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Photography.
A word I use every day. Most people probably know, but
seldom ever think about the word, "photography"
in it's literal meaning: "photo"
means "light",
and "graph"
means "picture".
"Light
pictures" I like
the way that sounds. Very often, the long word is shortened
to simply, "photos". Lights.
If you ever find yourself
in the midst of a bunch of photographers, you'll hear both
parts of the word a lot. The pictures are all about the
light. After that, there are color, angle, form,
composition, and then cropping, saturation, and all the
darkroom (now computer) enhancement techniques. "The
light was good." "The light was all
wrong." "The light angle was
peculiar." Bottom line: without good
light, you can't make a good picture.
When I was a child, my
family often took vacations to "exotic" places
like Oregon, Idaho, Utah, and northern California.
Between that, and our frequent roaming in the backcountry
for camping, hunting, and mining, one might expect a girl to
develop some sense of direction. That never happened for me
until I began surveying in my mid-twenties, long after
I had left the bosom of my family. Perhaps I had never felt
the need until then, for I had always had someone else to
navigate for me.
My father once remarked
to my mother that, on all those family trips, the only thing his
youngest daughter ever saw, were the baby animals. There's
a pinch of truth to that, for in fact I never did pay
attention to "landmarks", or to traffic, or roads.
Thinking back on it, though, I suspect I saw a lot of things
that others paid little attention to. I saw: the
way the light was dancing on those leaves over there; the
way the clouds made a halo on that mountain; the dazzling
gold of aspens up on the highest peaks; the fascinating
patterns of shadows and forms.
I must interject
here, that I think my parents had only themselves to blame
for my unconventional view of the world. For wasn't it Dad
who first taught us to lie on our backs cloud-watching,
trying to discern what beast or object that cumulus looked
like? Wasn't it Mom who showed us rainbows and sunsets?
And who could ever forget that day at Pyramid Lake, when
she got out Dad's welding hood so we might all have a peep
at the solar eclipse! Not to mention Grandma R, who gave
me that set of ceramic Leprechauns, from which I derived
hours and hours of amusement in the flowerbeds. To name
but a few of the creative encouragements I received
without anyone really knowing that's what they were.
I have noticed recently,
a dramatic shift in the style and quality of my photography.
Others have noticed it too. A friend who has observed
and enthusiastically encouraged my art over a long
period of time, recently remarked, "Your work seems
so much more intimate, now."
"Intimate."
Yes. I think
that expresses it rather neatly.
"Coincidentally"
(a concept I don't believe in, though I like to use the word
with a twinge of sarcasm), just yesterday I came across a
blog which included the following quotes:
In his
book Passionate Marriage, David Schnarch says
there are "two 'types' of intimacy:
"Other-validated intimacy involves the expectation of
acceptance, empathy, validation, or reciprocal disclosure.
This is what is often mistaken for intimacy per se.
"Self-validated intimacy relies on a person
maintaining his or her own sense of identity and
self-worth when disclosing, with no expectation of
acceptance or reciprocity. Ones capacity for
self-validated intimacy is directly related to ones level
of differentiation; that is, ones ability to maintain a
clear sense of oneself when loved ones are pressuring for
conforming and sameness. Self-validated intimacy is the
tangible product of ones relationship with oneself.
"Other-validated intimacy sounds like this: I'll tell
you about myself, but only if you then tell me about
yourself. I'll go first and then you'll be obligated to
disclose its only fair. And if I go first, you have to
make me feel secure. I need to be able to trust
you!
"Self-validated intimacy sounds quite different: I
don't expect you to agree with me; you weren't put on the
face of the earth to validate and reinforce me. But I want
you to love me and you can't really do that if you don't
know me. I don't want your rejection but I must face that
possibility if I'm ever to feel accepted or secure with
you. It's time to show myself to you and confront my
separateness and mortality. One day when we are no longer
together on this earth, I want to know you knew me.
"If you are willing and able to show yourself as you
are and call things as you see them unilaterally [others
are] less likely to silence you because you're not asking
for anything in return only the chance to say what you
feel. Such a relationship can remain intimate even in
times of conflict like when one of you wants less intimacy
than the other. [People] who aren't dependent on each
other's validation to feel okay about themselves fuel
their [relationships] with their unique strengths rather
than their mutual weaknesses."
Yes. That describes how I
feel about my art, at this point in time ... it seeks to
express, through sharing my viewpoint in this visual medium,
who I am (by how I see), even as this expansive sharing risks
rejection.
After so many years of
trying to relate the 
broad expanses of the great wide West; the awesome grandeur
of the skies over Nevada; those treasured fleeting
seconds of connection with wildlife I encountered there; and
now and again, a private moment between friends and loved
ones, captured forever on "film". Now, suddenly
-or so it seems-- I find myself going down a different track
.... to the very heart of the matter, as my heart sees the
world it lives in.
I want to show you the
Universe that I see in a single blade of grass; Spring as I
know it, in the first crackling of ice melting on the
creek; winter in diamonds falling on the apple tree at
night; the intimate secret of an underground spring.
I realize clearly
now, that I am self-validated enough to follow the Muse
of my Heart for as long as it leads me in this direction. My
light shines now, with a radiance not before revealed.
Pictures in Light: Photography.
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