Photography, Metaphor and Meaning

In my photography, as in the rest of my life, I challenge myself to be as fully present as possible within whatever circumstances I find myself; to assume a caring attitude toward all of creation that surrounds me at any given moment; to be fully aware of my surroundings, especially visually; and to act, based on that awareness. This approach arises from a sense of wonder, of questioning, as Dorothea Lange said: “that such things could be!”

From wonder arises delight or pain depending on the circumstances. Both are valid sensations in our blessed but troubled existence.  Both sensations call us to respond. My response, quite frequently, is to make photographs.

In her book, Problems of Art; Ten Philosophical Lectures, Susanne Langer wrote that art is a metaphor of the inner human experience. In and of themselves photographs are not an adequate substitute for direct experience. However, photographs, serving as metaphor of direct experience, have come to play a central role in the mediation and sharing of direct experience with others.

Ones own direct experience is necessary but not sufficient in itself to fully arrive at a realization of that which has been experienced. The fullness of realization comes through sharing experience in communion with others. The spring of living water gushes forth through the ground of community.

Photographs are a medium through which communion may take place and God's grace enter our lives. The act of sharing one person with another, the giving and receiving, is the value, the very essence, of the photograph.

The Incarnation, the power of the Word becoming flesh, gives each of us the energy of divine love, an energy that is meant to flow through every person to affirm, heal and strengthen each other. With this in mind, my photographs are not intended to be documentary in a strict ecological sense, but are more in the tradition of Stieglitz’s Equivalents and Minor White’s visual mysticism as he expressed it in his curatorial statement for the exhibit, Octave of Prayer: an Exhibition on a Theme.

I have taken to heart Alfred Stieglitz’s statement “art is the affirmation of life” and Dorothea Lange’s admonition “to really use the camera as though tomorrow you’d be stricken blind.”