View allAll Photos Tagged existential
Photograph published in News Junkie Post on 5/30/2020
newsjunkiepost.com/2020/05/30/climate-crisispandemics-and...
Photograph also published in The Duran on 5/31/2020
theduran.com/climate-crisis-pandemics-and-bad-governance-...
18. The less man has views and the more he has personal interests, the more he is inclined to regard his interests as views.
19. The »ideal« of dark tendencies is the person without world-views.
20. Man lives a lie because he cannot bear intellectually what he quite easily tolerates existentially: that he is so unworthy that he does not even have views. But the time is coming when he will be able to coexist even intellectually with his own unworthiness.
118. In the highest degree and as a first step man creates his incarnation; then - descending lower - he chooses it; descending even lower he freely accepts it; descending even lower than this he involuntarily takes notice of it: maybe he would like to but cannot avoid it; descending even lower than before he meets it; and finally he unconsciously falls into his incarnation - into that which originally was freely created by him.
119. Regarding especially its lowest degree - corresponding to the creatio factiva - and even its most external state, createdness means that I neither experience myself as the creator of myself nor as the creator of my own functions nor as the creator of my own world. Strictly speaking, creatureness means that my own being as creator becomes obscure.
121. The cherub who expelled man from Eden is the former rank of man, which keeps guard over the state of Eden of existence. And from this point of view man by man was expelled from Paradise, which essentially means that I myself expelled myself from myself.
122. Contemporary man - and the man of any age altogether - is nothing other than an identification.
142. The one who is not able to live his life as a constant ascension, which attains its perfection in the period right before death, but from a certain age starts to descend, in reality abuses his life.
143. He who does not strive upwards, descends.
144. He who lets himself be taken by the current, is certain to follow the wrong path.
151. Most people are infantile until about the midpoint of their lives, that is until the age of thirty-six, and immediately after that from one day to another grow senile.
218. He who wants the Goal, should also want the means that lead to the Goal. For if he does not want the means leading to the Goal, he certainly does not want the Goal.
220. The more a creature is a creature, the frailer he is, the more he is subject to attacks, the more he is subject to circumstances, the more he lives in the realm of attractions and repulsions.
224. Man should not ensure reservations of darkness in his life.
162. In the final analysis, man is not subjected to external factors but to his inner psychological states.
163. That which manifests itself as democracy in the world, appears as automatism, whirling associations, distractions and lack of (self)control in consciousness.
164. Every individual-personal mania is a usurper, and every mania represents the terroristic feature of the usurped power.
165. The really negative thing in someone’s raving is not that he is raving, but that in fact it is not him who is raving but something/someone within him.
166. Not only he commits a crime who by losing his self-control commits something, but also he who following from his lack of self-control does nothing.
137. The case when someone ignores essentiality involves not only that the most important thing starts missing but that there can be found something else in its place.
138. Sticking to the only-human leads not to remaining in the human sphere but to becoming sub-human. For persisting in something is to loose it: to loose that which was intended to be retained.
140. If superhuman principles does not stand behind man’s intention of changing himself then he will not remain in the human state but descend to a subhuman condition.
105. The fundamental alienation, the fundamental decline is the personality itself: when I myself am alienated from myself.
250. There is hardly a better chance for man to exempt himself from the requirements of realisation than by setting himself such high norms which he surely cannot attain.
251. Making haste is from the the devil, as well as delaying.
303. Since the offensive form of antitraditionality appeared, the slightest compromise between traditionality and antitraditionality has been an enormous antitraditional triumph.
[An example: »Catholic-Marxist dialogues always implied the defensiveness of the Church and the success of Marxism - regardless of the fact that in the course of these dialogues it was invariably the Marxists whose performance was weaker than that of the Catholics. Since the very fact that in religious circles the question was not whether to send Marxists to the stake but to find the common ground among the opposing views, demonstrated the defensiveness of the Church. For Marxists it was not the outcome of the dialogues which was important but that the Church started to »court« them.« (András László)]
305. Antitraditionality is nothing other than the creating of confusion in the relationship between the existent world and the centre of the existent world so as to make it impossible to find the way back to the centre.
653. Emotion is feeling become sick.
[scil. feeling is originally not a displaced state, because man is not the object of feeling, like that of emotion, but he is its subject.]
654. Each emotional state is a kind of obsession.
696. When man turns more and more to the quantitative world rather than himself, then he practically turns to nothing. By losing spirit man kept his soul, which still had some spiritual properties. After this he kept only the body, which still has some pneumatic properties; and slowly he will come to the nothing, which will only have some somatic properties.
707. Death inevitably pertains to life as its complement. Man experiences death to the degree he indulges himself in life, because life contains death.
708. When life is lacking what is beyond life then death, the complement of life, overcomes life.
717. If my identification tends toward the engendered world, I will pass away with the engendered world.
739. An extraneous force dominates all that has a beginning.
740. The loss of beginning is the loss of dominion, the loss of dominion is the loss of the consciousness of beginning and that of origin, i.e. the loss of my ultimate reality as a consciousness.
751. Originally, it was volition that is now instinct in man.
An experiment in light, shape, color and grain. Without doubt I love my 55mm Micro-Nikkor. It is manual, old and useful as all hell. The Lensbaby will get out of doors work now. I will use it, but more like an amusing three nosed child rather than a normal primogénito. :-)
A lone fisherman casts his hopes into the Atlantic near Maspalomas Lighthouse, Gran Canaria—utterly unfazed by the crashing surf or existential metaphors. Just him, the sea, and the dream of dinner that doesn’t come in a tin.
While painting is about communicating the artist inner world, photography could be conceived as a means of communicating the artist's perception of the outer world.
Within this frame of thought, I interpret my photographic activities as an effort to communicate selected visual fragments of my surroundings. In addition, I perceive the act of taking pictures as equivalent to the implicit formulation of an existential statement such as: "I exist, therefore this is the way I see the world".
This concept is perhaps not exclusive to photography but also applicable to other forms of art. The artist is implicitly within his/her work (Artifex in Opere). Creating the artwork then becomes an elliptical way of corroborating the artist's own existence, either through his/her own contemplation or fundamentally from the feedback received from other individuals.
If we assume that there are few casual elements within a picture and most elements within have been chosen either consciously or unconsciously, there must be another meaning associated with photographs that goes beyond the esthetics of the composition. This underlying hermeneutics adds an occult symbolic layer to the images that transcend the boundaries of individual fragments of work to step into the emotional and spiritual world of the photographer. The overall resulting pattern is clearly greater than the summation of its parts (gestalt).
I am very much attached to my cameras, I think that this feeling stems in part from my fascination with their precise mechanics, but nonetheless from the executive role they play in the process of image creation. The camera is an approximation of what the brush is to painting (Photography: from the Greek: φωτός (phōtos), genitive of light and γραφή (graphé) representation by means of lines), literally the photographic camera is the instrument that allows us to draw with light.
However, there are some caveats with this analogy, since there is no complete transparency during the process of image creation, the results are always inseparable from the syntax superimposed by the media and the camera. For example, a black and white picture represents the colors of a scene as gradations of grey but because we have the ability to see in color, we would never interpret this as being a literal depiction of reality.
Another example of image related syntax can be found on images produced with early photographic processes, in those days emulsions had a low sensitivity to light. A consequence was that most portraits taken during that period had to be done outdoors under harsh sunlight, having the subjects hold static postures for a long time. Understanding this syntax allows us to interpret why people looked so serious or event upset, their solemn appearance deriving from their stiff postures and hard shadows under their facial features.
I do not think it is essential to understand the underlying photographic syntax of an image in order to enjoy viewing a picture, but being acquainted with it could add valuable context to its interpretation.
Regardless of which technology is used, a photograph domain will always lay within the space where the artist composition intersects with the mechanical action of the camera, which will capture, without restrictions, everything that exists within its field of view. Including those elements that the artist never perceived, consciously or unconsciously, before pressing the shutter button.
Claudio Valdés
Pictured from top left are Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre, all prominent philosophers. Even though they are all dead, they still must face the challenge.
As an aside, Jean-Paul Sartre is the only one of these three who managed not to be included in Monty Python's infamous The Philosopher's Song.
Long Exposure. No photoshop was used to create this image. Lightroom was used for some exposure and contrast adjustments.
Walking on foot brings you down to the very stark, naked core of existence. We travel too much in airplanes and cars. It’s an existential quality that we are losing. It’s almost like a credo of religion that we should walk.
There is, of course, something inherently romantic—if not heroic—about the extreme solitary explorer enveloped by nature. The very image of Herzog on foot recalls the iconic 19th-century paintings of Caspar David Friedrich, especially his Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, with its lone figure staring out at the wide vista above the clouds.
'Truth itself wanders through the forests,' Herzog writes near the end. Yet here he embroiders his memories for effect: The vast swath of geography between Munich and Paris is littered with industrial towns and cities.
Once he comes out on the other end, traversing the deforested Champs-Élysées (“We were close to what they call the breath of danger”), Herzog emerges victorious.
― Of Walking in Ice: (Munich-Paris, 23 November–14 December 1974)
by Werner Herzog
This is a very personal piece I created back in 2016 following a grievous event in my life. It was a major depressive trigger that knocked me down to arguably my worst rock bottom. I felt as if I was trapped in a door-less chamber of unending pain and suicidal ideations--- that even the passage of time can’t heal
*******
(I wish to redo this. I feel that it doesn't do justice to my concept. :/ )
Whenever I have big questions, I stop by here, so I can end that question.
At least then I know I have my questions right, right?
WAH- April. Existential
There is a record number of homeless people in NYC today, 2014. There is also a record number of billionaires living in NYC today.
"In that case, what is the question?" Gertrude Stein (3 February 1874 – 27 July 1946) These are her reported last words."
Visual Artist, Alberto Giacometti UK: 10 October 1901 – 11 January 1966) was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draftsman and printmaker. Beginning in 1922, he lived and worked mainly in Paris but regularly visited his hometown Borgonovo to see his family and work on his art.
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 Surrealist influences in order to pursue a more deepened analysis of figurative compositions. Giacometti wrote texts for periodicals and exhibition catalogues and recorded his thoughts and memories in notebooks and diaries. His critical nature led to self-doubt about his own work and his self-perceived inability to do justice to his own artistic vision. His insecurities nevertheless remained a powerful motivating artistic force throughout his entire life.
Between 1938 and 1944 Giacometti's sculptures had a maximum height of seven centimeters (2.75 inches). 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.
In Giacometti's whole body of work, his painting constitutes only a small part. After 1957, however, his figurative paintings were equally as present as his sculptures. His almost monochromatic paintings of his late work do not refer to any other artistic styles of modernity
Giacometti was born in Borgonovo, Switzerland, the eldest of four children of Giovanni Giacometti, a well-known post-Impressionist painter, and Annetta Giacometti-Stampa. He was a descendant of Protestant refugees escaping the inquisition. Coming from an artistic background, he was interested in art from an early age. Alberto attended the Geneva School of Fine Arts. His brothers Diego (1902–1985) and Bruno (1907–2012) would go on to become artists and architects as well. Additionally, his cousin Zaccaria Giacometti, later professor of constitutional law and chancellor of the University of Zurich, grew up together with them, having been orphaned at the age of 12 in 1905.
In 1922, he moved to Paris to study under the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, an associate of Rodin. It was there that Giacometti experimented with Cubism and Surrealism and came to be regarded as one of the leading Surrealist sculptors. Among his associates were Miró, Max Ernst, Picasso, Bror Hjorth, and Balthus.
Between 1936 and 1940, Giacometti concentrated his sculpting on the human head, focusing on the sitter's gaze. He preferred models he was close to—his sister and the artist Isabel Rawsthorne (then known as Isabel Delmer). This was followed by a phase in which his statues of Isabel became stretched out; her limbs elongated. Obsessed with creating his sculptures exactly as he envisioned through his unique view of reality, he often carved until they were as thin as nails and reduced to the size of a pack of cigarettes, much to his consternation. A friend of his once said that if Giacometti decided to sculpt you, "he would make your head look like the blade of a knife".
During World War II, Giacometti took refuge in Switzerland. There, in 1946, he met Annette Arm, a secretary for the Red Cross. They married in 1949.
After his marriage his tiny sculptures became larger, but the larger they grew, the thinner they became. For the remainder of Giacometti's life, Annette was his main female model. His paintings underwent a parallel procedure. The figures appear isolated and severely attenuated, as the result of continuous reworking.
He frequently revisited his subjects: one of his favourite models was his younger brother Diego
In 1958 Giacometti was asked to create a monumental sculpture for the Chase Manhattan Bank building in New York, which was beginning construction. Although he had for many years "harbored an ambition to create work for a public square",[16] he "had never set foot in New York, and knew nothing about life in a rapidly evolving metropolis. Nor had he ever laid eyes on an actual skyscraper", according to his biographer James Lord.[17] Giacometti's work on the project resulted in the four figures of standing women—his largest sculptures—entitled Grande femme debout I through IV (1960). The commission was never completed, however, because Giacometti was unsatisfied by the relationship between the sculpture and the site, and abandoned the project.
In 1962, Giacometti was awarded the grand prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennale, and the award brought with it worldwide fame. Even when he had achieved popularity and his work was in demand, he still reworked models, often destroying them or setting them aside to be returned to years later. The prints produced by Giacometti are often overlooked but the catalogue raisonné, Giacometti – The Complete Graphics and 15 Drawings by Herbert Lust (Tudor 1970), comments on their impact and gives details of the number of copies of each print. Some of his most important images were in editions of only 30 and many were described as rare in 1970.
In his later years Giacometti's works were shown in a number of large exhibitions throughout Europe. Riding a wave of international popularity, and despite his declining health, he traveled to the United States in 1965 for an exhibition of his works at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. As his last work he prepared the text for the book Paris sans fin, a sequence of 150 lithographs containing memories of all the places where he had lived.
Giacometti died in 1966 of heart disease (pericarditis) and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease at the Kantonsspital in Chur, Switzerland. His body was returned to his birthplace in Borgonovo, where he was interred close to his parents.
With no children, Annette Giacometti became the sole holder of his property rights. She worked to collect a full listing of authenticated works by her late husband, gathering documentation on the location and manufacture of his works and working to fight the rising number of counterfeited works. When she died in 1993, the Fondation Giacometti was set up by the French state.
In May 2007 the executor of his widow's estate, former French foreign minister Roland Dumas, was convicted of illegally selling Giacometti's works to a top auctioneer, Jacques Tajan, who was also convicted. Both were ordered to pay €850,000 to the Alberto and Annette Giacometti Foundation.
Born: 10 October 1901
Borgonovo, Stampa,Graubünden, Switzerland
Died: 11 January 1966 (aged 64) Chur, Graubünden, Switzerland
Orginal photo: Photograph by Ernst Scheidegger
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Giacometti
Artwork by TudioJepegii
We're Here! in the Three Stooges Existential Balloon Factory, thinking about the impact of Larry, Curly, Moe, and Shemp on our culture.
Photo from my Clues: 1979-1982 scrapbook, part of my Trek Across the Present.
Note the rather bizarre existential advert for, of all the things, the AA Driving School.
Ashton, Wellington Road, 04/03/1995.
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If one looks closely amongst the gorgonians in the shallows of the Caribbean, one will regularly see these tiny oddities with what looks somewhat like hieroglyphs on them. About one inch long, this individual is actually a species of Cowrie called a FLAMINGO TONGUE. The colorful exterior is actually a thin fleshy mantle spread out over it's prized shell. If you look closely, you will see the thin border between the 4 sections.
Admittedly, I've read too much SCIENCE FICTION, and so my imagination compulsively leads me to ponder such things as: Is there a message to be gleaned from the spots/living hieroglyphs on the FLAMINGO TONGUE? Perhaps a simple intra-species message - VOULEZ VOUS COUCHEZ AVEC MOI, CE SOIR?? Perhaps something existentially profound? Wouldn't that be a kick in the head finding the MEANING OF LIFE scrawled across the mantles of FLAMINGO TONGUES?! (Cheers to Douglas Adams).
Thanks for reading and for viewing. Comment, fav, share and please check out my best photos … Mark
"What the Photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once: the Photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially." Roland Barthes
In the view of the existentialist, the individual's starting point is characterized by what has been called "the existential attitude", or a sense of disorientation, confusion, or dread in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world