THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD - ( beyond the sheltered candle ) Print

THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD - ( beyond the sheltered candle ) Gifts of unknown things in the Lutheran Cathedral, Helsinki. For Coleridge. But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the East, and Juliet is the sun! ( Beyond the temptation fetish of Tech and anti-Tech and the retro-bondage of sailor’s knots, Eco-warriors should be heating huge crucibles, not their desert ivory towers ) Just as Beauty needs the mortal blush of foul decay as a ground from which to thrive, so the Divine has always been nothing without tension, temptations of the flesh, the coddling human heat of the draped erotic, nothing without the human indulgence of decoration and admiration, nothing without the more than necessary. And Art has always been the willing handmaiden who serves all that may be and all that we can imagine - the codifier of buried lusts, the elaborator of Sins, of camouflage and deceit. Art expresses the subconscious reminder we are physical, organic, fundamental, terraform human - not the children of gods. While, at the same time, art exposes, art is, our desire for something more - the diagnostic of our discomfort, of our malaise, of the human animal’s fear-filled mental aberration of needing to understand, achieve, control, dominate everything. The Light of the World should be not only a benighted, subtle guide that threads the darks of Evil, like pilgrims through an eternal boundless fog, or like the man sent from Porlock to shred our un-crystalized dreams. The Light of the World should be an illumination, an exuberance, a nebula burst, a gestation that dissolves all the shades into its fertile, vibrant embrace. The Beauty of Creation glows more wholesome than the shriven flesh of Denial or the polite, fast-track affectation of worship. When all the deer are dead, all the pumas extinct, then any notion of man’s respect of Grace becomes an insult to any choice of Creator by any form of prayer. There is no point in blindly wishing for Light if we are afraid to witness the glory revealed by each morning sun. Or more succinctly - if you really want to feel closer to your god, whichever god, also see, feel and respect the huge, brilliant world that lies between you and your god. Snuff the sheltered candle and open your eyes. Feel mistress moon wax full in the sun’s embrace. There is nothing more, nothing less. Measuring Life and arbitrating our chauvinist tribal share is not some noble manifest destiny. And no-One is measuring us. Responsibility - response - requires connection. Not detached, self-righteous isolation. In my personal work I am not a purist photographer but photography has long been my tool of choice because of its fundamental and inescapable grounding in reality which I see as the generator of all imagination. The beauty of the finely crafted classical monochrome print is undeniable but many years ago I tired of the puritanism which I felt deadened the delight of discovery. The Zen of it all might leave the photographer enhanced but to the viewer such images too often seem to decrease and recede into the perfection of technique rather than expand the fields of vision. A rose is a rose is a rose but its mazing scent and its thorn against the breast conjure danger and complexity seldom embraced by the purist. Journeying in the craftwork of a pedigreed train is best felt when it bursts out of the tunnel into expanding colour and light - and when you can drive your own discoveries beyond the tracks laid down by the agenda of others. The freedom of a child to be lost without fear. I like the fascination of occlusions in my optics rather than the predictable perfection of well-behaved mathematics. Seduction and possibility hold more attraction than purity and certainty. In many of the works shown here I have developed the micro detail which makes these images best viewed as larger prints. I use this energetic texture to challenge the perception - from where are realities derived - to where are they projected? My path explores form, colour, surface levels and possible meanings. I push off from the shore but leave the journey to the winds and to the tides. The concept of destination is something I have never understood. I am looking to create sideways glances rather than documents or statements. The glimmer intrusions of parallel worlds. In the realms of Art, the camera is the only true voyeur - on the real battlefields, in the satin boudoirs of power, under the volcano, on the snub nose of a probe - it sees worlds we are too timid to seek - lets us imagine we can directly care. My philosophy - what informs how I see the world and put it into what I present? - The failure of humanity, through the ages, is that we have been taught, and have come to believe, that some future Heaven is more desirable than Eden. Our content to be what we are is destroyed when we look in the mirror and see ourselves haloed with gurus, profits and angels. Personal delight, beauty and peace are not things which can be bought or taught by any form of teacher - these things do not come from adrenaline hits of small cans of over-priced holy water laced with caffeine. The things which sustain us, give us nourishment, grace and stimulation, lie freely around us. But we have to find them alone and pay for them with patience, questioning, openness and the reduction of “self”. Maybe that’s not a very 21st Century philosophy. Take the time to listen to the storytellers, folks - and to the shamans and the poets - not the modern ones who only, endlessly, talk about themselves, but listen to the ones whose stories multiply our worlds and show us unfamiliar colours - who challenge the unconsciousness brought on by the narcosis of comfort and security. Except for one or two obvious composites, all the images here are derived from single, in-camera, exposures. Everything you see was once, for me, for a brief moment, some kind of reality on the other side of the looking glass.