Seeking Purpose
Searching for The Way
Today’s fine art photography covers an incredibly wide range of styles, subjects,
degrees of digital manipulation, and aesthetics. In addition to professional fine art
photographers are the huge numbers of mobile “iphonographers” that create a
unimaginable number of images that are instantly distributed worldwide through
social media and aggregating services such as Instagram and Pinterest. These social,
ad-hoc images range from mind-boggling masteries of composition and timing to
mind-numbing blandness of poor judgement and poorer taste. The ease of web
publishing and blogging creates new aggregates of images every second, from all
around the world. It is truly the age of photography.
Even after spending 45 years learning, experimenting, and creating photographic
works, I was still struggling to find my Tao — my Way — for creating a personal brand
of fine art photography. In parallel to my photographic work I was studying Asian
art, particularly Japanese calligraphy and poetry (the fusion of which is called haiga),
feeling that in its long lineage was a foundation for a modern artistic grounding.
While I readily admit that it would take another lifetime (or two) to master any one
of the Japanese arts, I feel a deep connection with the key principles of Japanese
aesthetics that surround the arts of haiku, haiga, shodo, and zazen. While I still have
much to learn, I have, for now, found my Tao in the aesthetic principle of yugen.
In this torrent of images and styles, where do fine art photographers look to find an
aesthetic value that can define. refine, and guide their work? Does one seek to mimic
the masters of the past? Or tread new digital paths laid by constantly morphing
camera technology and computer software? Where is the “meaning” in photography
today? What is its purpose?
For the last few years my photographic work has been focused on applying my
interpretation of the aesthetic of yugen to modern photography and bringing
the resulting works into people’s work-spaces, healing-spaces, art-spaces, and
meditative sanctuaries. What is yugen, and why is it a key to artful interpretation of
the world around us?
Sunburst Poppy
Beach Rose and Bark