Professor Steve Weinberg’s book The First Three Minutes ends with “the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”This is because he believes that there is no reason for it. Leonardo da Vinci wrote relevant to photography: “This is the true rule how observers of natural effects must proceed: while nature begins with reasons and ends in experience; we must follow the opposite [course], beginning with experience and with that investigating the reasons.” Any artist who aspires to expose the true depth of reality and the feelings created by the experiencing of that reality, must first believe that there is a reason for the world and his experience of it and that that reason can be at least dimly perceived by the mind and heart of man. Leonardo executed his idea in paintings that succeeded in infusing the form, or formal aspects of his art, with the ephemeral spiritual thing causing the form to be what it was. For him, not just the face, but that something that gave the flesh life was want he was trying to capture; spirit giving material a reason to exist. Words fail this project, unless one is a lyric poet, so those of us who are not lyric poets must express ourselves without words.
I think that truly fine photographic art captures not only the physical experience of the subject, photons hitting a sensor, but the reason for the subject, its essence which is its purpose. Really good portraiture might be the most obvious example of this quality, but this characteristic of really fine photographic art applies to any photographic subject, whether it be a nude or a flower, a mountain or a street scene. Of course one is free to say that this is all romantic bunk, but to take this position to its logical conclusion would be to render photography a purely documentary activity; all you would be doing is recording the behavior of photons, sensors and software.
It is interesting how attracted westerners are to the idea of permanence, post-modernist theory aside; we like to think that things we perceive exist somewhere as fixed objects. Of course this is an error unless we realize that we think of things as fixed because the ideas we use to think about them with are fixed; a tree is a “tree,” and as our understanding of a tree becomes more sophisticated we simply add more ideas with equally fixed meaning, e.g., “maple tree in the fall.” The Japanese, however, treasure beautiful/truthful things more by emphasizing their ephemeral nature, e.g., cherry blossoms, fall leaves, snowy mountains, youth, etc. I suppose it is Buddhism v. Christianity; circular time v. linear time; flux v. destiny. Perhaps the rational mind of God simply wanders creatively.
No. 41: The Rational Mind of God
Professor Steve Weinberg’s book The First Three Minutes ends with “the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”This is because he believes that there is no reason for it. Leonardo da Vinci wrote relevant to photography: “This is the true rule how observers of natural effects must proceed: while nature begins with reasons and ends in experience; we must follow the opposite [course], beginning with experience and with that investigating the reasons.” Any artist who aspires to expose the true depth of reality and the feelings created by the experiencing of that reality, must first believe that there is a reason for the world and his experience of it and that that reason can be at least dimly perceived by the mind and heart of man. Leonardo executed his idea in paintings that succeeded in infusing the form, or formal aspects of his art, with the ephemeral spiritual thing causing the form to be what it was. For him, not just the face, but that something that gave the flesh life was want he was trying to capture; spirit giving material a reason to exist. Words fail this project, unless one is a lyric poet, so those of us who are not lyric poets must express ourselves without words.
I think that truly fine photographic art captures not only the physical experience of the subject, photons hitting a sensor, but the reason for the subject, its essence which is its purpose. Really good portraiture might be the most obvious example of this quality, but this characteristic of really fine photographic art applies to any photographic subject, whether it be a nude or a flower, a mountain or a street scene. Of course one is free to say that this is all romantic bunk, but to take this position to its logical conclusion would be to render photography a purely documentary activity; all you would be doing is recording the behavior of photons, sensors and software.
It is interesting how attracted westerners are to the idea of permanence, post-modernist theory aside; we like to think that things we perceive exist somewhere as fixed objects. Of course this is an error unless we realize that we think of things as fixed because the ideas we use to think about them with are fixed; a tree is a “tree,” and as our understanding of a tree becomes more sophisticated we simply add more ideas with equally fixed meaning, e.g., “maple tree in the fall.” The Japanese, however, treasure beautiful/truthful things more by emphasizing their ephemeral nature, e.g., cherry blossoms, fall leaves, snowy mountains, youth, etc. I suppose it is Buddhism v. Christianity; circular time v. linear time; flux v. destiny. Perhaps the rational mind of God simply wanders creatively.