jbartok's photostream

Please visit my website if you are interested in purchasing a photo. Click here: www.shobophoto.com

about the photos

"These photographs arise out of my own Zen meditation practice, which is fundamentally a practice of presence, of continual opening to the world precisely as it is, to all the richness this moment offers. In my photographs, I strive to do this without judgment and without commentary.

Often as we move through our lives we get so caught up in thoughts, agendas, responsibilities and all the rest, that we miss out on the the very texture of experience that makes life so vividly wonderful. In the visual realm, we get so caught up with looking that we forget to see. Our discursive minds tend to always respond to photographs with the question, “What is it?” And then once we know, we box it away under the description, “It is a picture of…” and in so doing, we stop seeing it. So, although my photographs are of course always pictures “of” something, they are also things-in-themselves. They are precisely this.



about the phototographer

I am fairly new to world of artistic photography, having just begun in May of 2005, though before that I dabbled in ink-painting, and did a couple of stints acting and directing for the amateur stage.

I am the practice leader of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Zen Sangha, and a Dharma Teacher with Boundless Way Zen. I encountered Zen practice in 1991 while studying Cognitive Science at Vassar College. I am a staff editor at Wisdom Publications, where I've served as in-house editor for dozens of books on Buddhism and Zen including Hardcore Zen, Mindfulness Yoga, and The Dharma of Star Wars.

I am also the compiler of two books: Daily Wisdom and More Daily Wisdom; and, with Ezra Bayda, the author of Saying Yes To Life (Even the Hard Parts).