Photo Lectio - the Image as Icon...

"Art, monastics of every century knew, gives

us new ways to see the unseeable."

Joan Chittister

The Monastery of the Heart

     In my last post, I spoke about my "Thought Flow", the process I go through as I approach a landscape to photograph, hopefully, in a contemplative way. At the end of that post I talked about re-visiting the photograph long after the fact, to look at it as an image that might illicit thoughts on some essential truth. This post again speaks to a process. It enumerates a kind of disciplined approach to looking at - and "reading" your image.  It is simply my way of reflecting on the finished photograph and can be seen as the end result of the entire process of contemplative photography for me.

     The ultimate goal of every contemplative photographer is to create images that inspire us to a greater understanding of essential truths.  Through the simple vehicle of the photographic image, a person can reflect on ideas that transcend the reality of the recorded subject.  The Carmelite William MacNamara defines contemplation as "The long, slow look at the real" and what is more "real" than a photographic image?  A photograph is an artifact of a moment in time. Dorothea Lange said "photography alters life by holding it still." In contemplative photography, we can enter into this trans-formative relationship with the image...we can alter how we think of life by reflecting on essential truths contained within this "stilled moment".

     Lectio Divina is a monastic practice of contemplating sacred texts. Icons served the same purpose but as a visual reference rather than the written word. They were vehicles to focus prayer and contemplation.  I use this practice to look at the photographic image in a kind of Photo Lectio.  I try to "read" the image as a visual text to see if it stimulates any thoughtful reflections.

    I refer readers to the wonderful book by Christine Valters Paintner, Lectio Divina which has an in-depth summary of the process .  I'll summarize it here and see how we can apply it to our photographic images.

   There are four steps (Christine calls these "movements") in Lectio Divina..read, reflect, respond, and rest. With only slight variation, we can apply this process to looking at our photographic images as well.

1.READ  (LECTIO)
     Look carefully at your image.  I'll refer to the photograph above for this exercise.  What are the essential elements that draw your attention? This is the basic "text" of your photograph.

The open widow space...the rough stone work...the plants

growing on the stone...the beautiful sky...the trees in the distance

2. REFLECT  (MEDITATIO)
     Take one element or a combination of elements to focus on.  You can always come back to the image for other reflections so try not to be to broad in your reflective scope. Write your thoughts in a journal.

 I will focus on Nature, as represented by the green foliage  

It seems to grow out of the Man-made structure, trying to 

emulate the trees outside the window. Nature will always

return to reclaim Man's constructions for it is more 

powerful than any of his grand designs. Nature is 
Divine presence.

3. RESPOND  (ORATIO)

     This is the time to personalize your observations and reflections. This can take any number of directions...from relating the reflection to something in your life or something you see in the world around you. Write again in your journal or you might try composing a poem.

We must make room for Nature...in our lives and

in our communities. Gardens, green spaces, a pot

of herbs on the window sill...we loose an essential

part of our soul when we become detached from 

the natural world.

4. REST  (CONTEMPLATIO)

      After I've concluded my contemplative reflection on the image I created I just let it sit quietly on the table next to where I sit each morning. I look back on it from time to time before I put it away. Resting with the image is an acknowledgement of your efforts and the landscape's wisdom you were able to record in your photograph.  Remember, it is a dialogue, not a monologue!  The landscape still speaks to you through your photograph.

     I have begun to put together images, quotes, and personal reflections into small hard-covered books that I can look back on from time to time.  My first attempt at formalizing my thoughts in a more concrete and easily accessible  way is The Annaberg Encounter.  It was such a profound experience for me and I reflected at great length about the experience, that I ended up writing extensively and making a series of very altered images. It just seemed the most likely next step to bind it all into a tiny book!

   I am sure that this is just a beginning for me because my other passion is book arts. It is a wonderful thing to be able to combine the two.  I have created small books of my photography before, most recently, my Hebrides images but this is the first time that I've made a book that is more contemplative in nature. It includes lots of quotations as well as my own reflections along with the images. It is my "illuminated" manuscript.

     I hope this inspires others to try putting their images and reflections together in a book! 


    

    

The Contemplative Photographer's "Thought Flow"...

   There are many reasons for your arrival at a certain place at a certain time.  You might be called to it by an intense inner yearning or it may be mere happenstance that finds you there but something in the landscape awakens a wonder in you. However you arrive, by whatever road you take, you will experience that place in your own unique way.  Even when you travel to popular "tourist" destinations photographed millions of times, you will see it with your own insights.  As a contemplative photographer, I have tried to develop an series of experiential steps that allows me to reach the moment I want, the moment I can say, "Yes, now, make the photograph". I call it  my Contemplative Thought Flow.  Mainly, it is a series of questions I ask myself before and after I make an image.  "Work Flow" is a term that refers to a specific way a photographer approaches their images in the digital darkroom...the technical steps they take to arrive at their final photograph..  My Contemplative Thought Flow is the way I approach each landscape I encounter on location.  I  find that employing this series of actions I am more likely to arrive at the kind of contemplative image I seek.

   The three photographs I've included in this post are my Loch Bee series. You may be familiar with #3, the culminating image, but here are the two photographs I made prior to that one. The first was a  good enough image but as I looked at it the landscape seemed to beckon me to continue. Photograph #2 moved me closer to the feeling I was getting as I encountered this landscape but the conversation wasn't quite over.  With #3 I felt I had said what I wanted to express. I could bring the conversation to a close.

Approaching:

Loch Bee Reflections #1

1. Be still.  Become aware of what is around you and quiet your mind. Be present with all your senses. Most importantly, what does your 6th sense, your spiritual inner sense, reveal to you?
2. The landscape is full of metaphors - do you see any?
3. The landscape contains a range of emotion - what do you feel?
4. The landscape holds wisdom it wishes to share with you - do you hear it?  Begin your conversation with the landscape...ask your questions then listen for the answers.Write these in your journal.


Engaging:

Loch Bee Reflections #2

1. Of all that is in front of you, all that you see, and feel and hear, what draws you in?  Focus your attention.
2. Does it ask you to move closer or step back?
3. Which angle provides the most interesting viewpoint for interpreting the subject?
4. A cardboard viewfinder is helpful for framing possible images...sketching also helps you discern the essential elements of the landscape.
5. Be Patient! The landscape will tell you when to release the shutter.

Loch Bee Reflections #3

 Reflecting:

1. Does the image I made say anything about the experience?
2. Are there ways I can technically enhance the image to more clearly match my experience?
3. Does the final image complete our dialogue?
4. Do I need to return?  Be Persistent.  You will know when the conversation with the landscape is complete.
5. Consider experimenting with the final image in Photoshop...you are not  making postcards but personal icons of your encounter with the landscape.



   Much later, after I have had time to detach myself from the experience, I look again at the images I made.  This is the time I like to look for the greater message...those eternal truths I've spoken about before. Sometimes, if I'm very lucky, an image will become an icon of a truth...an image that I will return to over and over to reflect on and learn from. Loch Bee Reflections#3 above is one of those universal icons for me. At times the landscape will tell me something that I didn't particularly want to hear as happened at Annaberg on St. John. (See "The Annaberg Encounter" post of April 11, 2012)  Both kinds of encounters are important to a contemplative photographer. Always, it is the emotional impact of a landscape on the photographer that counts...not the surface quality but the layers of meaning below that reality

    These truths, "these layers of meaning" whatever they are, are really relevant only to me. Others looking at the image may not see what I saw at all and that is as it should be. Contemplative photography is not about some universal language or a set of defining principles.  Everyone  must make their own metaphoric equivalents. Contemplative images are open-ended photographs...they ask questions and rarely give an answer and they may ask a different question each time you look at them.  They will serve each viewer in a different way.  Fortunately, as Minor White has observed, "Photography is a language more universal than words." It is enough that they have meaning to you.  It should be the only reason you make them. Make them, reflect on them and then let them go.

The Contemplative Eye...

"With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony,

and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things."

William Wordsworth

      I was reminded of this quotation by Wordsworth as I wandered the grounds of a Franciscan monastery in Maine last week. Spring hadn't made a full appearance yet and my woodland walk was punctuated only by the singing of a cardinal and a cool breeze off the ocean. It was a very peaceful stroll.  I had come to the monastery with two friends and, for a time, we each went our separate ways on the grounds. One friend was photographing the site, as I was, the other was just enjoying the walk and I wondered how each of us was experiencing the same place.  Did we see the same things?  How much of perception is directed by our thoughts, feelings, expectations and needs?  How does seeing with a "contemplative eye" differ from any other way of regarding the reality of the world around us?

     As so often happens, when I think intensely about something, some ray of inspiration comes into my life to illuminate the thought. The day after I began to write this post, I received my weekly "Sounds True" email with it's wonderfully inspiring "A Good Minute". This week the speaker was my constant source of lovely reflection, John O'Donohue.  I have mentioned John several times on this blog-most recently at the beginning of my April 28th post- and I often think about what a gentle soul he was and so brilliantly intuitive. Although I had corresponded with him via email for several months, it was such a blessing to have finally met him in 2007 just 6 months before his untimely death. Finding this week's "Good Minute"  was like John reaching out to me and giving me the words I needed to communicate the thoughts in this post.

A contemplative eye is the quiet eye of the heart.

Love is the Light - podcast with John O'Donohue

     To answer the questions I posed above, I would simply say that each of us saw a totally different place that day because we were all approaching it for different reasons and from different mindsets.  Each viewpoint was correct and it served the needs of the viewer at that moment. I doubt my two friends thought a single moment about their process of "seeing".  When you begin to see the world with a contemplative eye, however, it is nearly impossible to revert to ordinary ways of looking at a landscape and every moment is an opportunity to reflect upon some larger truth.  When I cease to judge or analyze what is in front of me, when I listen to the landscape with an open heart, then I begin to truly see and not merely look at the world around me.

EYES OF THE HEART 

an on-line course in contemplative photography from
The Abbey of the Arts

     I love this site and enjoyed taking this course this past winter.  Christine is writing a book based on the course content and I look forward to adding it to my collection.

"I begin to see...an object when I cease to understand it."

-Henry David Thoreau

    

The Contemplative Continuum...

 "The outer landscape becomes a metaphor for the unknown inner landscape."

   John O'Donohue

The Monks Fishing Hut-Cong Abbey

  Many years ago I chose to follow a contemplative path in my camera work. I had learned photography the "old fashioned way"...all f-stops and apertures and technical things about developing a print. I learned composition and value and what makes a "good" photograph but in time I learned that, for me, the "Why" of photography became more important, more interesting, than the "How" of photography.  I wanted a personally meaningful and expressive image not merely a technical perfect one.

From the Dark to the Light-Cong Abbey

    The advent of the digital camera and Photoshop liberated me in a sense. I could concentrate on the content of  my images. I could use the camera as a sketchbook and not worry about wasting film. I could make an image, view it and re-make it if necessary.  Photography became more spontaneous and more adventurous.  In many ways, I could make the photograph  a visual extension of my daily journal practice.   But it is hard to discard all we know; to truly "empty the bowl". I discovered that during the whole process of making photographs, I was on a sort of "Contemplative Continuum".

   I would move from an objective, analytic first step to a contemplative phase, to a purely intuitive time while I was actually making the photograph to a final subjective, and often hyper-critical, stage at the end. What I have tried to do over the years is to expand the contemplative/intuitive dimension of the continuum. I've even tried to by-pass that initial step of planning my images allowing, instead, the landscape to inform my work.  I wanted the experience to be much more of a dialogue than a monologue. The landscape had much to teach me and I needn't impose my will on it to make a beautiful image. I have found that my pure joy in the picture making process has increased the more I was able to do this. The critical inner judge became much more forgiving. Each photograph is merely a step in the journey. Even "failures" have something to teach. As a good Taoist would say, "It is what it is. Learn from it and move on." 

    I resisted the impulse to "capture" an image.  It always sounded predatory and aggressive to me. I pictured the photographer laden down with his huge lenses and tripod stalking the illusive landscape ready to "take" the photograph, by force if necessary.  Not an appealing picture to me.

     Contemplative photography is a gentle process. It is slow and thoughtful and we understand that we are waiting for the landscape to invite us in.  Only then do we make our photograph.

     If I had to define Contemplative Photography (and I hesitate to do this because once you write it down it seems to limit it) I would do so this way.

     Contemplative Photography is a focused approach which explores,

on many levels, an idea, an insight or a personal truth until its 

relationship to our individual lives is so clearly understood that

we can then translate it into a visual image.  It is also a way

of interacting with a subject which allows for an interchange

between what is and what is intuited within that reality.
 In the end it becomes, 

as contemplative photographer Diane Walker says,
"an act of faith".

A Photographic Dilemma...

   After several weeks of delving into the Taoist side of picture making, (with a short detour into "thin places") it is time to reflect on the contemplative dimension of photography.  Before I begin that series, I feel a brief discussion on what I call the "photographic dilemma" is called for.  It is a question each of us has to answer before we go too far on our journey as photographers.You'll have to decide on which side of the fence you stand or you may decide to hop back and forth over the fence as the spirit moves you.

     Basically, it boils down to one question. Do photographs reveal cultural codes or personal truths?  Or, to put it in another way,  do photographs merely record what is in front of the photographer or are they metaphors for what is inside the photographer?  The prevailing feeling in the art world today is the former. Personally, I feel both  are equally valid points of view.  It all depends on the motivation and intent of the photographer. However, the "art market", that self-proclaimed arbitrator of style and setter of trends, seems to favor the detached, impersonal type of image at the moment...sometimes, the more visually and conceptually shocking the better.  Any mention of the transcendental aspect of the photographic experience sets their tongues "tsk tsking" and their heads shaking. The metaphoric capabilities of photography seem certainly to be out of style.  That's fine with me.  I've never been one to follow the trends anyway and besides, I believe in, as Minor White described it, a "perpetual trend" that is always with us; that is the ability of photography to transcend the here and now and offer the viewer a more complex and symbolic vocabulary...the language known very well by the contemplative photographer.

 I offer one of my photographs as an example.

  This is a dresser that I photographed in the Outer Hebrides in 2005.  Most traditional Hebridean homes had such a piece of furniture.  Many still do.  Only the best china, special objects, and photographs were place in it. You could view it as just a cultural artifact or a nice composition of lines and circles or, if you took the metaphoric approach, you could, as I do, view it as a domestic shrine dedicated to the most cherished hopes and memories of a family...an altar to the sanctity of belonging.

   Detractors of the metaphoric approach to image making insist that it is too personal, too reliant on individual interpretation.  It is true, you may not see what I saw in the dresser but that is the very point of contemplative photography.  Everyone brings to it that which is in themselves and takes away only what they need.  What more can you ask of a photograph?  Besides, I submit that we human beings are innately contemplative creatures at heart.  We long to find meaning even in the seemingly meaningless.  There is no harm in that.  In fact, it can inspire new revelations and insights and that is what contemplative photography is...a personal journey inward by means of thoughtfully created imagery of your outward experience.  It need only mean something to you.

     Very often we begin on one side of the fence, making a photograph of something that caught our eye, for whatever reason, and it is only later, when we really look at the image do we begin to see it's metaphoric intentions. Hop back over the fence. This is perfectly acceptable and I think Rene Margritte has a valid point to make, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" but ultimately, metaphor, as well as beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. If you are a person of a contemplative nature, you will see the metaphor.  If you aren't then you will see the beauty.  You both win!  Dilemma solved.

The Annaberg Encounter

   I have always defined "Thin Places" as a site where the material world and the spiritual world co-exist and it is possible to move more easily between the two. I have always thought of them as peaceful, quiet places. Not so!  I found a thin place on St. John that stunned me...so much so that I has inspired to create images in a radically, for me at least, new way.  That place is the Annaberg Sugar Mill.

   It was my first full day on St. John and I went by myself to the sugar mill site. Since I was alone I decided to sit and do my visual listening exercise. It was a beautiful location  high on a cliff over looking the sea and the ruins were well maintained and extensive. The sensation of the place was, however, foreboding and uncomfortable. The sun was shinning in a bright blue sky with soft white clouds but I didn't get the sensation of peace...just suffering and oppression.

   As a walked around later, trying to photograph the buildings, I knew that I had to find a different way to translate the landscape. Warm, soft color wouldn't do nor would my typical black and white style. I sat down and wrote, extensively, in my journal.  I knew that I would need to reflect for some time before I would know what I needed to do with this place.  These images are a rather unusual combination of solarized and infra-red processing.  It got me the effect I wanted to convey the emotion of the place. I'm not sure I'll use it again but isn't it wonderful that digital processing allows such experimentation!

   This is why I think photography, especially digital photography, is such a valuable way to enhance your contemplative practice.  It can make concrete your feelings and emotions in unexpected ways.  It also gives you an artifact to stimulate new thinking and reflection.  Later on, you have a visual record of the experience that transcends and illuminates the words in your journal. Some people bring back pretty postcards from their travels to new places...I try to bring back evidence of deeply moving encounters as well.

   When I got back to my friends house and told them of my experience at Annaberg, they told me some of the history of the place.  All the sugar mills on the island employed slave labor but the slaves at Annaberg sometimes committed suicide by leaping to their deaths from the cliffs rather than endure further torture by the slave owners. This was a unique and horrible attribute of the place. That must have been the energy I felt while I was there. I visited other sugar mill ruins on St. John during my week there. They all had a sadness about them but none had the profound affect Annaberg had on me. This was a totally new kind of thin place for me. Before I left Annaberg I spent some time sitting with my back to ruins and looking out to the sea.  I needed to try and clear my mind from what I had just experienced and, thankfully, I did. I felt an up swelling of  peace as I gazed out over the turquoise sea.  If we want to embrace the good in the world, we have to be willing to look at the bad. Taoism teaches that in even the deepest black there is a spot of light.  THAT was the message I took away from Annaberg that day. I think I will amend my definition of thin places by including an old Apache proverb:

"Wisdom sits in places."

      Thin Places are sites that prompt reflection and will always affect a person on a deeply personal level if you allow yourself to fully engage in it.  Sometimes the affect is peaceful and uplifting and sometimes it's immensely sad. In all thin places, you'll walk away a different person than you walked in as. For that reason, as a contemplative photographer, I will continue to seek them out wherever I travel.

  

Thin Places...

Photograph by Andy Ilachinski

   As I wrote about in my series of posts on the Characteristics of the Photographic Sage, Qi is the essential energy that flows through all things and in all places. It is what the contemplative photographer seeks most earnestly.  Some places seem to allow you to tap into this energy more easily.  As you sit quietly, listening to the landscape, you can hear  its message with crystal clarity.  Sometimes, your sense of time is warped and while you may think you have only spent a few minutes there you discover that, in fact, it has been much longer. These places are called "Thin Places".

    There are many famous thin places all around the globe.  The Ancients viewed them as sacred sites and built many of their monuments on them.  Callanish, on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides is one of them and the Ring of Brodgar in the Orkney Islands (located off the Northern edge of Scotland) is another.  Photographer Andy Ilachincki wrote about his experience among those stones in his wonderful blog. (I've included a link to it on this site.)

 "As I wandered around with my camera, looking for angles and compositions,

.....I felt myself drift in and out of the time of the "here and now" into a more

ancient, and ineffable, time; a time that lurks somewhere in the shadows,

and is part of the very fabric of the megaliths themselves.....The Ring o'Brodgar

is - for  me - a physical symbol of timelessness and transcendence.  It is 

a place for serious contemplation and meditation."

Andy Ilachinski

    

     The real challenge for the contemplative photographer is to find these thin places in ordinary settings because I believe they do exist everywhere not just in the established sacred sites like Callanish and Brodgar.  They may be a bit more difficult to find in places where the modern world seems so dominate and the energy is more material than it is spiritual.  That is what I found when I visited St. John in the US Virgin Islands recently.  Nicknamed the "Beverly Hills of the Caribbean" (there was my first red flag!), I knew I would need to look deeply to find its thin places but I can assure you they were there!

   It is not by coincidence that you need to step away from crowed locations and seek out a quiet retreat....someplace where you won't have the noise of modernity to muffle the sound of the landscape. And, for heaven's sake, put the Ipod away!  I'm not opposed to music but all your senses must be alert. When I see tourists walking around in amazing landscapes with those ear plugs I feel a certain sadness. People have become so detached from the natural world, even from human contact, that their senses must be numb. This is no way to experience the world and definitely not something a contemplative photographer would consider.  I'll get off of the soap box now but it is something to reflect upon.

   One of the thin places on St. John was a remote site along the Reef Bay Trail, deep in a gorge in the middle of the National Park where archeologists have found petroglyphs carved into the stones around some natural pools and a small waterfall. (Both of these are nearly non-existent on St. John...perhaps that is why the ancient peoples thought this site was special.)  The moment I stepped onto those stones you could feel the energy and peace that surround the location. Sitting amongst the carvings, which some say could be as old as 10,000 years, with dragonflies hovering nearby (the only ones I saw on the island) you are truly transported. The image on the left reminded me of one I found on the Burren in Ireland and it immediately connected me to that magical landscape. There are fascinating sacred places all over the world and they are all thin places.

   I discovered a wonderful site for those interested in traveling to some of these special places. Not all are sacred in the normal meaning of the word. One of my favorite places, a place I have returned to year after year, is Concord, Massachusetts.  You can see it on this site.

 SPIRITUAL TRAVELS

   I could have sat there, listening to the whispers of these stones, for hours.  Unfortunately, we could only stay for a brief time as we had to meet a boat that would take us back.  These stones are accessible from the road after a 3 mile hike but we came up from the beach, a much shorter, 1.1 mile walk.  I do advise those visiting  this place to pack a lunch and plan to stay for awhile...it is worth a much, much  longer stay than I was able to make.

   One of my favorite blogs is THIN PLACES written by Mindie Burgoyne.  She is a writer and she leads travel groups to explore the thin places of Ireland.  I recommend you visit her blog.  I've provided a link below to one of her posts on visiting thin places...it's excellent. I agree totally with the title:

DON'T RUSH THROUGH THIN PLACES

   She also lists 5 keys to visiting these kinds of places and they are well worth noting in your travel journal for your next encounter with a thin place.

    In my next post I will talk about a place that gave me a complimentary experience to the Reef Bay site and which gave me way to reflect on phrase that has always haunted me.  "Where is God when the earth shakes?"  It was a terribly uncomfortable  place. My encounter with it stunned me and I had to find a whole knew way to create my photographs of that location. Was it a thin place?  If it was it was a kind I'd never encounter before.