The Image Non Image

Table of Contents

My Personal Path Through Photography:
This CD contains my images, personal thoughts and references from the Tao Te Ching.

When I first started in photography I had an insatiable need to understand how it worked. I try to satisfy this need by reading, talking to photographers I respected and constant shooting. The learning continued by exploring the B&W and Color darkrooms - again with an insatiable need to understand the process. I practiced the zone system, learned the law of reciprocity, how to control perspective with lens utilization, how quanta of light interacted with silver halide... it was endless.
All during this intense time, everything I did was photographically related. I was not disappointed... the more you explore photography... the more you understand it's interrelationship... the more you realize that "photo" "graphy" is truly the science of light.
Little did I know that this myopic path would lead to a broader understanding of myself and my feelings. There was a time when I didn't pick up a camera for a few years. One day a friend observed, "Bob, I never see you take pictures anymore" my immediate response was , "Ya but I still see."
It was then I realized that at one time I was only able to see looking through the viewfinder. It was during that non-photographic period that I really learned to see - and more importantly to feel. I was technically competent with the camera and the photo process to record what I saw... now the challenge was to try to photograph what I felt! All my knowledge and training only got me to the starting line.
The images incorporated in the Image Non Image are the first images I felt I created as a photographer. The long journey, time and effort to control the craft of photography, was just the preparation to the expression.
As if this revelation wasn't profound enough... I have always written personal insights and combined them with my photos. Recently I discovered the Tao Te Ching only to find my insights where merely revelations of truths as old as time itself.
Because of my path through photography, I no longer try to define what I see in myself or in others because it limits the possibilities to new revelations.

Return

General Book Notes:

There are only two human forms in this "book"... the first and last images. The first image is my shadow and the last image represents me being lost in a "circle of confusion". The "circle of confusion" is a photographic term defining what is in, or out of, focus! Also chapter 20 of the Tao Te Ching reads:
	Other men are clear and bright... i drift like the waves on a sea, without direction, like the restless wind. i am different, i am nourished by nature.

Return

Chapter 1: Life and Photography

The images in this chapter can be taken by a beginning photographer with the ability to observe or an experienced photographer with the ability to observe. The level of the photographer doesn't matter - it's the ability to "clear away" all the complex things and to observe simply or simply observe. Whether this simplicity is arrived by being a simpleton or a person who has learned to make things simple is unimportant.

The poem can be read either across or down the columns. In either case it reaches the same conclusion... to be nonjudgmental and accept what is presented to us.

Return

The "Non-Image":

The "Non Image" will not be seen by viewing the INI from the beginning to the end. The "Non-Image" can be viewed by clicking either the blue "Non Image" in the INI essay or the icon on the "Index" page. Either start a sound module containing 5 images: 1st - the solarized nude; 2nd - the winter scene; 3rd - the old woman composited against a dead tree; 4th - the "Non-Image" [the void]; and 5th - the rock and the tree.
The 4th image - the "Non-Image" is shown (or not shown) with the lyrics "What once was will always be" symbolizing that we, the human beings, are temporary on this earth. The end of the audio/visual poem is "the rock and the tree" which were here long before us and will be here long after us. The "Non-image" is boundless and represents either the birth or death of the human being as it transitions "from" or "to" the next place.

Return