View allAll Photos Tagged existential
When photographing a big storm cell near Adelaide river, south of Litchfield park, Northern Territory, a smaller storm creeped up behind me. I was able to get some more lightning pics with the railway stop signs making a nice foreground. The sign has been "painted" with a torch. This is my favourite from the night.
See cloudtogroundimages.com/2013/12/26/northern-territory-exi... for a description of my NT trip
There's no better way to evaluate your role as the architect of your brief and minuscule life, then to sail across a deep blue sea, into a fiery sun blazing in a deep red abyss. However, I might not know this from first-hand experience.
Image imagined in MidJourney AI and finished with Topaz Studio 2.0 and Lightroom Classic.
one of my favorites from the photographic and existential journey into the wilderness that is ... coney island.
There are places where what we see is not necessarily what we are truly looking at.
Forms, architecture, sacred images, a cross, a face, a skull, a figure crossing a doorway… they are only signs. Traces left by humanity in an attempt, perhaps, to give a name to things that cannot be explained.
But the real subject does not always reveal itself.
Sometimes it hides in an almost insignificant detail.
Sometimes it lives in the contrast between two presences.
Sometimes it is found in the light that enters and the darkness that remains.
Sometimes it is simply a question the image refuses to ask.
I tried to remain precisely there, in that uncertain place where what we see stops being merely reality and becomes interpretation.
A church can be a place of faith, but it can also become a place where we question our own existence. A cross can speak of hope, or remind us of the weight of time. A memento mori can be a symbol of death, but also an invitation to look at life differently.
And then there is a threshold.
Two figures meet for an instant, coming from apparently distant worlds. One emerges from the shadow of the sacred, while the other waits in the light of the world.
I do not know whether a true boundary exists between what we call sacred and what we call profane.
Perhaps that boundary exists only in our eyes.
That is why I would rather not give these images an answer.
I would rather leave the viewer free to discover their own true subject — the one that does not immediately appear before the eyes, but slowly emerges within us.
Because perhaps a photograph reaches its deepest meaning precisely when it stops belonging to the person who made it.
And then what I saw no longer matters.
What matters is what you will see, when you are left alone, on the side of silence.
Ci sono luoghi nei quali ciò che vediamo non è necessariamente ciò che stiamo guardando.
Le forme, le architetture, le immagini sacre, una croce, un volto, un teschio, una figura che attraversa una porta… sono soltanto segni. Presenze lasciate dall'uomo nel tentativo, forse, di dare un nome a ciò che non può essere spiegato.
Ma il vero soggetto non sempre si lascia vedere.
A volte è nascosto in un dettaglio quasi insignificante.
A volte vive nel contrasto fra due presenze.
A volte è nella luce che entra e nel buio che rimane.
A volte è una domanda che l'immagine non pronuncia.
Ho cercato di fermarmi proprio lì, in quella zona incerta in cui ciò che appare smette di essere soltanto realtà e diventa interpretazione.
Una chiesa può essere un luogo di fede, ma può anche diventare il luogo nel quale ci interroghiamo sulla nostra stessa esistenza. Una croce può parlare di speranza, oppure ricordarci il peso del tempo. Un memento mori può essere un simbolo della morte, ma anche un invito a guardare diversamente la vita.
E poi c'è una soglia.
Due figure si incontrano per un istante, provenendo da mondi apparentemente lontanissimi. Una esce dalla penombra del sacro, l'altra attende nella luce del mondo.
Non so se esista davvero un confine tra ciò che chiamiamo sacro e ciò che chiamiamo profano.
Forse quel confine esiste soltanto nei nostri occhi.
Per questo non vorrei dare una risposta a queste immagini.
Vorrei piuttosto lasciare a chi le guarda la possibilità di trovare il proprio vero soggetto, quello che non appare immediatamente davanti agli occhi, ma che emerge lentamente dentro di noi.
Perché una fotografia, forse, raggiunge il suo significato più profondo proprio quando smette di appartenere a chi l'ha scattata.
E allora non importa più ciò che ho visto io.
Importa ciò che vedrai tu, quando resterai solo, dalla parte del silenzio.
If you're looking to transcend your current reality, consider taking the celestial stairmaster--it's great for those chunky calves and thighs.
Image imagined in MidJourney AI and finished with Topaz Studio 2.0 and Lightroom Classic.
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.
Pondering is like having a daydream with structure. It's wondering and wandering in your mind at the same time. Try it, you'll like it.
Image imagined in MidJourney AI and finished with Topaz Studio 2.0 and Lightroom Classic.
A fragile twig, almost invisible.
Too small to be noticed,
alive enough to defend itself.
Thorns do not shout: they warn.
They do not hurt out of anger,
but out of the right to exist.
To resist is not to be strong.
It is to leave a mark
even when the world walks over you.
Un rametto fragile, quasi invisibile.
Troppo piccolo per essere notato,
abbastanza vivo per difendersi.
Le spine non gridano: avvertono.
Non feriscono per rabbia,
ma per diritto di esistere.
Resistere non è essere forti.
È lasciare un segno
anche quando il mondo passa sopra.
More ICM / street / double exposure / whatever-you-want-to-call-it stuff. Shot in Vuosaari, Helsinki, Finland.
All rights reserved. Please send me a private message if you wish to use this photo. Adding to Flickr galleries is fine without permission.
What the Photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once: the Photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially.
-Barthes
One last ICM picture before I return to something more traditional. Combining motion blur and still subjects was a fun challenge, a very different kind of photography experience. I will probably attempt this again at some point or go "full ICM", we'll see. Thank you for the feedback so far!
All rights reserved. Please send me a private message if you wish to use this photo. Adding to Flickr galleries is fine without permission.
The writer finds solace and inspiration on a foggy autumn morning. The fog paints a veil of mystery over the morning inviting the writer's imagination to wander where it will. This writer however, is not finding solace in the heavy rain and wind that is crashing through our area at the moment. It's time to batten down the hatches in the Foothills.
Image imagined in MidJourney AI and finished with Topaz Studio and Lightroom Classic.
You knew where this was going.
I'm not gonna lie, this was originally conceived as a retirement post.
I mean, where do I go from here? I've completed the holy collection, and I feel like I've been out of ideas for a while honestly. Just been killing time till the last of these came in.
Honestly I haven't really been feeling the lego thing lately. Don't get me wrong, I love the hobby and the community and all you guys, but I dunno, the appeal isn't the same these days, and I've been kinda trying to figure out like, what's my plan for this collection in the long run. What am I gonna do with this stuff in five, ten years. Just being existential and crap. Plus I've just had a lot going on, so I haven't really found the time, and, in a way, I feel like I've pretty much accomplished everything I could have hoped to do. Well, outside of finishing up my JP figs, and making the perfect Popeye figs, who I do have plans for, but not the parts. I'd also love to do a Squad series someday like Moth Stories, but I haven't got the time or means right now.
This isn't retirement though, just musing. I'll still be around, fear not.
ANYWAYS, you're not hear for my existential crap, you're here to ask if that Gordon is a real Christo. Ha!
All of these figs, save for Man-Bat, Moth, Hatter, Ra's, Hush, Clayface, Batgirl and Gordon, are the 100% official, classic 2006-8 Bat figs. All of em. This is essentially my dream collection, and I'm stoked to finally have them all.
Hush is a LYL Brick custom, Clayface is one of those cheapass knockoffs, Moth is a purist custom, Ra's and Man-Bat are as well, save for the former's hair and latter's wings, Hatter has a painted CMF Balloon clown hat, an Onlinesailin head, and that Western torso with the card suits. Batgirl is old news, and yes, Commissioner Gordon is indeed a Christo, supplied to me by Saga Customs/Bravo Bricks, a gentleman and scholar. I had to wait a good many months, but it was damn well worth it.
Anyways, it's no Sharp Hand Joe, but this would have made a damn fine retirement post I think.
Cheers everybody, I'll see you round the flickersphere
Rovingian Existence as the Result of the Symbiosis Between Consciousness and Matter - The Lichen Metaphor by Daniel Arrhakis (2026)
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Rovingian Existence as the Result of the Symbiosis Between Consciousness and Matter - The Lichen Metaphor
Rovingian animism, a non-theistic philosophical and spiritual perspective that redefines the relationship between being and environment. It proposes an absolute and unbreakable interdependence between consciousness and matter, where existence is only possible through this symbiosis and mutual exchange.
The Lichen Metaphor: Consciousness and Matter
Lichen is an excellent philosophical metaphor to illustrate existence as a symbiosis between consciousness and matter.
To understand this relationship, we can divide the roles of each element in this existential symbiosis:
The Fungus (Matter/Structure): In lichen, the fungus provides the physical structure, protection from the outside, and absorbs water and minerals. In existence, matter functions as the physical support, the body and brain, providing the tangible basis and the laws of physics that sustain life.
The Algae (Consciousness/Light): The algae perform photosynthesis, transforming sunlight into vital energy and food. In the analogy, consciousness is the force that captures the "light" of meaning, generating perception, subjective experience, emotion, and purpose from raw reality.
The Lichen (Experienced Existence): Without the algae, the fungus starves; without the fungus, the algae dries up and dies. Similarly, matter without consciousness would be a mechanical universe without witnesses; consciousness without matter would be pure abstraction without form or anchoring.
The "lichen" is our own existential life: a unified reality where both sides coexist.
This Rovingian animistic view presupposes:
- The Rejection of Cartesian Dualism: It breaks with the strict separation between mind (subject) and matter (object).
- Symbiotic Panpsychism: Suggests that consciousness is not a late byproduct of matter, but a fundamental component of the universe, walking side-by-side with the physical aspect from the subatomic level to complex biological systems.
- Phenomenology: Proposes that there is no "world out there" independent of a subject perceiving it; reality is always the living relationship between the observer and the observed.
Rovingian animism thus proposes a dualism of a double aspect or symbiotic panpsychism and the rejection of traditional determinism.
Rejection of Traditional Determinism
We are not machines: The human being is not merely a biological automaton governed by blind chemical reactions or whose emotions are solely due to chemical cocktails of synthesized molecules.
Co-creative agency: Consciousness is not passive; it shapes matter while being shaped by it.
Open future: Reality results from living interaction, making the future probabilistic and creative, not predetermined by an immutable destiny.
Ego Dissolution: The "I" is not isolated from the world; we are the very fabric of the environment in symbiosis.
Deep Ecological Ethics: Destroying the environment is not just damaging resources, it is mutilating the very structure of our consciousness.
Shared Responsibility: The individual assumes an active role in constructing their life experience and the collective world.
Naturalistic Spirituality: Dispenses with external deities (non-theistic), finding the sacred in the living relationship between perception and cosmos.
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A Existência Rovingiana Como O resultado da Simbiose Entre Consciência E Matéria - A Metáfora do Líquen
Animismo Rovingiano, uma perspetiva filosófica e espiritual não-teísta que redefine a relação entre o ser e o ambiente. Ele propõe uma interdependência absoluta e inquebrável entre consciência e matéria, onde a existência só é possível através desta simbiose e troca mútua.
1- A Metáfora do Líquen: Consciência e Matéria
O líquen é uma excelente metáfora filosófica para ilustrar a existência como uma simbiose entre consciência e matéria.
Para compreender esta relação, podemos dividir os papéis de cada elemento nesta simbiose existencial:
O Fungo (A Matéria / Estrutura): No líquen, o fungo fornece a estrutura física, a proteção contra o exterior e absorve a água e os minerais. Na existência, a matéria funciona como o suporte físico, o corpo e o cérebro, fornecendo a base tangível e as leis da física que sustentam a vida.
A Alga (A Consciência / Luz): A alga realiza a fotossíntese, transformando a luz solar em energia vital e alimento. Na analogia, a consciência é a força que capta a "luz" do significado, gerando perceção, experiência subjetiva, emoção e propósito a partir da realidade bruta.
O Líquen (A Existência Experienciada): Sem a alga, o fungo morre à fome; sem o fungo, a alga seca e morre. Da mesma forma, a matéria sem consciência seria um universo mecânico e sem testemunhas; a consciência sem matéria seria pura abstração sem forma ou ancoragem.
O "líquen" é a nossa própria vida existêncial: uma realidade unificada onde os dois lados coexistem.
Esta visão animista rovingiana pressupõe:
- A Rejeição do Dualismo Cartesiano: Rompe com a separação estrita entre mente (sujeito) e matéria (objeto).
- Panpsiquismo Simbiótico: Sugere que a consciência não é um subproduto tardio da matéria, mas sim um componente fundamental do universo, caminhando lado a lado com a vertente física desde o nível subatómico até aos sistemas biológicos complexos.
- Fenomenologia: Propõe que não existe um "mundo lá fora" independente de um sujeito que o perceba; a realidade é sempre a relação viva entre o observador e o observado.
O animismo rovingiano propõem assim um dualismo de aspeto duplo ou pampsiquismo simbiótico e a rejeição do determinismo tradicional.
2 - Rejeição do Determinismo Tradicional
Não somos máquinas: O ser humano não é apenas um autómato biológico governado por reações químicas cegas ou cujas emoções se devem apenas a cocktails químicos de moléculas de síntese.
Agência cocriativa: A consciência não é passiva; ela molda a matéria enquanto é moldada por ela.
Futuro aberto: A realidade resulta da interação viva, tornando o futuro probabilístico e criativo, não predeterminado por um destino imutável.
Dissolução do Ego: O "eu" não está isolado do mundo; nós somos o próprio tecido do ambiente em simbiose.
Ética Ecológica Profunda: Destruir o ambiente não é apenas danificar recursos, é mutilar a própria estrutura da nossa consciência.
Responsabilidade Partilhada: O indivíduo assume um papel ativo na construção da sua experiência de vida e do mundo coletivo.
Espiritualidade Naturalista: Dispensa divindades externas (não-teísta), encontrando o sagrado na própria relação viva entre perceção e cosmos.
Sometimes silence doesn’t feel empty—it feels heavy, like it knows too much.
Image imagined in MidJourney AI and finished with Topaz Studio and Lightroom Classic.
The moon shouldn’t be that color.
Not orange, lit from within, like something is burning inside it.
You tell yourself it’s atmospheric distortion, wildfire smoke, refraction… anything human, anything explainable. But the longer you stare, the more you realize the light isn’t shining through the moon.
It’s shining out.
The silhouettes of the palms don’t sway. There’s no wind. No insects. No distant traffic. The world has gone perfectly, impossibly still, the kind of stillness that only happens when every living thing is holding its breath at the same time.
You try to look away, but something in the sky pulls at you. Not gravity. Not magnetism.
Recognition.
You’ve been seen.
The orange glow pulses once... slow, deliberate, like a heartbeat the size of a continent. And in that moment, you understand why the stars look wrong tonight. They’re not stars. They’re apertures. Openings. Watching holes in the fabric of the dark.
You are not alone.
You were never alone.
You were simply beneath notice.
Until now.
The moon brightens again, and the shadows of the trees stretch toward you, long and thin and reaching, as if the sky itself is trying to touch its newest discovery.
You.
And somewhere above the atmosphere, in the cold where sound cannot travel, something ancient and patient begins to move, not toward Earth, but toward you specifically, as if your gaze was a signal it had been waiting centuries to receive.
You wanted fear.
This is fear.
My latest photography is now available for purchase at crsimages.pixels.com/, featuring prints, framed art, and more from my curated collections.
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.
On the road again with Kenzie, my faithful sidekick, following my highway in the wind.
Image imagined in MidJourney AI and finished with Topaz Studio and Lightroom Classic.
Do you ever see pictures of yourself from years ago and wonder, 'what happened to that person?' One of the existential crises of life is the pursuit for the person we think we should become, unknowingly not accepting who we are as the person we're stuck with and should find the perfection within ourselves. Staring at the photos of days long past and thinking, 'why couldn't I have chosen then to appreciate myself and worry about the fine-tuning as it came to be necessary?' My friends, be who you are and leave the rest up to time. I think we'll find that we'll get to where we need to be in due time. The consequence otherwise might be at the sacrifice of our own happiness, uniqueness, and individuality.
Hi, everybody! It's been a while. I took a creative break from photography for the summer and have only now been slowly getting back into it.
For the past couple of weeks, I've been experimenting with intentional camera movement, something I've always found fascinating but haven't done much myself. The results so far are exciting; especially when combined with still subjects the scene becomes very dreamlike and esoteric. The picture you see here is essentially a double exposure – the person and the surroundings were shot in the same location but with vastly different techniques. It's like street photography taken to a whole new, existential level.
Tell me what you think, or just say hello in the comments, and I'll make sure to catch up on your latest photos!
All rights reserved. Please send me a private message if you wish to use this photo. Adding to Flickr galleries is fine without permission.
the modern man taken by an attack of existential angst
Image distortion due to the mirror itself/
Saturation due to Photoshop tools/
Feeling disconnected? It might be time to find an alien.
Image imagined in MidJourney AI and finished with Topaz Studio 2.0 and Lightroom Classic.
A goodbye can mark the end of a chapter or the beginning of a new one.
Image imagined in MidJourney AI and finished with Topaz Studio 2.0 and Lightroom Classic.
Jerry Saltz, Art is Life: Icons & Iconoclasts, Visionaries & Vigilantes, and Flashes of Hope in the Night (Ilex, 2025).
Jerry Saltz is 75 now, but he is still writing actively as an art critic for New York Magazine. He was formerly with the famous Village Voice. He is also by his own confession, "a failed artist". In the 1970s he was an up-and-comer in the Chicago art scene, and worked tireless on his art and managing a collective artists' gallery, N.A.M.E.. He is being a little modest, as he did in fact sell a number of works to various public galleries at the time (though the money then was miniscule to what it is now).
However, there came an existential moment every artist is faced with. It's not so much whether one can make a living out of art (most can't), but in fact much more personal: Am I any good at all? Jerry had always been interested in art history and museums in particular, and he knew he could write. So when opportunities arose to express himself in various publications, usually commenting on the art of the time, he knew this was something that he needed to make a priority.
As Jerry said, "Being an artist also made me realize that I wasn't built for the loneliness of the artist's life. Art is slow, physical, resistant, material; it involves an ongoing commitment to doing the same thing differently over and over again." So when faced with this existential crisis, Jerry made a simple decision, "I gave in and got out." And he never picked up a pencil or a paintbrush in anger again.
But as an art critic Jerry has been able to have a huge say in the art world of his times. He is a champion of the artist in the face of increasing cynicism about it all. Just a couple of weeks ago a painting by the once homeless street artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988), sold for just over US$45 million
www.facebook.com/sothebys/videos/bidders-made-quick-work-...
But that was nothing compared to the US$110 million for one of his masterworks in 2017. This is the subject of Saltz's essay, "Basquiat Painting Becomes Priciest Work Ever Sold by a US Artist" (p.221).
The fact that the super-rich are laundering their money in art "investment" is a terrible thing indeed, and has nothing at all to do with the intrinsic worth of art itself. But Jerry Saltz understands that most artists have a compulsion to create regardless of how their work is ultimately valued in a monetary sense. And artists need to be respected for that.
There is a deep seated need for artistic creation in the human psyche, and the fact the capitalist world has seized it as another opportunity to make money should not discredit it. By all means hate the billionaire who bought the Basquiat, but please try to understand what this seminal artist was trying to do with his creative work.
The creative urge is probably why most of us do photography, even if almost everything we produce is not strictly speaking "art" as such. Don McCullin still refuses to acknowledge that his photography is art (though I for one would dispute his self-assessment). He is more than happy to accept the title of photographer. Jerry Saltz certainly claims that some photographers qualify as artists, and in this collection of short essays he includes several pieces on key figures: Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman, Garry Winogrand. Most interesting of all to me is the German photographer he writes about, Andreas Gursky (b.1955).
Gursky is now best known as the first living photographer to sell a photograph for over a million dollars. In 2011 his large format photograph Rhein II sold for $4.3 million. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhein_II
He trained in Düsseldorf under the great photography teachers, Bernd and Hilla Becher. The Düsseldorf school placed a great emphasis on objective photography, and particularly documenting the history of industrialism in Europe. It would seem an unlikely source for an artistic approach to the discipline. But Gursky is indeed as much an artist as his older contemporary, Anselm Kiefer.
Andreas Gursky - The making of worlds
www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBbkRBcrjmA
The Photographer Who Made Reality Look Fake.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJZkpQM7x2U
Art is Life is a wonderful book to dip into. Most essays are short and can be read while enjoying a cup of coffee. So if you want to learn more about the contemporary art world and artists themselves, then this is 350 or so pages packed with wisdom.
Jerry Saltz - Go-go-go with the internet’s favourite art critic
90:365
Yesterday was positive so it seemed only right to keep the balance of the universe and make today negative.
light vs dark
heat vs cold
up vs down
ying vs yang
I think these ideas should be expressed as such...
light AND dark
heat AND cold
up AND down
ying AND yang
Been thinking about a lot of stuff lately......I blame my hormones...
I promise to do a fun or pretty shot tomorrow. After all, it's about balance, right?
HCS
=]
I'm perplexed when encouraged by full-time transwomen to be my "true self." What? To do so would mean that everything I've been before now isn't true. Crazy! It also presupposes I'll not change in the future. How can anyone say who their "true self" is when there is still lots of life to experience?
Do you agree we need to get away from popular language of authenticity and simply understand we are all works-in-progress and be happy, if not excited, about it?
I am tired of being made to feel less than authentic because I fail to meet expectations of others. I’m still me, regardless, and pretty happy about it.
When the comic character Popeye famously said “I am what I am, and that’s all that I am” didn’t he insist others accept his state of being, regardless of what that may be?
Popeye, after all, was a one-eyed, lantern-jawed, vegetarian, sailor, with mutant-sized forearms and fists, yet no biceps, who wore the very same outfit every day for decades. However, he breaks out of his largely imagined life situation prison and asserts his “true self” – whatever that needs to be at the moment.
Shouldn't we be the same?
Nora
This photo was taken by Cassandra Storm at a strip mall while on a shopping trip and photo safari with girlfriend Alex Forbes. The chair just happened to be there so I thought a seated pose would be different. Also different are my regular eyeglasses. They are rimless so not immediately obvious. I no longer need spectacles. Instead, I've become one. Ha ha ha!
Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typically features isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers. It has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. His best known works include the short story "The Metamorphosis" and novels The Trial and The Castle. The term Kafkaesque has entered English to describe situations like those found in his writing.
Kafka was born into a middle-class German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, today the capital of the Czech Republic. He trained as a lawyer and after completing his legal education was employed full-time by an insurance company, forcing him to relegate writing to his spare time. Over the course of his life, Kafka wrote hundreds of letters to family and close friends, including his father, with whom he had a strained and formal relationship. He became engaged to several women but never married. He died in 1924 at the age of 40 from tuberculosis.
Few of Kafka's works were published during his lifetime: the story collections Contemplation and A Country Doctor, and individual stories (such as "The Metamorphosis") were published in literary magazines but received little public attention. In his will, Kafka instructed his executor and friend Max Brod to destroy his unfinished works, including his novels The Trial, The Castle and Amerika, but Brod ignored these instructions. His work has influenced a vast range of writers, critics, artists, and philosophers during the 20th and 21st centuries.