bDe gNas' photostream  

“As far as I am concerned, taking pictures is a means of understanding which cannot be separated from other means of visual expression. It is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one’s originality. It is a way a life.

Anarchy is an ethic.

Buddhism is neither a religion nor a philosophy, but a medium that consists in controlling the spirit in order to attain harmony and, through compassion, to offer it to others.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson
The Mind’s Eye, page 16
New York, Aperture Foundation
1999


Like many photographers, I was trained as a painter. I also did pottery. I do not consider myself to be an ex-painter or a potter of yore, but rather an artist currently focusing on photography. I bought a Nikon FM about thirty years ago to aid me in painting portraits. I would photograph my subject, then use a grid to transfer the image to canvas for painting. I soon realized that I liked doing photographic portraits more than painted portraits and eventually moved from the 35mm format of my Nikon to the 120 format of the Hasselblad. I also surrendered to the square format of the Hasselblad as opposed the rectangular format of 35mm. A camera lens is round and can perfectly contain the equilibrium of a square whereas a rectangle creates stress when part of the lens has its view “cropped” by one of the rectangle’s sides.

Although I do occasional landscapes, my favorite subject matter, either in painting or in photography, has always been portraiture. I love the human face. I also prefer doing portraits of Buddhist monks and other spiritual contemplatives in Asia. Such people aren’t concerned with whether their portraits are cosmetically appealing. For them, a photo of themselves is simply a memento to gloss a particular occasion. Westerners often ask for post-production “favors” such as bag, wrinkle, or chin removals. Buddhist monks know that wrinkles are just part of the impermanence of the phenomenon we call life. Future lives will bring more than enough facelifts. I have always considered Buddhism to be a cult of tranquility. Tranquility is a useful agent in photography. Many of my concerns about photography, and art in general, have developed from my interest in eastern mysticism and spirituality. The square format of the Hasselblad corresponds to the sense of harmony found in the Sanskrit postulate rta. Rta is the natural cohesion that regulates and coordinates the operation of the universe and everything within it. Rta signifies both “order” and “truth” and may be collectively referred to, in its ordinances, as dharma, and individually, in relation to those ordinances as karma. Rta is the opposite of chaos.

I find it difficult to write about photography despite all the attention that has been given to critical theory, or Photo-Discourse. Many photographers consider much of this discourse to be mere gibberish and would like to see critics boiled in a cistern of ink over a pyre of burning exegeses. Yet those like Michel Foucault inspired a philosophy that there is nothing more practical than a good theory combined with the rise of new media technologies to bring divergent voices (and disciplines) together. These diverse influences, in many ways, broaden the discursive platform to include social, political, as well as artistic voices. There are coteries of Photographers, and there are cabals of Artists who use Photography. I tend to fall, more or less, into the latter camp as an artist who uses “lens-media.” In her copia verborum on the subject, Susan Sontag states that photography is predatory. I do not consider myself to be a sabertoothed paparazzo, stalking monks or other subjects. As a photographer, I am a gatherer, not a hunter.

For me, composing the portrait through my viewfinder is homologous with the Indian notion of darshan. Literally, darshan implies “to see” or “sight.” But more specifically darshan is concerned with an event in consciousness that creates an interaction between the seer and the seen. Thus darshan heightens consciousness. Another term is rasa, literally meaning “juice” or “essence.” Rasa denotes an essential mental state dominated by a primary experience of the viewer by what is viewed. For me rasa is a vital component in photographic composition, similar to what Roland Barthes has called the photograph’s noeme.

I feel that photography has a melody but not a song. It is a story without diegesis…a fetish without an aura. A photo is a receptacle without utility, the dance without movement. A painting is hyperbole, whereas a photograph is litotes. Photography is the crown jewel of austere poverty. It is what the Japaneser poet Hakuin Ekaku has called “the sound of snow.” A photograph can be the answer to a koan that is not information but consciousness. There is an energy that flows between the photographer and the subject. This energy is the source of inspiration and has a classical association to the muse. This muse, or exuberance is known as prana or “life force” in Sanskrit, rlung in Tibetan, ch’I or qi in Chinese, pneuma in Greek, spiritus in Latin, ruwach in Hebrew, and, perhaps the word “soul” in English. Sometimes it is necessary to be very patient for this vitality to arise. Often an external element such as the light and shadow on the subject is an inappropriate ebullience for the “breath” of the muse to arise, but when the “breath” proceeds, the camera photographs and the photographer and subject fuse to create an amalgamation of beauty. The subject is the echo of its creator. As the photographer Minor White said, “Spirit always stands still long enough for the photographer it has chosen.”

I shoot film because it is easiest for me. I don’t like all the configurations and buttons necessary to operate a digital camera. A light meter involves enough computation. I don’t need an entire dashboard. Actually, I shoot “hybrid” in the sense that my analogue photos disappear into a digital binary code of postproduction to re-appear as an analogue mimesis. Likewise, I shoot in black and white…again because it is easy. I also like the abstraction that black and white creates on a paper’s surface. Similar to viewing the work of a painter like, say, Franz Kline or works by great calligraphers working in black ink, the viewer’s imagination is called into play when it encounters black and white photography. The mind isn’t immediately told that what it “sees” is a “realistic” image or message. The mind first must interpret the tonality and contrast of the viewed subject in order to gain a meaning. The highlights and shadows of a black and white photograph are the warp and weft that create the “fabric” of the pictorial tapestry. The greater the range of tonality between black and white, the more pivotal, for me, is the image. A photo can never have too many shades of grey. Greys are the intermediate tones that create the designs and textures woven into the photo.

I have always felt that using black and white film in my photos of India is a bit of western hegemony. The Rajasthani photographer Raghubir Singh notes that Indian photographers prefer color to convey what he felt is their sense of optimism. Singh notes that even when black and white is used, say in the films of Satyajit Ray, it is a psychological metaphor for this optimism. However, I find there is a wonderful minimalism to black and white photography that justifies and surpasses any contrition I discern about this monochromatic hegemon. It is neither optimistic nor pessimistic. A photograph is just an image on a piece of paper…it can be blown away in a gust of wind. It is minimal, even in color photos. It is limited by the duration of exposure, what John Szarkowski calls “a discrete parcel of time.” It defines brevity. It defies both optimism and the vicissitudes of pessimism. It silhouettes a moment…it is the kireji , caesura or the critical word of a visual Haiku...a machine made haiga.

The nineteenth century British photographer William Henry Fox Talbot referred to the camera as the “pencil of nature.” Nature nourishes. My camera is a less archival utensil and more of a Pandora’s box. When the shutter opens all the darkness in the box flies out into the world, but light enters and captures the “hope” of a good photograph.
Sarva mangalam.