sufficient interest that it didn't notice me at all - it made me chuckle to see what looks like a mantis existential moment, staring deep in to the abyss!
Archimantis latistyla
5 cm length
© All rights reserved.
The sun is a generous lord | It shares its light |
With all things Great or Small.
Straight out of the Camera. A camera is a receptacle of light. A photographer is a gatherer of light. A camera can capture infinite attributes and hues of light. Attributes and hues which can be manipulated but (perhaps) never enhanced by post processing on a computer. Personally I believe that a mild tweaking of exposure or white balance may be necessary at times but extensive processing sucks out the meditative and emotionally charged component of an image leaving behind something which is unreal and lifeless. To PP or not to PP? An existential dilemma which every photographer has to solve for him-her-self.
The ivories beckon to the pianist as he seeks to change his perspective. Sometimes inspiration comes from the willingness to embrace the absurd. Find that world where gravity is only a suggestion.
Image imagined in MidJourney AI and finished with Topaz Studio and Lightroom Classic.
Lithographs on Japanese Bunko-Shi paper, ed.17/30
Courtesy: The artist and Item editions
In Lynch's work, the subconscious if often viewed as a place of conflict, where paranoid, phobias and moments of crisis reveal the negativity and instability of the human condition.
As he asserts, 'Everyone's subconscious is filled with plenty of horror. All the things we don't want to face with our conscious minds are there just waiting for us.' While locality plays an important role in characterising the immensity of these problems (in particular, insular and closed spaces), the challenges are ultimately made worse because the 'problems are inside the people themselves'.
In many of his lithographs, we are presented with an almost infantile outlook, with protagonists engaged in states of confusion, longing and alienation. The use of text - a few words or short phrases inscribed onto the lithographic stone - bestows these often solitary figures with various states of existential distress and emotional anguish reinforced by the titles of the works.
....may occur when cellular and wifi service goes down for 10 minutes and everyone realizes who they really are.
Image imagined in MidJourney AI and finished with Topaz Studio and Lightroom Classic.
This project, where the use of reflecting surface and experimentation are the essence, includes three series exploring existential issues "Talk To Her", "Broken Embraces" and "Identity" ; two self-portraits with my tool of the trade "Self-portrait With Camera n◦ 3" and "Self-portrait With Camera n◦ 4" ; seven nudes "Nude With Camera" XIX, XX, XXI, XXII and XXIII, XXIV, XXV ; two works with the reflections of my cats as an integral part of my body "Self-portrait With a Paw And a Tail" and "Self-portrait With a Cat In the Belly" , two pieces of my ghostly nature "Ghost" I and "Ghost" II as well as two self-portraits focusing on deformations of the human body "Self-portrait With Three Heads" and "Self-portrait With Three Legs".
DALLE mini is a AI-based text-to-image software program. I decided to give it some existential prompts. Prompt, "What does DALLE-mini look like?"
Existential angst, anyone? This rock formation just 'screamed' Edvard Munch. (sorry, had to do it)
Does anyone else see it or am I losing it a little? I can't look at it without my mind's eye putting the hands up there holding the head.
This formation is also from the West Fork hike. I've got at least 4 more that I want to post from that hike.
I wanted to go hiking this morning and miss the mid-day sun, but Metallica tickets went on sale at 10 a.m. so I had to stay around for that. I'll probably go out here shortly and brave the heat. Lord knows I need to sweat off a few pounds. My goal was to lose weight in AZ but I've gained 4 freakin' lbs.!
tribune.com.pk/story/831276/the-mangroves-of-karachi-faci...
The most visible and delicate ecosystem of Karachi, a city with a profound coastal environment, is that of the mangrove forests that thrive in the mingled salt and freshwater where the Indus River meets the Arabian Sea.
These forests, however, are under existential threat for a number of reasons, particularly along the city coastline. There is untreated municipal waste and industrial pollution causing still-undetermined amounts of damage, there is exploitation of the trees by the area’s communities for use as firewood, building material and fodder and, most alarmingly, there is the chopping down of the forests to make way for coastal development projects.
The Pakistani coastline stretches for around 990 kilometres, with the Exclusive Economic Zone – the sea zone in which the state has special rights over marine resources – covering an area of about 240,000 square kilometres. Meanwhile, the 220-kilometre Sindh coastal belt, characterised by a network of tidal creeks and numerous islands with mangrove vegetation, is divided between the Indus Delta system and the Karachi coast. The former is home to the largest arid climate mangroves in the world, while mangrove forestation also dots the latter.
A vast ecosystem
According to the Sindh Coastal Community Development Project, the extensive mangrove swamps of Sindh spread over approximately 100,000 hectares. The black mangrove, with aerial roots growing up out of the mud, is the most common species. The forests also house the red mangrove, Rhizophora mucronata, Ceriops tagal and Aegiceras corniculatum, as well as several species of marine seaweed that often grow as algal mats on the surface of the mud.
The mangrove swamps, creeks and mudflats serve as a breeding ground for a diverse variety of marine life along the Sindh coastline, such as mussels, oysters, shrimp and fish, which move offshore as they grow. Some species of migratory birds, too, use the swamps as wintering grounds.
It is not just animals and vegetation that are supported by the vast ecosystem formed by Sindh’s mangroves. The 100,000 people living along the northern edge of the Indus Delta use an estimated 18,000 tons of mangrove firewood each year, while the leaves and shoots are used as fodder for livestock.
The mangroves, beautiful as they are, offer more than just aesthetic value: they can greatly benefit both the city and the country if they are properly harnessed. Protecting them could enhance the financial dividends for the fishing industry. Research has also proved that they can act as a barrier against tidal flooding and coastal erosion, as their roots, embedded in the coastal land, provide shoreline stability.
Another important yet neglected element of the viable use of the mangroves is recreation. Countries with these natural assets often develop ways to utilise coastal mangrove forestation as sites for exciting recreational activities, which not only draw tourists and have tremendous financial value but also provide educational benefits.
Farhan Anwar is an urban planner and runs a non-profit organisation based in Karachi focusing on urban sustainability issues
Published in The Express Tribune, February 2rd, 2015.