Reflections

Why do people connect? Stephen Fry talks about social media and people.

2012-02-12T09:54:00.001-08:00

Why do people connect? Stephen Fry talks about social media and people.

Posted on January 8, 2012 by admin in Blog, Building a Following, Running an Online Business

I just watched this through and I think that it’s worthwhile watching (particularly if you’re new to social media).

Some highlights:

Don’t set yourself goals. (They keep you from fulfilling who you really are.)

Keep your ego in check. (You’ll be better liked, and more opportunities will come your way.)

Have heroes.

Get outside your comfort zone.

Connect with others.

Avoid the phrase “I need”.

Don’t whine.

via bowtiewebsites.com

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Pictorialist and Straight Photography

2012-02-11T04:28:00.001-08:00

via youtube.com

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ZEN MASTER: an intimate portrait of John Daido Loori Roshi

2012-02-01T14:05:00.001-08:00

via youtube.com

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STREET PHOTOGRAPHY: Check out this free 'e-book' on by Chris Weeks

2012-01-30T23:06:00.001-08:00

The PDF version of Chris Week's 'e-book' is HERE

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Compassion - an infinity of teaching in a short piece

2012-01-26T23:29:00.001-08:00

SOURCE is HERE

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Abraham Menashe - outstanding 'humanistic' photographer

2012-01-26T23:02:00.001-08:00

Today someone, Abraham Menashe, changed my life in his introduction to 'humanistic photography' - about the 'changing' more later.

The words of his introduction to his flip-book were if anything more impressive than his impressive photography - see HERE - read through to the end of the short introduction.

His books are HERE

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Corporate Rule Is Not Inevitable - 7 tools to help shut it down.

2012-01-26T14:34:00.001-08:00

You may remember that there was a time when apartheid in South Africa seemed unstoppable.

Sure, there were international boycotts of South African businesses, banks, and tourist attractions. There were heroic activists in South Africa, who were going to prison and even dying for freedom. But the conventional wisdom remained that these were principled gestures with little chance of upending the entrenched system of white rule.

“Be patient,” activists were told. “Don’t expect too much against powerful interests with a lot of money invested in the status quo.”

With hindsight, though, apartheid’s fall appears inevitable: the legitimacy of the system had already crumbled. It was harming too many for the benefit of too few. South Africa’s freedom fighters would not be silenced, and the global movement supporting them was likewise tenacious and principled.

In the same way, the legitimacy of rule by giant corporations and Wall Street banks is crumbling. This system of corporate rule also benefits few and harms many, affecting nearly every major issue in public life. Some examples:

lick on link HERE to read article

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Split -screen: a love story - a great vid on Vimeo

2012-01-26T10:29:00.001-08:00

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Photographers/photography rights - Nick Turpin

2012-01-25T00:21:00.001-08:00

via youtube.com

Some interesting comments about this - click through to YouTube

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16 Great Examples of Street Photography Without People by the Community — Eric Kim Street Photography

2012-01-17T00:46:00.001-08:00

via erickimphotography.com

Click on link to go to Eric Kim's site

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"There is nothing so mysterious as a fact clearly presented." - Lisette Model

2012-01-16T22:11:00.001-08:00

Maria Friedlander, Southwestern United States, 1969
II. Lee Friedlander (b. 1934)
Lisette Model said, “There is nothing so mysterious as a fact clearly presented.” Lee Friedlander’s photographs are both clear and mysterious.

via americansuburbx.com

Click on link to read & see much more.

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Vivian Maier: A life's lost work seen for first time BBC interview with John Maloof

2012-01-12T07:51:00.001-08:00

via bbc.co.uk

Click on link to read the article

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Science and Spirit - Prof Rupert Sheldrake

2012-01-11T01:28:00.001-08:00

via youtube.com

Here is a link to his most recent book

The Science Delusion

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Science-Delusion-Rupert-Sheldrake/dp/1444727923/ref=s...

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The Science Delusion: Freeing the Spirit of Enquiry, By Rupert Sheldrake Independent review by Colin Tudge

2012-01-11T01:08:00.001-08:00

The Science Delusion: Freeing the Spirit of Enquiry, By Rupert Sheldrake

Colin Tudge

Friday, 6 January 2012

Science is wonderful and necessary - one of the great creations of humankind. Most importantly, it is helping us to see just how extraordinary life and the universe really are, far exceeding the unaided imagination even of the greatest poets. At its best, too, science lives up to its own mythology: a disinterested, self-effacing search after truth, carried out by people of humility in true generosity of spirit. As a fairly considerable bonus it has led us to create a wide range of "high" (science-based) technologies that have improved the lives of a great many people, and have the potential to help all humankind and our fellow creatures too.

But alas, in large measure, science and the idea of it have been seriously corrupted. That some of its high technologies are not in the general good is all too obvious – although it isn't always obvious which ones are and which ones aren't. Even more to the point, and in some ways more serious, is that science all too often becomes the enemy of what it should stand for. Although it must have rules and methods – in particular, the ideas of science must be testable – it should be open-minded. It should go where the data lead. That's what the myth says it does do – but the reality is very different.

via independent.co.uk

Click here to read this review

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Zen Art: Water Speaking Water, - YouTube

2012-01-10T22:58:00.001-08:00

via youtube.com

Zen Art. Photographed by John Daido Loori Roshi among the rivers and streams of Raquette Lake in the Adirondack Mountains, NY, this video reflects on ways of seeing water, attempting to go beyond appearances to capture the direct experience of water in its myriad manifestations.

Words by Zen Master Dogen.

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ZEN PHOTOGRAPHY, John Daido Loori Roshi of Zen Mt. Monastery, NY

2012-01-10T22:41:00.001-08:00

via youtube.com

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Vivian Maier, Photographer Extraordinaire - wonderful presentation of her life as a first-person narrative

2012-01-09T07:20:00.001-08:00

via youtube.com

So beautiful - a true homage to an extraordinary woman and the story of her new beginning.

Worthy of BBC Radio 4 at its very best - I would love to hear it broadcast and/or televised in the UK.

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One of the world's great photographers, Carol Guzy - Pulitzer-Prize Winning Photographer for the Washington Post

2012-01-05T00:04:00.001-08:00

US troops occupied Haiti to restore order after a military coup. Guzy was covering a pro-democracy march when a grade went off. "The mob was about to tear apart the man they thought had thrown the grenade," she says. "The soldier had pulled him out and definitely saved his life. I had fallen to the ground and got this shot looking up at the action."

Full-Screen Slideshow: Guzy's Pictures From Haiti, Kosovo, and Colombia

Editor's note: This slideshow contains some graphic images.
She had just returned from family leave to her job as a photographer for the Post. Her mother was suffering from Alzheimer’s, and Guzy had been by her side in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. “I promised her I would help her through the journey,” Guzy says. “If it had been anywhere but Haiti, I could not have considered going. But I had to.”
She packed in 20 minutes, hitched a ride to New York with AP photographer Gerald Herbert and Post reporter Mary Beth Sheridan, caught a flight to the Dominican Republic, and made her way to Port-au-Prince. “It was a surreal scene,” she says. “To see places I had been so many times, with people dead under schools, palaces, churches, apartments.”

via washingtonian.com

Click on link to read the article

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Great (woman) photographers: Vivian Maier - a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma - what a moving story!

2011-12-30T02:13:00.001-08:00

I guess many like me fell instantly in love with the work and story of Vivian Maier - it moved me to tears. What a story!

When more is known it would make a great movie - but keep Hollywood away! I'd settle for the Cohen brothers with Roger Deakins as the cinematographer

Her official website is http://www.vivianmaier.com/

We have to thank John Maloof for creating the bridge between this extraordinary woman and ourselves. He discovered the lost negatives & edited the book - and someone had the perspicacity to ask the brilliant Geoff Dyer to write the intro.

The blurb for the book reads;

A good street photographer must possess many talents: an eye for detail, light, and composition; impeccable timing; a populist or humanitarian outlook; and a tireless ability to constantly shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot and never miss a moment. It is hard enough to find these qualities in trained photographers with the benefit of schooling and mentors and a community of fellow artists and aficionados supporting and rewarding their efforts. It is incredibly rare to find it in someone with no formal training and no network of peers.

Yet Vivian Maier is all of these things, a professional nanny, who from the 1950s until the 1990s took over 100,000 photographs worldwide—from France to New York City, to Chicago and dozens of other countries—and yet showed the results to no one. The photos are amazing both for the breadth of the work and for the high quality of the humorous, moving, beautiful, and raw images of all facets of city life in America’s post-war golden age.

It wasn’t until realtor and amateur historian John Maloof stumbled upon a box of anonymous negatives in a Chicago auction house in 2007 that any of her marvelous work saw the light of day. Presented here for the first time in print,Vivian Maier: Street Photographer collects the first wave of the best of her incredible body of work—much of which still hasn’t been enlarged or in some case even developed into negatives. Hidden treasures like this don’t come along every day, and powerHouse is excited and honored to present this astounding body of never-before-seen work to the public at large.

There is still very little known about the life of Vivian Maier. What is known is that she was born in New York in 1926 and worked as a nanny for a family on Chicago’s North Shore during the 50s and 60s. Seemingly without a family of her own, the children she cared for eventually acted as caregivers for Maier herself in the autumn of her life. She took hundreds of thousands of photographs in her lifetime, but never shared them with anyone. Maier lost possession of her art when her storage locker was sold off for non-payment. She passed away in 2009 at the age of 83.

-0-

NB Her book is available via Amazon

DON"T MISS THIS - A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

My intro was via HERE

For more just Google.

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Times Higher Education - 'I sit in a UK library and feel so sorry for my friends in Iran'

2011-12-21T22:48:00.001-08:00

Credit: Reuters
Not welcome: Baha'i students say that their preparation for university entrance exams is done in the knowledge that their applications to Iranian state universities will likely be turned down because of their faith

Once, during Ramadan in the mid-1990s, Erfan Sabeti was on his way to an all-day genetics class at the Baha'i Institute for Higher Education in Tehran.
He had taken to wearing a tie to show he was not a hard-liner, though the Ayatollah Khomeini had just issued a fatwa saying that ties were a symbol of westernisation. As he was about to get into a taxi, he was stopped by revolutionary guards.

via timeshighereducation.co.uk

Click on link to read the article.

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UK Photographers Rights v2 - Simon Moran

2011-12-20T07:16:00.001-08:00

via sirimo.co.uk

Click on link to read full article

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Interview with Ken Rockwel - on his brilliantly down-to-earth photography website

2011-12-19T01:58:00.001-08:00

Interview is here;

Website is here;

http://www.kenrockwell.com/

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JOYOUS GREETINGS - 106 of the most beloved Street Art Photos – 2011

2011-12-17T23:44:00.001-08:00

via streetartutopia.com

Oh joy!

Click on link to see the rest

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An elegiac video presentation of ROBERT FRANK photographs

2011-12-13T12:10:00.001-08:00

via youtube.com

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Reason for Being

2011-12-13T11:54:00.001-08:00

“Everything is a subject. Every subject has a rhythm. To feel it is the raison detre. The photograph is a fixed moment of such a raison detre, which lives on in itself.” André Kertész (Hungarian born photographer/ known for his groundbreaking contributions to photographic composition and the photo essay)

Wandering Violinist, Abony, Hungary 1921

via whetherornot.wordpress.com

Click on ink to go to the Whether or Not blog

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Alfred Stieglitz The Eloquent Eye - YouTube

2011-12-04T14:06:00.001-08:00

via youtube.com

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Churches should afflict the comfortable!

2011-12-04T13:02:00.001-08:00

St Paul's Cathedral was wrong to shut its doors as protesters camped out on its steps, the shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander said today.

Mr Alexander said the job of the church was not just to "comfort the afflicted but to afflict the comfortable", adding the demonstrators camping outside the cathedral were speaking to a "general unease" in the country.
Speaking to Jeremy Vine, standing in on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, Mr Alexander said he felt uneasy when the cathedral's authorities decided to close its doors.
He said: "I think the job of the church is not just to comfort the afflicted but to afflict the comfortable.

via independent.co.uk

I like that.

Click on link for the whole article

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When the mote turns in the light: A 10 STEP 'Barthesian' course on Street Photography

2011-12-04T04:12:00.001-08:00

Picture source WikiPedia

When the mote turns in the light: A 10 STEP Barthesian course on Street Photography

Sub-title: 31 OF THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEAS ABOUT (STREET) PHOTOGRAPHY

DERIVED FROM ROLAND BARTHES’ BOOK CAMERA LUCIDA

inspired by the annotation by Kasia Houlihan (University of Chicago)

Roger Prentice Ph.D., MA (ACE), B. Ed. (Hons)

1st draft 4th Dec 2011

INTRODUCTION

Although my practice of photography is still at a beginning stage I want to keep up an old habit - that of theorizing my practice and practicing my theory. On the theory side as a starting point I have gone for 'the big one' Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida.

Barthes’ book Camera Lucida: reflections on photography is more like literature than an academic text. Indeed its very purpose is to get us to function in a ‘heart-centred’ way, instead of via left-brain classification and logic-chopping. It is even more like a Zen master’s pointings or teachings. It is profoundly intuitive and insightful about photography in relation to the inner life of being human. It is not in any conventional sense subjective - it is about the very opposite the state of transcending the ego and ironically, given its arguments, it is about living transcendentally in the now.

Camera Lucida provides answers for an enormous range of problems, not just to understanding the true nature of photography. In particular it is staggeringly insightful about what it is to be human, in the world with others (and the memories of them) and the exquisite place the art of photography can play in deepening our realization of our true selves.

I have taken as a starting point Kasia Houlihan’s excellent summary/annotation to be found HERE The four sections relate to the 4 paragraphs in Kasia’s original summary/annotation. To Kasia I will be eternally grateful because it enabled me to stop wandering around in a desert of unmanageable responses to Camera Lucida - and it saved me from the temptation to dive in to the very large pools of academic writing about Camera Lucida - where I would probably have developed unbearable head-hurt and eventually drowned. Including the 10 Step course this is a framework for further development.

The area of photography that grips me currently is Street Photography. I discovered the truth in Camera Lucida two ways a) by doing street photography, however modest my achievements to date and b) through all the work that went into my doctorate - see HERE .

For serious students therefore I suggest the following 10 steps;

1) start taking photographs and keep up the practice between every one of the other steps listed here - & get as much feedback as possible.

2) look at photographs a lot - yours, your family’s and those of great photographers,

3) read Camera Lucida, don't worry about understanding

4) read Kasia Houlihan’s original summary/annotation to be found HERE and this piece (in development) which was inspired by it.

5) read or re-read this listing of 31 major ideas,

6) read articles about street photography - there are a range of starting points - HERE

7) read at least the summaries of my doctorate HERE or work out your own understanding of the human spirit

8) do even more photography

9) read every poem and other literature you can find about photos & photography, look at every painting & dance about light etc. Link photography to transcendent spirituality if you will - there's a 'course-on-a-page HERE

10) then and only then read the academic literature on Camera Lucida and Barthes!

Whatever is true here about photography is also true about street photography - in fact I would say it is especially true about street photography. I intend to write other articles about how this incisive, manageable way into Camera Lucida relates to street photography, to art generally, to spirituality and so on.

SECTION 1

1 The book Camera Lucida sets out to determine a new way of looking at photography.

2 Camera Lucida is about a new consciousness - by way of photography.

3 Barthes seeks a new way of reading and valuing photographs - an altogether customized framework.

4 Barthes’ framework is to be distinct from all existing accounts of classifying photographs.

5 He wants to deal with photographs so as to get at the essence or noeme of photography.

6 Barthes says that he wants, ‘a History of Looking’. (RP don’t know what is meant but 26e below might be the answer)

7a In his search Barthes attempts to account for the fundamental roles of emotion and subjectivity

7b in i) the experience of and ii) accounting for Photography.

8 Subjective experience of photography (I would say creating as well as reading) has an essential nature—or eidos

9 The essential nature of a photograph is as an index indicating, ‘that-has-been.’

SECTION 2

10 Photography is set apart from all other forms of representation.

11 Previously established ways of classification etc are ‘disordered’ (because they fail to work with the essential nature of photography.)

12 Consequently it is unclassifiable (I suppose compared to say genre classification in film).

13 We need to hold to the fact that ‘the Photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially’.

14 The essence is the event,

15 The event is ‘that which is never transcended for the sake of something else.’

16 In other words, the photograph is never distinguished from its referent—that which it represents;

17 ‘it simply is what it is’ (I, RP, wonder if this means, “It is what it is because it is indissolubly linked to that which it represents?)”

18 This is illustrated by the fact that one says ‘this is me’ when showing someone a photographic image of oneself, as opposed to ‘this is a picture of me.’

19 When we look at a photograph, it is not the actual photo that we see, for the photograph itself is rendered invisible; (presumably because we see what the photo is a referent of - or see what we are)

20 Consequently the photograph is unclassifiable,

21 Why? - because it resists language, as it is without signs or marks—it simply is. (This is comparable to Lacan’s version of the Real.)

22 Furthermore, the subject that is photographed is rendered object, dispossessed of itself.

23 Consequently it becomes ‘Death in person.’

SECTION 3

24 In his personal—subjective—examination of multiple photographs, Barthes proceeded to note a duality that was characteristic of certain photographs: a ‘co-presence of two discontinuous elements’—what he terms, the studium and the punctum.

25a The studium refers to the range of meanings available and obvious to everyone (RP because we are taught by the culture and society of which we are part).

25b The studium part of these photographs is unary and coded, - the former term implying that the image is a unified and self-contained whole

25c The unary meaning of the studium can be taken in at a glance (without effort, or ‘thinking’).

25d The latter (THE CODING) implies that the pictorial space is ordered in a universal, comprehensible way.

25e The studium speaks of the interest which we show in a photograph,

25f the desire to study and understand what the meanings are in a photograph,

25g to explore the relationship between the meanings and our own subjectivities.

26a The punctum (a Latin word derived from the Greek word for trauma) on the other hand inspires an intensely private meaning,

26b one that is suddenly, unexpectedly recognized and consequently remembered

26c It "shoots out of [the photograph] like an arrow and pierces me”.

26d It ‘escapes’ language (like Lacan’s real); it is not easily communicable through/with language.

26e The punctum is ‘historical’ as an experience of the irrefutable indexicality of the photograph (its contingency upon a referent).

26f The punctum is a detail or “partial object” that attracts and holds the viewer’s (the Spectator’s) gaze;

26g it pricks or wounds the observer.

SECTION 4

27a The ambiguity of the book’s title lends itself to the many levels on which the text addresses media theory.

27b This ranges from the very materiality of the photographic medium itself

27c to its grander implications for human consciousness in the pursuit of truth.

28a In his efforts to divorce photography from realms of analysis that deny or obscure its essence, Barthes ultimately formulates a new science of photography

28b It is an original framework in which photography steps beyond the shackles of classification and such terms as ‘art,’ ‘technique,’ etc. and, thus,

29a It draws upon an ‘absolute subjectivity’

29b This absolute subjectivity exceeds the normal boundaries of the everyday by moving the activity of viewing from a transparent relationship of meaning and expression to a level in which meaning seems to be there without the presence of subjectivity.

29c It is as if the photograph brings out the unconscious;

29d it also represents the unconscious, while at the same time, it denies all of these relations of meaning.

29e The photograph allows for the sight of self,

29f not as a mirror but as an access point into a definition of identity—

29g but identity associated with consciousness,

29h thus housing a whole;

30a it is in the photograph ‘where being coincides with self,’ (109)

30b It is ‘true being, not resemblance.’

31a The photographer, (is) a mediator,

31b S/he is one who (RP potentially & for themselves) supplies the transparent soul its clear shadow,

31c S/he reveals the soul’s value and not its mere identity (110);

31d the photographer, ‘makes permanent the truth.’

MY PERSONAL CONCLUSION

Camera Lucida is more like a revelation, a spiritual text, than a piece of academic writing. I have no no doubt that it's a work of intuitive, soul-searching genius. It tells us nothing about the mechanics and technique of photography. It tells us everything about the nature of being human, in which photographs are a gateway to reading our soul.

We (should) read photographs as we are asked to read the text of the self - with the whole of our consciousness and with truth, beauty, goodness and justice.

As Barthes shows himself, and us, the defining characteristic of photographs (at least the personally affecting ones) is that they show us ‘that which has been’. They are embodiments of memories. As such they elicit powerful emotions and as such they tell us who we are, which is why when that part of the brain which enables memories is damaged people no longer know who they are, or who people close to them are. In normal health however we can only have a healthy life-supporting relationship with memories, and photographs, if we live reasonably successfully in the now. Living in the now is the only way we can healthily experience ‘that which has been’.

All photographs are self-portraits. In all creating of, and viewing of, photographs we are searching. For ourselves, for our love, for that mysterious Whole of which we each are an infinitesimally small part.

We, and our photographs, are each the mote that the ray of light makes visible. Through them we enter the lucidly lit room.

For me in our ‘plucking from the flow’ the photographs that come to us it is not so much the ‘collecting of souls’, as Thomas Leuthard suggests, but is the embodiment of spirit caught when the mote turns in the light. That for me is my street, and its flow of (human) spirit, in that genre we call street photography.

Photo: Roger Prentice

END

GLOSSARY
1 WikiPedia Indexicality
an indexical behaviour or utterance points to (or indicates) some state of affairs........
Social indexicality in the human realm has been regarded as including any sign (clothing, speech variety, table manners) that points to, and helps create, social identity.

TAGS:

Photography, street photography, rogerprentice, roger prentice street photography, photography course, Henri Cartier-Bresson, p

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Tshaka Campbell at Apples & Snakes in Soho, June 2010 - YouTube

2011-12-03T04:55:00.001-08:00

via youtube.com

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▶ LISTEN to this great 'Tongue Fu Podcast 3 by TongueFuSounds'

2011-12-03T02:19:00.001-08:00

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The White House is having a 'Holiday Tree' this year not a Christmas Tree!

2011-12-02T02:13:00.001-08:00

Apparently the White House referred to Christmas Trees as Holiday Trees for the first time this year which prompted CBS presenter, Ben Stein, to present this piece which I would like to share with you. I think it applies just as much to many countries as it does to America .

The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary.

My confession:

I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees, Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are, Christmas trees.

It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, 'Merry Christmas' to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu . If people want a creche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from, that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship celebrities and we aren't allowed to worship God ? I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where these celebrities came from and where the America we knew went to.

In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.

Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her 'How could God let something like this happen?' (regarding Hurricane Katrina)... Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, 'I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?'

In light of recent events.... terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found a few years ago) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK. Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. The Bible says thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave, because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about. And we said okay.

Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with 'WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.'

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing yet?

Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you're not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it.

Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.

Pass it on if you think it has merit.

If not, then just discard it.... no one will know you did. But, if you discard this thought process, don't sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in.

My Best Regards, honestly and respectfully,

Ben Stein

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Is this photograph of Tony Blair for real?

2011-11-28T13:40:00.001-08:00

via twitpic.com

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'Street Photographers' a new 'magazine'

2011-11-28T03:55:00.001-08:00

?

street photographers

“seeing photographs in the flow of the human spirit on the street”

Curated by Roger Prentice

via scoop.it

I've just started 'curating' my 'Street Photographers'' magazine at scoop.it

The site logo is a shot of mi from a Brighton street market.

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Zeno Watson [Street Photography] - YouTube

2011-11-28T01:59:00.001-08:00

via youtube.com

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Sadler's Wells Theatre - Turnage / McGregor / Wallinger / OpenEndedGroup - UNDANCE / Twice Through the Heart

2011-11-28T01:41:00.001-08:00

WORLD PREMIERE

Book Tickets

Play Clip

//-->

A world premiere by Olivier Award-winning choreographer Wayne McGregor – “one of the most celebrated and sought-after choreographers of his generation” New York Times.
Inspired by American sculptor Richard Serra’s List of Verbs and the work of photographer Eadweard J. Muybridge, UNDANCE is about undoing, unraveling, unwinding… “I thought it would be interesting to enact these action verbs – like To Roll, To Wrap, To Slide – and not know where they are going but just do them and see what comes up – Undo them” Wayne McGregor.
Danced by ten breathtaking performers from Wayne McGregor│Random Dance, with a brand new bluesy, action-filled score by internationally acclaimed composer Mark-Anthony Turnage (Anna Nicole), UNDANCE features a set by Turner prize-winning visual artist Mark Wallinger, costumes by Moritz Junge and lighting by Lucy Carter.
For the first part of the evening, McGregor directs mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly, immersing her in a spectacular 3D environment created by New York digital artists OpenEnded Group – in a new staging of Turnage’s emotional chamber opera Twice Through the Heart.
Both works feature a live orchestra, handpicked by Mark-Anthony Turnage and conducted by Tim Murray.

via sadlerswells.com

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COMPASSION TEST - one of the most beautiful, moving photographs I've ever seen.

2011-11-28T00:33:00.001-08:00

The hand to steady the artistry.

The fore-finger and little finger to maximise the stability.

The mouth and eyes set in concentration.

The "I will, I can" in asserting the self against the darkness.

Compassion know thy name.

Has any more beautiful a picture of the human spirit ever been captured?

SOURCE

Retweeted over 24 million times!

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PaulBartonPiano's Channel - YouTube (Only an Englishman?)

2011-11-27T04:35:00.001-08:00

via youtube.com

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PJ Media » The Logical Extreme of the ‘American System’

2011-11-27T04:14:00.001-08:00

in the 1920s by H.L. Mencken in the fourth of his six-part series, Prejudices. In it, he identified the two sides of the great American experiment – our representative democratic republic and the free market capitalist system — as “the conjoined twins.” Each is wonderful and praiseworthy in its own right, but they are locked together in a way which eventually becomes toxic to both.

via pjmedia.com

To read the article click on the kink

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Her fourth Pullitzer Prize - Photo Journalist Carol Guzy | C-SPAN

2011-11-27T01:52:00.001-08:00

Q&A with Photo Journalist Carol Guzy

2011 Pulitzer prize winner

Photographer Carol Guzy

Washington, DC
Sunday, May 1, 2011

This weekend on Q&A, our guest is Washington Post photographer Carol Guzy.

Along with two Post colleagues Nikki Kahn and Ricky Carioti, she has just won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography. They won for a series of photographs of the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. This is Carol Guzy’s fourth Pulitzer Prize, the most pulitzers won by a journalist.

In this interview, Guzy shows photos from the Haiti earthquake. She also discusses her past photo journalism projects including the fall of the Berlin Wall; the 1986 mudslide in Colombia; Kosovo and Albania in 1999; 9/11 in New York; and her photo story series of animals left behind after Katrina.

Carol Guzy has worked for the Washington Post since 1988. She previously worked as a photographer for The Miami Herald.

via c-span.org

Carol Guzy is one of my favourite journalistic photographers.

Click on link to find out more.

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You'll find some great photographers & photography here - The Pulitzer Prizes | Feature Photography

2011-11-27T01:46:00.001-08:00

Feature Photography

« Back to Category List

Finalists have been announced since 1980. Full texts, photographs and cartoons are available for Journalism winners from 1995–2011 only.

via pulitzer.org

NB You will need to Google the individual photographers.

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Shaped by War: Photographs by Don McCullin | Imperial War Museums

2011-11-25T01:31:00.001-08:00

via iwm.org.uk

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Swedish Nature Photographer Exposed as Giant Photoshopping Fraud

2011-11-23T17:16:00.001-08:00

Swedish Nature Photographer Exposed as Giant Photoshopping Fraud

How'd Terje Helles win the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency's top prize for 2010? By capturing so many incredible shots of endangered species! And how'd he miraculously find all of these rare animals? On internet stock photography sites

via gizmodo.com

click on link to read the story

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The beautiful Satish Kumar {morning} (1/2) - YouTube

2011-11-23T11:22:00.001-08:00

via youtube.com

A day with Satish Kumar, in his interview for Earth Pilgrims, part 1/2.

http://www.earthpilgrims.com/

Satish Kumar is an Indian, currently living in England, who has been a Jain monk and a nuclear disarmament advocate, and is the current editor of Resurgence, founder and Director of Programmes of the Schumacher College international centre for ecological studies and of The Small School. His most notable accomplishment is a "peace walk" with a companion to the capitals of four of the nuclear-armed countries - Washington, London, Paris and Moscow, a trip of over 8,000 miles. He insists that reverence for nature should be at the heart of every political and social debate.

Visit his homepage at http://www.resurgence.org/

Interview by John Craig (aka Echan Deravy) of http://www.japanthropologist.com/

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What is Google Chrome OS? - YouTube

2011-11-23T02:32:00.001-08:00

via youtube.com

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Wonderful site of street photographs by Robert M Johnson

2011-11-22T13:57:00.001-08:00

Robert M Johnson

Massachusetts, USA

American Street Photographer From The Classic 70's Period.

Go HERE o see a wonderful site of photographs by Robert M Johnson

How to kick-start funding for a movie about street photography - you to can be invoved

2011-11-22T12:49:00.001-08:00

http://kck.st/p7VHfr

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Eugene Richards - The Compassionate Eye - YouTube

2011-11-22T12:38:00.001-08:00

via youtube.com

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Introduction to Street Photography with Eric Kim - YouTube

2011-11-22T10:16:00.001-08:00

via youtube.com

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Elliott Erwitt - photography, reality & truth & bicycle horns

2011-11-22T10:07:00.001-08:00

via youtube.com

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ROBERT FRANK - YouTube

2011-11-22T10:03:00.001-08:00

via youtube.com

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Joel Meyerowitz 1981 Street Photography Program - YouTube

2011-11-22T09:59:00.001-08:00

via youtube.com

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Joel Meyerowitz - demonstrates the essentials of Street Photography - YouTube

2011-11-22T03:45:00.001-08:00

via youtube.com

He's one of the main guys that inspire me.

"Photography is made up out of light and yet it is invisible. Only the camera makes it visible." - Joel Meyerowitz

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Free Royalty Free Music for your YouTube Videos

2011-11-22T02:09:00.001-08:00

via youtube.com

Rick's site is http://music4yourvids.co.uk/royalty-free-music.html

What a great idea - thanks Rick!

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1992 Susan Sontag interview - YouTube

2011-11-21T16:26:00.001-08:00

via youtube.com

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WAYS OF SEEING (first episode) 1/4 - YouTube

2011-11-21T16:11:00.001-08:00

via youtube.com

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UK - Check out some stuff re the unmissable 'The Killing' - series II starts this Sat - two episodes - tell your friends

2011-11-18T12:39:00.001-08:00

Tell your friends.......

Series 2 of this genius series starts this Saturday on BBC 4 at 9pm. Great article in this week's Radio Times - handy hints for newcomers in the RT.

Sofie Grabol is wonderful - read her astonishing entry into acting in the RT.

If you get really serious you can even go on a 'Killing Tour of Copenhagen!

You will suffer severe separation pains when the series ends, but the good news is that Series III is on its way!

Copenhagen cop: Sofie Gråbøl as Sarah Lund in the second series of The Killing. Photograph: BBC/DR

Søren Sveistrup heaves open a heavy wooden door and steps into a deserted Copenhagen police headquarters. Austere grey corridors give way to tatty interrogation rooms and lockers that have seen better days; in the main office huge bookcases are lined with files,

desks littered with paperwork and laptops. Shadows congregate in every corner.

Which is just the way Sveistrup likes it. The writer of The Killing believes a thriller should look murky round the edges and what isn't achieved via the Danish weather – currently cold, windy and desperately trying to drizzle – is suggested by the authentic and surprisingly

large set. We stroll about, pausing to chat in the meeting room, and loitering by Sarah Lund's desk........... Guardian write up by Vicki Frost HERE

HERE is a glimpse of how seriously people took the first series - my comment is at the bottom.

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William Eggleston - great article by Chris Klug

2011-11-18T10:46:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I had one of the most moving experiences, photographically-speaking, that I’ve had in a while. I was in Chicago on business for the day. The meeting ended at 3pm, so I had a little time before I had to head back to the airport. I knew I was close by the Art Institute, so I went online to see what photography exhibit they had up. It turned out it was a show by William Eggleston entitled ‘Democratic Camera,’ so I quickly walked over to the Institute and took in the show.

For those of you not familiar with his work,

via patternsoflightndark.com

Click on link to read Chris Klug's article

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Louis Daguerre: Google Doodle photography innovator's earliest surviving image - mirror.co.uk

2011-11-18T10:19:00.001-08:00

Louis Jacques Daguerre's first surviving daguerreotype image, of a collection of plaster casts on a window ledge (Pic: Getty)

Louis Daguerre, whose 224th birthday is celebrated today with a Google Doodle, was the inventor of the first commercially successful form of photography.

Advertisement >>

The French physicist devised the daguerreotype, the process for transferring photographs onto silver-coated copper plates – although according to writer Robert Leggat, his discovery was made by accident.

via mirror.co.uk

Click on link to read article

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"Street Lights" - Street Photography by Eric Kim - YouTube

2011-11-18T04:39:00.001-08:00

via youtube.com

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101 Things I Have Learned about Street Photography — Eric Kim's Street Photography

2011-11-18T00:35:00.001-08:00

1. Don’t worry about the camera so much, just take the damn photo.
2. Ditch the zoom lens and screw on some primes
3. Carry your camera gear in a messenger bag (it makes your camera & lenses easier to access).
4. Go for the candid look.
5. Go for the shock factor.
6. Smile often.
7. When shooting from the hip, your first 1000 shots will be terrible.
8. Don’t make eye contact with your subjects when trying to be discrete.
9. Imagine that the world is your stage and people are your actors.
10. Feel free to ask people to take their portraits.

via erickimphotography.com

Click on link to read the full list

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Oh how sad I am to have missed this exhibition of 'Comrades' by Phil Maxwell

2011-11-16T03:35:00.001-08:00

via philmaxwell.co.uk

Click on link to see more wonderful work.

Go HERE - http://philmaxwell.co.uk/ - and sign up for his daily photoblog

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All you budding street photographers check out PHIL MAXWELL - he's been doing it for 40+years!

2011-11-16T01:53:00.001-08:00

Apparently the world’s first pop-up shopping mall will be assembled within the next month at the former Bishopsgate Goods Yard. The historic site will be renamed ‘Boxpark’ and will house 60 recycled shipping containers, spanning two floors. According to the advertising hype it promises to be “a radical, ground-breaking alternative to the ailing conventional high-street”. What the organisers have failed to realise is that such an alternative existed for years when every Sunday a small army of people would sell a range of clothes and household items. One of my favourite retailers was the woman below.

An 'alternative' shop keeper promotes her stock at the Bishopsgate Goods Yard. London 1998.

via philmaxwell.org

I love his daily pics - you can sign up on his site to get the same yourself.

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Stand Your Ground - resisting attacks on the freedom to photograph.

2011-11-15T03:02:00.001-08:00

via youtube.com

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"Security guards have no right to prevent street photography," says Home Office - British Journal of Photography

2011-11-14T16:22:00.001-08:00

Home News Rights Street Rights

"Security guards have no right to prevent street photography," says Home Office

The Home Office and the British Security Industry Association have published a new set of guidelines for security guards confirming that photography in public places is legal and cannot be restricted

via bjp-online.com

Click on link to read article

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Focus on Thomas Leuthard – Street Photographer - great interview on DPS

2011-11-12T15:35:00.001-08:00

If you like street photography, you’ve probably heard of Thomas Leuthard. He lives in Switzerland and, although he hasn’t been on the street photography scene for very long, he’s made quite a name for himself in the community worldwide. The guy has got quite an eye! When I see his regular posts on social media, I am always astounded by the number of quality of images he manages to shoot on any given photo walk. There is something very special about his photographs, some will make you smile, others will move you. He does it out of sheer passion for the craft. He loves to roam the streets of large cities worldwide and enjoys sharing his work and knowledge through social media and workshops. His generosity has even led him to publish two fantastic e-books about street photography that are downloadable free of charge! He agreed to answer a few questions for the dPS readers. If you haven’t already done so, I urge you to check out his work by visiting his website from there you can find all the links to Thomas’ social media world.

1. When did you start doing street photography and why?

It was in May 2009 when I ordered a new Nikon 85mm prime lens and decided to make only street photos with this lens and upload it to a new online profile called 85mm. This was the start of 85mm Street Photography. The lens changed to a wider one over time, but the name remained.

via digital-photography-school.com

Click on link for interview and more photographs

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Being Stephen Shore | Photography | Agenda | Phaidon

2011-11-12T11:08:00.001-08:00

via uk.phaidon.com

"Part of what a photographer does is make sense of the space around them." Stephen Shore

'Part of what a photographer does is make sense of the space within them" - RP

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AMAZING SPEECH BY WAR VETERAN - YouTube

2011-11-12T11:06:00.001-08:00

via youtube.com

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Fine art photography as images that connect us to deeper meaning

2011-11-08T23:19:00.001-08:00

When is a wildlife photograph 'more than', more than, that is than a good example of the wildlife genre, or category, to which it belongs?

I take the essence of wildlife photography to be a celebration, a celebration of the beauty and diversity of fauna? That's enough in itself. But when and how might a wildlife photograph become fine art as well?

My answer is when it connects us, beyond celebrating the creature's intrinsic beauty as a-thing-in-itself, to a wider discourse or conversation.

That is when the photograph connects us, if we have the eyes to see, to one of the great conversations about being human in the world, with others - the 'others' of course means other humans but also other creatures as well. For me a photograph to be fine art has to have the extra dimension that invites us to engage more deeply than in the simple, entirely valid, enjoyment of celebrating the animal, bird insect or fish.

Such conversations are about questions such as 'what is real?', 'how should we be living our lives?', ...................

OK if the so-called fine art photograph has a plus factor, that connects us to these conversations, through what is that connection made? How do we come to feel that we have been taken into one or more of these conversations?

The answer is via some detail or added dimension.

This is a perfectly respectable wildlife photograph of a hippopotamus that might get taken on a 'safari holiday' (Source: WikiPedia);

This I take however to be an outstandingly good fine art photograph

It's a bit over-cropped but the main elements of people, bars, hippo and reflection are all there.

It was taken in 1852 by Juan, Count of Montizon. The hippo's name is Obaysch (1849 - 1878) and he was the first hippopotamus seen in England since prehistoric times! Obaysch came from Egypt.

To what does the photograph connect us, other than celebrating the fact that this is a very fine hippo, and not a zebra or platypus - and by what means does it make the connection?

For me the details that engage my heart-mind to this photograph are the closed eyes and the line of his mouth. He is imprisoned but he looks sublimely happy, whereas the people if anything look anxious.

From here we can ask who is imprisoned most the people or the animal? The important detail is the bars behind which the people look to be the imprisoned ones? If so how and why and through what?

Supporting this is the point of view of the photographer. His shot is not impeded by bars - he is, to all appearances, inside the world of the hippopotamus.

It takes us to consideration of how animals are treated, and the effects upon us. A deeper more philosophical discourse is that of the nature of freedom and imprisonment and such like.

Let's look at one more example, this time looking at a hawk as opposed to hippopotamuses/hippopotami.

Here is a hawk (notice the use of differential focus)

It's an immature goshawk. (Source Wikipedia)

But here is a picture of a hawk that engages more deeply;

Photo used by kind permission of Les Bray

With hawks, and other birds of prey, which bits engage our attention? Answer claws and beak. But here 'the eyes have it! The eyes have it for more reasons than one. Birds of prey have an imperious look, and we know they have incredibly good sight compared to us humans. But it is the eyes, and the detail of the eyes, that provide the plus factor, the extra dimension. In the eye we see the blue sky and the outline of what I take to be a line of people - not unlike those leaning on the rail beyond the bars of the hippo's cage - waiting to see what, if anything, happens.

The reflection in the hippo picture leads us to thinking about one of life's great themes; appearance and reality. The reflection here leads us to back to ourselves and to what impact people and the hawk are having on each other

For me the reflection-in-the-eye immediately catapults this photograph to the highest level. Could it be better/ Perhaps if the eye and its reflection were larger so that the line of people were seen a bit more easily and clearly that would be better.

There is another dimension of fine art photography that adds to the ability to derive deeper satisfaction, richer meaning-making, in a work of art and that is its referentiality - it's ability to refer, to connect up to other works and to other ideas within one or more of the great conversations.

Did the photographer here choose to connect the 'who is the real prisoner' idea, and all of the other ways of making rich and deep meaning in his photograph, with the same idea in the Count's photograph? Perhaps not but it doesn't alter the fact that they both contribute to, and are both part of, a range of conversations - if we have the eyes to see. Developing 'eyes to see' is a matter of extending outwards the connections we can see, connections that deepen and enrich meaning-making.

The referring to, the referentiality, of a photograph is not something consciously looked for when much photography has to be done very quickly. It is afterwards we can see that sub-consciously we may have sensed something. The hawk and hippo photos connect up with many other works in various art forms. For me most powerfully they connect up with the poet Ted Hughes animal poems - particularly 'Hawk Roosting' and 'Jaguar'

We are meaning-making animals and fine art photographs, which can be photographs from basic categories but with a 'plus factor', give us far greater opportunities to experience delicious satisfaction. That delicious satisfaction is in two stages;

a) firstly there is the standing in awe of an image - we are united with it, at-one because we identify with it, and we know that ultimately it is pointing back to a mysterious whole, but

b) after the unity that we feel in the first impact we shift to engagement as having dialogue, we interrogate the image (and ourselves) - and seek to squeeze out the pleasure and satisfaction of the meanings.

These two stages are part of reading and appreciating a photograph. The reading allows us to derive deep meanings - as part of conversations that humans have been having since the time of primeval forests.

Art is about experience + meanings made.

The eyes have it - but so does the beatific smile of the hippo!

-0-

1st draft 9th Nov 2011 - Roger Prentice

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Two outstanding photographic artists

2011-11-05T14:50:00.001-07:00

Calum Colvin, at least in his Ossian project, is one of the truly great, innovative, fine art photographers.

This quotation seems to well suit Calum Colvin

A photograph is a distilled, charmed, disturbing, intense, and ethereal correspondence with the world: a talisman empowered by the ineluctable mystery of the visual. Tom Normand Source

The Ossian project site is HERE

More about Calum Colvin HERE

Various reviews are HERE

Some of Calum Colvin's techniques in Ossian resemble the work of the Chinese artist Liu Bolin

See here for more images

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Descending or not descending into hell - two photographs

2011-11-04T02:48:00.001-07:00

This photograph 'Valparasio, Chile' by Chilean photographer Sergio Larraain stopped me in my tracks.

I'm again trying to write an 'open appreciation' by pointing to issues and then moving into the sub-conscious and surreal by mentioning associations. I recognize, of course that other people may have a different set of associations.

After that I have included my photograph 'Two arrows' and my response to that.

The squares, triangles and planes are like an operatic stage-set. They registered (with me) before the two girls because the overall design works powerfully as a whole. Of course it echoes Cartier-Bresson in the stregth of its geometry. HCB has a photograph of a girl about to disappear left at the top of a steep set of stone steps in a white Greek village.

One girl is in shadow.

There is even slight ambiguity as to which way she is walking but the fact that she is following another girl, perhaps her older sister, forces us to accept she is walking away - and most belt bows are tied at the back. There is a hint that she is left-handed - and, horror of horrors is her arm cut off at the elbow - or is it that her arm is hidden in forward movement. I recall a photograph of an African boy helping dress his father both of whose arms were amputated by terrorists.

Are they both carrying square bottles - like many olive oil bottles? Are they on the way to a shop - or is the liquid refreshment from the heat

The girl in the shadow is about to step into light - glaring light.

The two girls shoulders, hair and very upright stance suggest they may be sisters - with the older one leading.

The girl in the light is similar but different - she might already be a young woman, certainly she is experiencing the world as someone quite a few years older than the smaller girl.

More subconsciously and surreal-ly

Their walk suggests;

ET's approach back to the space ship

The walk of the Midwich cuckoos in the film The Midwich Cuckoos

Even a hint of a Zombie walk - though oppressive heat might explain - walking in a way to stay as cool as possible.

What are they passing through - stages of growing up?

What are they descending into?

The sense of confidence and control in the 'stance that suggests their walk' doesn't give any sense of threat - so it's not a hell of any kind.

It is very processional, very operatic. The geometry is perfect. The moment is perfect. The narrative possibilities obey Francis Bacon's 'The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.'

Sergio Larrain was a born in 1931. Amazon still has a book he did of London in 1958/59 with Mike Seaborne. The picture is to be found on p261 of Phaidon's 'the Photo Book'

-0-

My photograph 'Descending and two arrows'

This photograph 'appeared' when travelling via the metro/underground in Budapest.

As is so often the case in 'Street Photography' I grabbed it unconsciously, like a bear mid-stream to whom the salmon leaps - snap! (Impossible lighting & v modest camera)

I didn't construct it consciously. It was a gift, not something directly worked for. I only saw it afterwards, back home.

If someone else had taken it, and I had looked at it, really looked, I would be stunned! So I will try to 'critique' it as if it was another photographer's work.

One key is the two arrows. Another is that the two men look to be the same person.

Three people. Two worlds.

The man coming down the steps - a clone or alternative version of the beggar-man at the foot of the steps?.

Perhaps they represent two parallel versions of reality as in the 1998 film Sliding Doors - except the two, and their realities, have come together at the particular moment of the photograph.

Perhaps the two are the same person who decades ago when 'Two roads diverged in a yellow wood' took the wrong road, except in a parallel reality the other road was also taken. The two versions, the two selves the two roads come together on the steps of the metro in this moment.

One is holding a cup, the other, I think, sun-glasses.

One exudes wretchedness and a hatred of the world that dealt him his deal, a world that won't fill his cup sufficient to displace that hatred? His sound is, "Ssssssssss".

Perhaps his gay/girlie pink bag is the punctum if you view the scene through Barthes-ian spectacles.

One exudes super-relaxed nonchalance. His sound is, " Hi guyyyyyyys, yo, how are y'all". (Yes, yes I know that is a mixture of out-of-dates idioms!)

Presumably he also has a cup - what does it contain? Not the dregs of bitterness.

Two descend from a world of super-brightness.

One huddles on the lower-most step.

In hell?

But which way is hell? What good is it the seduces us? The good deeds of the ordinary people are the sins of saints.

Which one is in hell, or might be tomorrow, following a turn of events?

Might their positions be reversed, if having coincided they take the next step along the journey?

Two arrows point. One points ascendingly, but not like a Zen master. One appears to point descendingly.

Which arrow is to be trusted?

Upwards there is the possibility of super-white teeth. Upwards there is a restaurant that asserts itself.

The woman is mysterious. Did she reject one, and accept the other? Is her own dual two-pathed reality about to come into a single moment? Did she turn back instead of making a choice between two roads.

Do we willingly descend?

Is hell a state of being, not a place, a state of being that we engender or step out from.

Would hell be the eternal living of the road not taken? A vision of this risk is Hirokazu Koreeda's film 'Afterlife'

Or a meeting with our 'selves', sub-personalities, that each made their own journeys and rattle and jostle our consciousness for space and time.

Are we ascending or descending?

Is the light too bright, as for eyes freed of cataracts?

Will we all realize the full consequences of choices made?

Is redemption in Abe Lincoln's home spun, "Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." Hell or heaven is the state we (choose) to live in?

Who, or what, makes up our heart-mind?

-0-

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Desperately seeking a photographic aesthetic

2011-11-03T08:23:00.001-07:00

Like multitudes of others I love photography - doing it and appreciating it.

I have for a long time looked at photographs by great photographers to inspire me into taking better photographs but I'm also looking for a 'photographer's aesthetic'.

By 'an aesthetic' I mean a model that includes the principles and values and perhaps 'tools' that help me to photograph more ably but which also helps in developing capability in reading and evaluating photographs.

For me it includes truth and goodness as well as beauty.

This short article is the first step towards such a 'photographer's aesthetic'.

It will be successful if it helps me;

a) in the photographs I take

b) the 'reading' of my own and other people's photographs

c) the evaluation of the relative worth of particular photographs

For me it needs to fit in with my model of what it is to be human - which I concluded was 'to care', 'to create' and to be critical' - all in our 'community' web of relationships.

The field is something of a minefield, ranging from very challenging important writing to gobbledygook cum psycho-babble. There is a simple possible aesthetic in a well-known book by John Szarkowski;

The book, of an exhibition, presents 5 concerns in photography. Szarkowski structures his book on

The Thing Itself - this I take to be the object 'out there', at least the thing that stimulated the photographer's attention

The Detail - which part of the object is emphasized
The Frame - what does and doesn't go inside one of the four sides of the frame

Time - not just the duration of the shot but whether the photograph re-presents the passing of time as in a blurring of motion.
The Vantage Point - which I take to be largely the same as PoV - point of View - high angle shot etc.

So with this 5-dimensional model we can read and appreciate any photograph. For example we can ask how interestingly/engagingly/unusually does any photograph use one or more or all of those five dimensions?

Much though I like the book and the essay the five dimensions seem to me to be too limited for my satisfaction.

One suspects that this and similar models come about to answer questions such as; "What is the specific nature of photography?" as well as questions such as "How do we read a photograph?" Perhaps also there is the defensive and doubt-ridden, "But photography is an art - isn't it?"

"If I were going there I wouldn't start from here," said the proverbial yokel. In the case of photography the place not to start from is the technology, or even the technique.

Most of the arts media are about mark-making - even dance is a moving, temporary, mark made in a particular space and context. The marks as paintings, or photographs, or any other medium, have in the hands of an artist, the ability to create experience, including deep experience - but more like a haiku than a novel.

Photography as a fine art then is simply another way to make marks - marks that are able, more or less, to provide an experience that engages us in one or more of the deeper concerns of life, without excluding the more prosaic and domestic concerns.

The essence of photographic artistry is in the user of the camera, be it a pin-hole camera or a Leica M9. The art is in the artist and her/his response to the world. The art is in engagement in the deeper concerns of being human, in the world with others.

Where does that leave us with Szarkowski's 5-dimension model? The five dimensions are really about the language of the photographic process in the same way that close-up, two-shots, establishing shots etc are all part of the language of film. They help us describe aspects of technique.

We need more to centre the process in being human as opposed to writing and reading technique. The only way for that to work is to recognize and have some familiarity with one or more discourses. The great educational writer Michael Oakeshott I recall said that all true education is a conversation - a conversation that started eons ago.

Why kind of conversation or discourse can we pull together that has a practical benefit for those who like making photographic images as well as reading such images?

We will have to raid the philosophies of the last half-century, without getting trapped in their mazes. We also have to shift from technique to the movement of the spirit, the photographer's and the 'reader's' with the embodied text, the photograph, as the agent for the spirit moves to take place.

Above all we will have to shift from 'outer' concerns' to 'inner' concerns.

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1st draft of first part of this article at 3rd November 2011

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Pierre Beteille (Monkeyman) - a genius to rank with Cindy Sherman

2011-11-02T01:38:00.001-07:00

via flickr.com

I hope some museum has paid him a million dollars for a set of prints!

Go to Flickr for oceans of joy, laughter and astonishment!

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Was Mayall the first ever fine art photographer?

2011-10-31T02:42:00.001-07:00

Check out this site HERE

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Who is this beautiful young poet?

2011-10-29T14:16:00.001-07:00

SORROW

Why does the thin grey strand
Floating up from the forgotten
Cigarette between my fingers,
Why does it trouble me?

Ah, you will understand;
When I carried my mother downstairs,
A few times only, at the beginning
Of her soft-foot malady,

I should find, for a reprimand
To my gaiety, a few long grey hairs
On the breast of my coat; and one by one
I let them float up the dark chimney.

-0-

D H Lawrence - Photo source WikiPedia
.

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Baha'i educators sentenced - by Iran's government

2011-10-26T03:48:00.001-07:00

The seven Baha'i educators sentenced to prison are (top row, left to right): Mahmoud Badavam, Ramin Zibaie, Riaz Sobhani, Farhad Sedghi; (bottom row, left to right) Noushin Khadem, Kamran Mortezaie, and Vahid Mahmoudi.

Baha'i educators sentenced
18 October 2011

NEW YORK — Seven Baha'i educators in Iran have each received four- or five-year prison sentences, according to reports received by the Baha'i International Community.

Verdicts against the seven were reportedly handed down by a judge at Branch 28 of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran.

The educators have been detained for almost five months in connection with their involvement in an informal community initiative – known as the Baha'i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE) – in which Baha'i professors, debarred by the Iranian government from practicing their professions, offer their services to teach young community members who are banned from university.

Two of the individuals, Vahid Mahmoudi and Kamran Mortezaie, were each sentenced to five years imprisonment.

Four year jail terms were given to BIHE lecturers Ramin Zibaie, Mahmoud Badavam and Farhad Sedghi, consultant Riaz Sobhani, and helper Nooshin Khadem.

Read profiles of the BIHE prisoners

"It is not even clear at this stage what the exact charges were against these innocent souls, whose only desire was to serve young people who have been unjustly barred from higher education on purely religious grounds," said Bani Dugal, Principal Representative of the Baha'i International Community to the United Nations.

"What kind of society makes educating the young a punishable crime?" she said.

Two other Baha'is associated with BIHE – husband and wife Kamran Rahimian and Faran Hesami, both psychology instructors – are also still being held without charge.

Global protest

The most recent attacks carried out against BIHE continue to provoke condemnation from governments, organizations, academics and young people throughout the world.

More than 70 academics in Australia, including University of Ballarat vice-chancellor, David Battersby, have signed an open letter protesting Iran's educational discrimination against Baha'is and calling for the immediate release of the imprisoned educators.

On 10 October, 43 prominent philosophers and theologians in 16 countries signed a letter of protest. “To acquire knowledge and learning is the sacred and legal right of all; indeed, the state is obliged to provide it. In Iran, the government has done the opposite...” wrote the academics.

Two Nobel Peace Prize laureates – Desmond Tutu, the Anglican Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, and Jose Ramos-Horta, President of East Timor – in another open letter, sharply criticized the Iranian government, comparing its actions to "the Dark Ages of Europe" or the "Spanish Inquisition."

On 5 October, resuming a Canadian Senate debate about the Baha’is in Iran, Senator Hugh Segal described the suffering heaped on Baha’is as “systematic and brutal, especially when the Baha’i are known as a peaceful faith that embraces the sanctity of all religions.”

“The official Iranian oppression of Baha’i … is a clarion call to humanity and to free peoples and democracies everywhere to look directly at the harsh colors of the Iranian reality and not look away until the challenge is faced head on,” said Senator Segal.

Around 112 Baha’is are currently behind bars in Iran because of their religion. This includes the seven Baha’i leaders, serving 20-year jail terms on trumped-up charges. The cases of some 300 other Baha’is are still active with the Iranian authorities.

via news.bahai.org

Click on link to read more

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Scottish amateur wins Landscape Photographer of the Year

2011-10-26T03:12:00.001-07:00

An amateur photographer from Scotland has scooped this year’s Landscape Photographer of the Year award, it has been revealed.

The annual competition, launched by master landscape photographer Charlie Waite, has been won by Scottish photographer Robert Fulton for his image ‘Winter Field in Snow’ (see above).

via photographymonthly.com

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How I Was Arrested at Occupy Wall Street | Occupy Cyberspace – American Autumn

2011-10-25T23:54:00.001-07:00

How I Was Arrested at Occupy Wall Street

Naomi Wolfe

Last night I was arrested in my home town, outside an event to which I had been invited, for standing lawfully on the sidewalk in an evening gown. Let me explain; my partner and I were attending an event for the Huffington Post, for which I often write: Game Changers 2011, in a venue space on Hudson Street. As we entered the space, we saw that about 200 Occupy Wall Street protesters were peacefully assembled and were chanting. They wanted to address Governor Andrew Cuomo, who was going to be arriving at the event.

They were using a technique that has become known as “the human mic” – by which the crowd laboriously repeats every word the speaker says – since they had been told that using real megaphones was illegal. In my book Give Me Liberty, a blueprint for how to open up a closing civil society, I have a chapter on permits – which is a crucial subject to understand for anyone involved in protest in the US.

via occupycyberspace.wordpress.com

Click on link to read the article.

Thank God this kind of policing couldn't happen in the UK!

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10 Things You Must Let Go Of Today - Inspired Every Moment by Katherine

2011-10-25T23:43:00.001-07:00

Some times you have to let go of things to allow new, more useful things, into your life. Letting go can be difficult, but it can also be very positive and rewarding. Here are a few things you MUST let go of if you truly hope to live a happy and positive life…

Let Go Of…

Guilt: Does guilt ever change the situation? Can it reverse time and change the past? The answer is NO! Guilt has no use what-so-ever. Let it go and get on with living. Take whatever it is that is making you feel guilty and use it as a lesson learned.

via inspiredeverymoment.wordpress.com

Click on link to read Katherine's 'Ten Things to let Go Of Today' article

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Check out 'PHOTOGRAPHERS SPEAK' DEAN BRIERLY's interviews

2011-10-25T04:03:00.001-07:00

Leiter might be regarded as the master of the “indecisive” moment – those in-between moments when nothing of much importance seems to be happening but which resonate with a profound if understated sense of interior drama. Leiter is one of photography’s underrated masters, and a living testament to the maxim that the greatest artists are often the most humble and self-deprecating. His black-and-white work was featured in the book “The New York School” and his color images in “Early Color.” The native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, still makes his home in New York City, where he has lived since 1946.

Saul Leiter

via photographyinterviews.blogspot.com

Click on link to read the DEAN BRIERLY interviews

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At What Age Do Photographers Do Their Most Influential Work?

2011-10-25T01:48:00.001-07:00

Jacques Henri Lartigue

Just about anybody who’s been in my company for the last couple of years has heard me yammer on about photography and aging. The best creative years for a photographer, I’d proclaim, are 20 to 40, but the peak is 25 to 35. Of course I’d mention the exceptions, but taken as a whole, photographic greatness seems to me to be a young person’s game.

via littlebrownmushroom.wordpress.com

God I hope he's wrong!

Click on link to read Alec's article

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There's no one quite like Nan Goldin | Art and design | guardian.co.uk

2011-10-25T01:18:00.001-07:00

Nan Goldin's photographic work The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is a slideshow taking in pictures from 1983 to the present day. It's different every time the photographer exhibits it, and on Saturday night it was given what is surely one of its most dramatic settings to date, the Tate's massive Turbine Hall. The pictures of junkies, drag queens, and the sleazy New York demi-monde of the past were projected onto a massive screen in the centre of the hall, and given a musical accompaniment.

via guardian.co.uk

Click on link to read article

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Masahisa Fukase's Ravens: the best photobook of the past 25 years? |Sean O'Hagan | guardian.co.uk

2011-10-25T01:12:00.001-07:00

Bleakly atmospheric ... Koen-dori, Shibuya (1982) by Masahisha Fukase. Photograph courtesy of the artist

The British Journal of Photography recently asked a panel of experts, including photographer Chis Killip and the writer Gerry Badger, to select their best photobook of the past 25 years. Surpisingly, perhaps, Nan Goldin's Ballad of Sexual Dependency, from 1986, came a close second to a much less well-known book, Masahisa Fukase's Karasu (Ravens), which was published the same year.
While Goldin's book is now widely regarded as a pioneering classic of the raw, confessional style of photographic memoir, Fukase's work is described by the BJP as "an obscure masterpiece".

via guardian.co.uk

Click on link to read article

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The secret of the world's oldest marathon runner | UK news | The Guardian

2011-10-22T09:49:00.001-07:00

Fauja Singh says he lives 'a very simple life'. Photograph: Chris Young/AP

'Anything worth doing is going to be difficult," says Fauja Singh, the 100-year-old runner who this week became the world's oldest person to complete a full-length marathon, crossing the line at the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront event in eight hours, 25 minutes and 16 seconds. (And he didn't finish last: five came in after him.)
At five foot eight and weighing a little more than eight stone, Singh is a spindly figure under his heavy turban and wispy beard. "Girl, you tell me: has anything you wanted ever been easy?" he says.

via guardian.co.uk

What a great story - click on link to read the article

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Streets and cafes in Budapest

2011-10-13T22:49:00.001-07:00

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Pushing photography to the limits MARIAH ROBERTSON at the BALTIC

2011-10-12T22:44:00.001-07:00

MARIAH ROBERTSON
25 June 2011 - 30 October 2011

Highly aware of our technology-saturated world, New York-based Mariah Robertson bridges photography, painting, film and sculpture with images that, at first, hark back to the slower, semi-pre-digital arena of her youth. Working in a darkroom using analogue techniques now in their demise, Robertson manipulates photographic materials to reveal their strengths and fallibilities. Her hands-on approach sees chemical mishaps 'paint' the photographic surface, and an array of objects exposed directly on the paper or obstructing the enlarger.

Her elaborate compositions, lush with colour, are presented as objects within heavy frames, or as structures that cascade from the ceiling and around the gallery as over-sized film-strips.

This is Robertson's first solo exhibition in the UK and will include recent and new work.

via balticmill.com

Enjoyed the idea of stretching photographic method to this extreme more than the actual artifacts. Well worth seeing though.

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Steve Jobs' 10 Secrets to Building a Huge Empire

2011-10-07T05:47:00.001-07:00

Steve Paul Jobs was born on February 24th, 1955. He is known to be the Chairman, co-founder as well as the CEO of the Apple Inc. He was also the former CEO of well known Pixar Animation Studios. He was also represented among the Board of Directors of the Walt Disney Company. Not bad!

He completed his studies in California and later he did his frequent after-school lectures in Palo Alto at the Hewlett Packard Company. In a few months time, he was hired in the same place and from there his career started to accelerate. The great personality exhibited by Steve Jobs was told and appreciated far and wide. He was referred to as one of Silicon Valley’s leading egomaniac by Fortune Magazine.

It was in the year 1976 when he founded the company he named Apple Inc. Presently, Jobs is referred to as the single largest shareholder in the Walt Disney Company and also one among its Board of Directors. His presence and appreciation in both the computer as well as entertainment field is remarkable.

NB To read this '10 Secrets' article by Manish go HERE

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Great posters

2011-09-29T04:32:00.001-07:00

via razzone.files.wordpress.com

Click on link to see more

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Are UK chocolate companies involved in slavery?

2011-09-27T10:32:00.001-07:00

Although slavery is no longer legal there are still millions of people living in slavery today. One place and industry where slaves still exist is the cocoa industry. This documentary takes a deeper look at that industry with disturbing and challenging eyes.

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'Slate-grey' and 'powder-blue': a photographic encounter with two Budapest women.

2011-09-10T09:37:00.001-07:00

Background:

'Buda-pest' is a series of photographs shot in Budapest September 2011

The written 'counter-point' texts seek to not demand particular readings or interpretations.

Bespectacled 'powder-blue woman' resembles the Greek singer Nana Mouskouri when young.

Slate-grey woman sits in shades of grey on the slate-grey marble.

Curled-up, 'slate-grey woman' sees only her pain, tight as a knot in apple-tree wood.

Bespectacled woman's pursed lips suggests she may be feeling the force field of inwardness and hopelessness that I had to negotiate in walking past slate-grey woman, then turning back.

The polished slate-grey marble benches are worthy of Greek or Roman 'senators'.

The three containers, red, powder blue and white contain their secrets of the day.

The mustard-yellow of the light-reflecting window is everywhere in Budapest.

White, green and red are the colours of the flag of Hungary.

The pavement shadows the vomit from a previous sitting.

-0-

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Recovering the 'ology' - the spiritual basis of (ecological) caring. (52 Meditations)

2011-09-02T01:25:00.001-07:00

This week's Breath-mantra:

Breathing in: I sense this flower's uniqueness

Breathing out: through it floods in the Whole that makes of us one

Breath-in: each thing a gateway

Breath-out: let go and let be the Whole

Breath-in: this

Breath-out: Whole

OR - make up your own breath-mantra

CONTEMPLATIVE STUDY

Today I was again reminded of the need to deepen our understanding of the relationship between the parts and the Whole.

I was reminded of a wonderful, eccentric educationalist from Houston that I met.

She pointed out that the ancient Greeks understood what we lost sometime post-enlightenment - a sense of the Whole.

This is a linguistic matter - and therefore or thereby a consciousness matter.

She pointed to words such as geology, zoology, biology. We now are only conscious of the zoo, geo & bio prefixes and

have lost our sense of, and connection with, the 'ology'!

Recovery of the ology is also recovery of enchantment, awe and wonder.

-0-

Abraham Joshua Heschel is the great master on matters of awe and wonder and the ineffable. Read first his Who is Man

WARNING: sit down and breathe consciously before you read further - the following could seriously expand the boundaries of your being!

WikiQuote provides us with the following quotes from Rebbe Heschel - the ones I've chosen are from Who is Man

Who Is Man? (1965)

Wonder, or radical amazement, is a way of going beyond what is given in thing and thought, refusing to take anything for granted, to regard anything as final.

Love of ultimate meaning is not self-centered but rather a concern to transcend the self.

Acceptance is appreciation, and the high value of appreciation is such that to appreciate appreciation seems to be the fundamental prerequisite for survival.

My power of probing is easily exhausted, my words fade, but what I sense is not emptiness but inexhaustible abundance, ineffable abundance.

Being is unbelievable.

Denial of transcendence which claims to unveil the truth of being is an inner contradiction, since the truth of being is not within being or within our consciousness of being but rather a truth that transcends our being.

Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme.

Awe precedes faith; it is the root of faith. We must be guided by awe to be worthy of faith.

We manipulate what is available on the surface of the world; we must also stand in awe before the mystery of the world.

Wonder, or radical amazement, is a way of going beyond what is given in thing and thought, refusing to take anything for granted, to regard anything as final. It is our honest response to the grandeur and mystery of reality our confrontation with that which transcends the given.
- Ch. 4

It would be a contradiction in terms to assume that the attainment of transcendent meaning consists in comprehending a notion. Transcendence can never be an object of possession or of comprehension. Yet man can relate himself and be engaged to it. He must know how to court meaning in order to be engaged in it. Love of ultimate meaning is not self-centered but rather a concern to transcend the self.
- Ch. 4

Ultimate meaning is not grasped once and for all in the form of timeless idea, acquired once and for all, securely preserved in conviction. It is not simply given. It comes upon us as an intimation that comes and goes. What is left behind is a memory, and a commitment to that memory. Our words do not describe it, our tools do not wield it. But sometimes it seems as if our very being were its description, its secret tool.
- Ch. 4

The anchor of meaning resides in an abyss, deeper than the reach of despair. Yet the abyss is not not infinite; its bottom may suddenly be discovered within the confines of a human heart or under the debris of might doubts.
This may be the vocation of man: to say "Amen" to being and to the Author of being; to live in defiance of absurdity, notwithstanding futility and defeat; to attain faith in God even in spite of God.
- Ch. 4

The sense of meaning is not born in ease and sloth. It comes after bitter trials, disappointments in the glitters, foundering, strandings. It is the marrow from the bone. There is no manna in our wilderness.
Thought is not bred apart from experience or from inner surroundings. Thinking is living, and no thought is bred in an isolated cell in the brain. No thought is an island.
- Ch. 5

Ultimately there is no power to narcissistic, self-indulgent thinking. Authentic thinking originates with an encounter with the world.
- Ch. 5

Human being is both being in the world and living in the world. Living involves responsible understanding of one's role in relation to all other beings. For living is not being in itself, but living of the world, affecting, exploiting, consuming, comprehending, deriving, depriving.
- Ch. 5

There are two primary ways in which mans relates himself to the world that surround him: manipulation and appreciation. In the first way he sees in what surrounds mim things to be handled, forces to be managed, objects to be put to use. In the second way he sees in what surrounds him things to be acknowledged, understood, valued or admired.
- Ch. 5

Fellowship depends on appreciation while manipulation is the cause of alienation: objects and I apart, things stand dead, and I am alone. What is more decisive: a life of manipulation distorts the image of the world. Reality is equated with availability: What I can manipulate is, what I cannot manipulate is not. A life of manipulation is the death of transcendence.
- Ch. 5

Acceptance is appreciation, and the high value of appreciation is such that to appreciate appreciation seems to be the fundamental prerequisite for survival. Mankind will not die for lack of information; it may perish for lack of appreciation.
- Ch. 5

As a result of letting the drive for power dominate existence, man is bound to lose his sense for nature's otherness. Nature becomes a utensil, an object to be used.The world ceases to be that which is and becomes that which is available.
It is a submissive world that modern man is in the habit of sensing, and he seems content with the riches of thinghood. Space is the limit of his ambitions, and there is little he desires besides it. Correspondingly, man's consciousness recedes more and more in the process of reducing his status to that of a consumer and manipulator. He has enclosed himself in the availability of things, with the shutters down and no sight of what is beyond availability.
- Ch. 5  
Exclusive manipulation results in the dissolution of awareness of all transcendence. Promise becomes a pretext, God becomes a symbol, truth a fiction, loyalty tentative, the holy a mere convention. Man's very existence devours all transcendence. Instead of facing the grandeur of the cosmos, he explains it away; instead of beholding, he takes a picture; instead of hearing a voice, he tapes it. He does not see what he is able to face. There is a suspension of man's sense of the holy. His mind is becoming a wall instead of being a door open to what is larger than the scope of his comprehension. He locks himself out of the world by reducing all reality to mere things and all relationship to mere manipulation. Transcendence is not an article of faith. It is what we come upon immediately when standing face to face with reality.
- Ch. 5

The perceptibility of things is not the end of their being. Their surface is available to our tools, their depth is immune to our inquisitiveness.
Things are both available and immune. We penetrate their physical givenness, we cannot intuit their secret. We measure what they exhibit, we know how they function, but we also know that we do not know what they are, what they stand for, what they imply.
- Ch. 5

Man is naturally self-centered and he is inclined to regard expediency as the supreme standard for what is right and wrong. However, we must not convert an inclination into an axiom that just as man's perceptions cannot operate outside time and space, so his motivations cannot operate outside expediency; that man can never transcend his own self. The most fatal trap into which thinking may fall is the equation of existence and expediency.
- Ch. 5

The supremacy of expediency is being refuted by time and truth. Time is an essential dimension of existence defiant of man's power, and truth reigns in supreme majesty, unrivaled, inimitable, and can never be defeated.
- Ch. 5

Authentic existence involves exaltation, sensitivity to the holy, awareness of indebtedness.
Existence without transcendence is a way of living where things become idols and idols become monsters.
Denial of transcendence contradicts the essential truth of being human. Its roots can be traced either to stolidity of self-contentment or to superciliousness of contempt, to moods rather than to comprehensive awareness of the totality and mystery of being.
Denial of transcendence which claims to unveil the truth of being is an inner contradiction, since the truth of being is not within being or within our consciousness of being but rather a truth that transcends our being.
- Ch. 5

Essential to education for being human is to cultivate a sense for the inexpedient, to disclose the fallacy of absolute expediency. God's voice may sound feeble to our conscience. Yet there is a divine cunning in history which seems to prove that the wages of absolute expediency is disaster.
Happiness is not a synonym for self-satisfaction, complacency, or smugness. Self-satisfaction breeds futility and despair. Self-satisfaction is the opiate of fools.
- Ch. 5

New insight begins when satisfaction comes to an end, when all that has been seen, said, or done looks like a distortion. … Man's true fulfillment depends on communion with that which transcends him.
- Ch. 5

In our reflection we must go back to where we stand in awe before sheer being, faced with the marvel of the moment. The world is not just here. It shocks us into amazement.
Of being itself all we can positively say is: being is ineffable. The heart of being confronts me as enigmatic, incompatible with my categories, sheer mystery. My power of probing is easily exhausted, my words fade, but what I sense is not emptiness but inexhaustible abundance, ineffable abundance. What I face I cannot utter or phrase in language. But the richness of my facing the abundance of being endows me with marvelous reward: a sense of the ineffable.
- Ch. 5

Being as we know it, the world as we come upon it, stands before us as otherness, remoteness. For all our efforts to exploit or comprehend it, it remains evasive, mysteriously immune. Being is unbelievable.
- Ch. 5

Our concern with environment cannot be reduced to what can be used, to what can be grasped. Environment includes not only the inkstand and the blotting paper, but also the impenetrable stillness in the air, the stars, the clouds, the quiet passing of time, the wonder of my own being. I am an end as well as a means, and so is the world: an end as well as a means. My view of the world and my understanding of the self determine each other. The complete manipulation of the world results in the complete instrumentalization of the self.

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Pebble for your pocket Meditation - YouTube

2011-09-01T11:46:00.001-07:00

via youtube.com

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Henri Cartier-Bresson interviewed by Charlie Rose

2011-09-01T05:43:00.001-07:00

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There's at least one person with integrity in the USA

2011-09-01T05:33:00.001-07:00

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This made me think again about Near Death Experiences!

2011-08-31T09:28:00.001-07:00

This rings too true to be dismissed in the normal ways;

YouTube notes say;

Anita was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and doctors told her family she was just hours away from death. It was at this point that she "crossed over" and then returned again into this world with a clearer understanding of her life and purpose on earth. This understanding subsequently led to a total recovery of her health.

Anita was born in Singapore of Indian parents, moved to Hong Kong at the age of two, and has lived in Hong Kong most of her life. Because of her background and British education, she is multi lingual and, from the age of two, grew up speaking English, Cantonese and two Indian dialects simultaneously, and later learned French at school.

She had been working in the corporate field for many years before being diagnosed with cancer in April of 2002. Her fascinating and moving near-death experience in early 2006 has tremendously changed her perspective on life. Her work is now ingrained with the depths and insights she gained while in the other realm. She works on the premise that our inner world (consciousness) is our primary reality, and if our internal state is healthy and strong, then our external world will align itself and fall into place as a result.

She is the embodiment of the truth that we all have the inner power and wisdom to overcome even life's most adverse situations, as she is the living proof of this possibility.

Anita is a compassionate and empathic person who seems to have a gift for articulating and simplifying metaphysical concepts, so that they may be applied in our daily lives.

SEE
http://anitamoorjani.com/

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Personal Development authenticity & autonomy via 'setting justice before our eyes'

2011-08-30T09:59:00.001-07:00

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The Zen Mind - an introduction

2011-08-28T22:30:00.001-07:00

Beautiful simplicity. I think Thich Nhat Hanh would say 'interbeing'.

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Is spirituality an intrinsic part of being human? (updated)

2011-08-28T01:05:00.001-07:00

Is spirituality an intrinsic part of being human?

Two of my favourite authors have challenged the fundamentalist-materialist position of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens that is so entirely unsympathetic to the religious, or more accurately the non-rationalist. They are Reason, Faith and Revolution, by Terry Eagleton and The Case for God, by Karen Armstrong. (They are reviewed HERE by Paul Vallely in the Independent.)

Here I want to appreciatively critique a passage from Chapter 2 of Eagleton’s book (p 83). The passage says;

Transcendence, however, did not simply go away. In one sense, this is precisely what Ditchkins (Dawkins + Hitchens) is complaining about; but the matter is more complex than that. The less plausibly religion seemed to answer to the human desire for a realm beyond science, material welfare, democratic politics and economic utility, the more robustly literature, the arts, culture, the humanities, psychoanalysis, and (the most recent candidate) ecology have sought to install themselves in that vacant spot. If the arts have accrued an extraordinary significance in a modern era for which they are, practically speaking, just another kind of commodity, it is because they provide an ersatz sort of transcendence in a world from which spiritual values have been largely banished.

The issues I have are;

1 Transcendence is a, more or less, normal part of being human like the mystical, of which transcendence is an essential part, like philosophizing, like sexuality, like breathing. It couldn’t go away unless every new human was subjected to a radical lobotomy. The ‘more or less’ depends on how crass or sensitive the individual’s education has been.

2 Instead of ‘desire for a realm’ I would prefer something like ‘intrinsic state of being’. That which Dawkins and Hitchens would expunge is not a faulty behaviour but an essential part of being human – possible hard-wired, associated with the structure and functioning of the right hemisphere of the brain.

3 Eagleton, like Armstrong is a successful critic of those he calls Ditchkins and a successful champion of this other ‘thing’ that isn’t the rational mind. But the ‘thing’ is not an aberration, a sop, a weakness, a behavioural defect, a culturally-induced pattern – it is a universal part of being human. Eagleton needs a better term for this ‘thing’, this part of being human that provides certain states being and engaging and knowing. He might do well to study Armstrong’s use of, and explanations of, ‘mythos’. However with her use I would plead that it start intra-personally otherwise it gets easily pushed out to being a thing in the social and cultural inter-personal world.

4 Failing to place mythos as art of being human leads Eagleton a set of judgments that are Ditchkins-esque in their severity. His list of literature, the arts, culture, the humanities, psychoanalysis, and (the most recent candidate) ecology are not vehicles for ersatz transcendence but vehicles for the real thing – because the transcendent or mystical experience is part of being human – from nature mysticism to sexuality.

5 To bring in, in this context, the horror of arts commodity-fication clouds the most important argument.

At the community level 60-80% of our friends are artists. They aren’t all crippled by commodity-fication. One or two perhaps but the possession of spiritual values is not synonymous with being religious, nor is the absence of conventional religiosity any bar to possessing spiritual values – as the Marxist Eagleton fully demonstrates.

Even at the Tate level of the arts commodity-fication is not primarily the issue. ‘Art now doing the job that philosophy used to do’ is as much the case as ‘art is now doing the job that religion used to do’. Then there is the issue of what gets in and what doesn’t get in. This is the prerogative of individual gate-keepers called curators, who along with particular critics, determine the particular kinds of discourse that will be presented. They only indirectly serve ‘the market’.

Transcendence, mystical experience and the possession or non-possession of spiritual values exist because we are human, and in the world with others. Good religion feeds these aspects of being human – and rationality for that matter. Bad religion blocks or distorts them.

Eagleton fails to establish that -”beyond-the-reasoning-mind part of being human which I feel is essential for the full success of his arguments. This is for want of a term such as mythos and secondly because he doesn’t start with the psycho-spiritual reality of what it is to be human.

Armstrong does so much better in this via her ‘we-need-a-balance-of-mythos-and-logos’ arguments in her ‘Case for God’, something I will celebrate in future posts.

I deal further with these and allied issues in my Spiritualizing Pedagogy: education as the art of working with the human spirit

As to the question, ‘Is spirituality an intrinsic part of being human?’ my answer is yes – good religion feeds these deeper aspects of being human – including rationality. Bad religion blocks or distorts them. As to the differences between the two that also is the subject for further pieces.

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O Israel and Palestine - listen to Sister Rosetta - just do it!

2011-08-24T00:50:00.001-07:00

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The Incredible Human Journey : Out Of Africa (BBC)

2011-08-23T22:38:00.001-07:00

All 5 of these wonderfully good 50 min videos on The Incredible Human Journey: out of Africa are HERE

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HUMAN SPIRIT: What makes us human? (52 meditations)

2011-08-23T00:09:00.001-07:00

HUMAN SPIRIT: In what are we human?

If you are busy just do Part A the breath-mantra/s - repeated as often as you bring the centreing and healing nature of the breath into consciousness, supported by your 'reminders'.

If you have more time do contemplative study on Part B using the Personal Study Method or the Group Study Method (if you have one or more study-buddies).

PART A) This week the breath-mantra practice is to raise our awareness of how the life-force/the human spirit flows through us - in our caring, our creativity, our criticality and in our life in our communities.

In-breaths as 'My humanity...' and the remainder of each of the 4 mantra statements as the out breaths.

My humanity is my caring
My humanity is my creativity
My humanity is my criticality
My humanity is my community-life

If it feels more right some other form of breath-mantra that gives you the experience of the same thought-feeling.

-0-

PART B

Q. What does

equal?

The first 3 represent truth (as science), beauty & goodness. The fourth is Community as represented via The Incredible Human Journey, presented by Dr Alice Roberts on BBC TV. This wonderful documentary (available on DVD) showed the great diversity of human cultures AND the oneness of the peoples of the world since we are all 'out of Africa'.

A. The human spirit - science, art & the humanities - truth, beauty, goodness - objectivity, subjectivity & morality - IT, I & WE voices - 4Cs (3 inner and 1 (Community) outer)

The first 3 arise from within us, but have outer counter-parts in the artifacts and methods within the arts, sciences and humanities.

The 4th, Community, is how we live together with others in the world.

SO ESSENTIALLY IN WHAT ARE WE HUMAN, WHAT IS THE HUMAN SPIRIT?

The ultimately mysterious life-force we call the human spirit Essentially we are human via the 4 Cs. That is we each have the three inner modes of being, and corresponding forms of truth-telling expression - we do science, make art, act caringly - and do these 3 in Communities. The 4 Cs.

the 'IT' mode of science & philosophy - objective truth-seeking and knowledge ('left-brain') -This is stuff we can demonstrate, repeat and support with reason, logic, maths.

the 'I' mode of art - subjective truth-seeking and knowledge ('right-brain') - This shows what it's like to be me, seeing things from where I stand and encounter and experience my world.

the 'WE' model humanities - essentially the caring and moral mode - its the expression of what societies have decided matter in caring for each other and the world. It draws upon IT and I modes.

The fourth 'C' is this. We learn & express the I, WE and IT modes in the world with others i.e. in the 4th C - Communities.

All 4 Cs are necessary vital expressions of the human spirit. Understanding their strengths and limitations as truth-telling forms is vital. All draw on each other. We switch between one mode and the others - sometimes in milli-seconds. They are NOT ways of thinking they are modes of being and expressing 3 forms of truth. We are foundering the inability to understand the difference between thinking and the overall awareness of the heart-mind. Strictly speaking thinking applies to the IT mode - I am thinking here of the distinction between thinking and 'non-thinking awareness' as taught e.g. by Eckhart Tolle. The same distinction is the foundation of mindfulness - as taught by Thich Nhat Hanh, amongst others.

WHAT'S NEEDED:

We need to teach this model to every teacher and every pupil - as the basis for education generally and human-centred education in particular.

All three are about the human condition. Without this model there is unending, very destructive confusion - people don't realize that there are these 3 distinct truth forms, they look to each truth form for answers that are more appropriately gleaned from one of the other truth-creating ways. For example science isn't about morality - but it needs to be conducted in a moral context (if we are to survive). The arts aren't about objectivity - we can study them objectively, in which case we are no longer having and arts-aesthetic experience

Nowhere is there greater confusion generated by failing to realize the strengths and limitations of each of the arts-sciences-humanities truth claims than in the religion versus science domain.

Science can't give you religious experience any more than it can give you experience of acting caringly/morally. It might count types of religious affiliation in a population or map brain wave patterns in people upon being shown religious ikons - but that's the stuff of science. On the other hand spirituality/religion is quintessentially subjective experience - it isn't about ticking beliefs from a list. Nothing matters more than helping yourself, and others, to be true, beauty-creating and actively good. If religion helps in this it is worth having. If it leads to falsity, hypocrisy, ugliness and hurting others stay away from it. The only value in religion is in it's ability to enable us to be more fully ad wholly human - including reflecting the higher-order 'divine' qualities. Religion is story, stories of subjective experiences that, ideally, not only enable us to be more moral but also to see into the reality of ourselves and of the communities and world in which we live. The truths of religions are conveyed via metaphor, metaphor is the language of the spiritual. The stories are intending to create relationships and action - not belief box-ticking.

Two final points.

Truth beauty and goodness i.e our Criticality, Creativity & Caring are conditioned by one other supreme virtue - justice. Justice, as a quality of our heart-mind, is what enables us to self-evaluate as well as conditioning our relationships with others, notably our compassion and our living by the Golden Rule.

The 3Cs are NOT primarily ways of thinking in the narrow left-brain sense that we have deified because of the rise of science - they are modes of being and acting. Thought, servant not master, can come in as a support activity. By his own account Einstein arrived at his theory of relativity riding on a beam of light, the maths came later. Relativity is a translation from what was essentially a mystical experience into the laughter of mathematics.

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