Inner Light

An unedited low res point and shoot pic from an early digital camera, circa 2012, at the Alhambra in Granada, Spain.

What to see in it?

Textured surfaces, shadows and rays within an aged stone room. A glimpse of bright green and more outside through a deep yet simply framed window. As a whole, an interplay of light and darkness, of interiors and exteriors. Perhaps a grounding sense of the physical and beyond that if not the spiritual, at least suggests an impression of what may lie beneath and beyond material facades. A sense of time through the moment?

This early digital photo of mine, a fortuitous take at a famed historical site, is not the most striking, epic, dramatic or lush of scenes I have enjoyed and sometimes hoped to convey or suggest by way of photography. I imagine comparable arrangements might be discovered, happened upon, and yes orchestrated at any number of enduring old sites. An accomplished photographer ought to have collected many such.

At all of this I’m a complete amateur, a dilettante.

But, that doesn’t obviate my experience of taking the picture, enjoying it long after, and subsequently “reflecting” on the processes and meaning of focusing, framing, producing and replicating such an artifact.

The latter reactions, which some term “meta” experiences, I admit were involved from the very start. Even as a dilettante, one is conscious of the artifice of the enterprise of creating material memories, souvenirs. To call oneself a dilettante, even, shows a consciousness of discipline or expertise in the use of available tools and an application of constructive judgment in the process of re- production. Awareness of these skills but lacking them while pursuing the process defines one as amateur. The other extreme, however, is to dwell so intensely on precise technical features and composition that the entire enterprise seems to become an artificiality.

An interesting still photograph strikes me as akin to an engaging haiku, which is another format I dabble in. Both efforts presume to convey something provocative or essential about a point of time-space, subtle or startling, memorably or uniquely.

Words and images obviously are mediums with distinct strengths and options.

One of the goals of a would-be haikuist might be to convey meaning by not showing, that is, not saying, certain information about a scene. As could be explained by a Zen meta critique of this aesthetic, the blank spaces marked by what is unsaid express as much as the simple lines offered. In practical terms, an effectively reticent haiku poem engages its readers by challenging them to apply their own experience, imagination and language skills to complete the meaning of the moment.

A still photograph, on the other hand, of course “says” nothing. It may be seemingly full, potentially refulgent, in what it “shows.” But it doesn’t have to be. Photographs, like Zen paintings, can make use of blank spaces as well. A “finished” photograph shows only what the photographer intends it to, and its received meaning will vary by framing, context and the eye and mind of the receiver.

Art criticism differs from the unshown and unsaid techniques of the photographer and haikuist by trying to make the absent explicitly present. Criticism can indeed be helpful, even revelatory. It can also easily overreach by being too authoritarian in managing or arrogating the inclinations of an audience (be it informed or otherwise). In the most extreme cases, particularly true with literary critics, authority leans in to supplant authorship, as if imagining itself the artist. (Anyone who has attended humanities courses at university in recent decades can recognize and vouch for this; although perhaps it has always been the same.)

From a more general philosophical or anthropological perspective, fashioning artifacts in response to our experiences for whatever purpose is what humans do as humans.

We are an observing and observant species, and our lens shifts and expands continuously, from moment to moment. We "take," make and share, from one to another.

My photograph, my souvenir and thoughts, here shared.