Category / Photography

by John

Something White

My previous post focused on the color blue, so this image provides a nice transition from blue to this post’s subject, something white. The photograph was taken in White Sands National Park in New Mexico and is completely surrounded by White Sands Missile Range. The white material in the photograph consists of gypsum crystals, and the dune field is the largest of its kind on earth. Fossilized footprints found here are dated to the earliest arrival of humans in North America around 20,000 years ago.
For some, the color white is a symbol of innocence, purity and peace. It is ironic and sad that this beautiful place is surrounded by a missile range where instruments of war are tested.

This Gardenia blossom surprised me as I walked past a small tree in the Louisville Zoological Gardens. Native to Asia, Gardenias were introduced to the southern United States in the 18th century but are relatively uncommon in Kentucky. The last time I had seen one was in the 1960’s in South Africa. To make sure that this was a Gardenia, I stepped closer to smell it. Yes, the intoxicating fragrance confirmed that this was the real thing. The scent of the flower plays an important part in attracting pollinators especially at night, appealing to nocturnal insects like moths who are also attracting to the white flowers discernible in the dark.
Is the image just a pretty photograph, or does it remind you of a time and place? Can you remember the fragrance?

Snow is actually translucent or clear because it is made of ice. But, because of the crystalline nature of ice, when light is reflected off the ice crystals, it breaks up and all the colors of the spectrum shine equally. Our eyes perceive all these colors colliding as white. The philosophical and scientific moral of the story is that things are not always as they appear, but in the case of snow let us embrace the appearance.

What does this little sign have to do with Something White? Well, the lacquered white base on which the black letters are printed is white. The hand that holds the sign is White. The second line is written in Afrikaans. Translated, it reads “Whites Only”. That’s how things were in South Africa before the end of apartheid. Our small group of anti-apartheid activists removed these signs from park benches in the city, an inconsequential gesture that may not have even been noticed. But there are times when one cannot remain silent. This was a beginning.
Living at peace with our Whiteness is not always easy.

Here is Lucy who brought much happiness to Lilian and me during our retirement. We have been “dog people” for most of our lives with canine members of our family that include golden retrievers, labradors, border collies, spaniels, and an assortment of mixed breeds. But it was Lucy who stole our hearts. Maltese dogs have a rich history that dates back over 2,500 years, originating on the island of Malta. They were popular in ancient Greece and Rome (catuli melitaei) and were even linked to the goddess Venus who was said to have kept them as pets. We like to think that Lucy is now with Aphrodite on Mount Olympus.

When one starts to think about white, a person becomes more conscious of it in our everyday lives. In the diptych above we see toothpaste and facial tissue. In much of Africa, the word for toothpaste is “Colgate” and in the United States and Canada, the word for facial tissue is “Kleenex”. Good examples of metonymy, the phenomenon that occurs when a brand name is so widely recognized that it is used in place of the product itself.

This flower can teach us something. It is the Trichocereus Candicans, also known as the Argentine Giant, native to Argentina. It thrives in arid climates and full sun, so it wasn’t surprising that it bloomed in our Sonoran Desert home. It is a night flowering species and although it blooms for only two days, it leaves an indelible impression. May our two-day lifespan leave its own beautiful mark.

by John

Something Blue

Lake Erie is one of the five Great Lakes in North America and the fourth-largest. It straddles the international boundary between Canada and the United States. The Canadian province of Ontario occupies its northern shore while to the south and east the US states of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York occupy its shores. But none of that matters.

Have you noticed that standing on a beach looking out over water reduces one to silence?

The ocean is blue because water absorbs colors in in the red part of the light spectrum leaving behind colors in the blue part of the spectrum for us to see. The universality of this phenomenon is born out in this pentaptych that is a compilation of photographs I’ve taken: The Pacific Ocean off the coast of California, the Indian Ocean off the Southeast coast of South Africa, and the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Massachusetts. Among my photographs, I find images of the Caribbean, the Adriatic and the Mediterranean. And I remember my grandmother in 1967 as she looked out over the breaking waves of the incoming tide, and her words to me, “I wish I had your faith. Your grandfather and both my sons have died. And, you know, the waves will keep rolling in long after I have gone.”

For about ten years, we made cross-country trips from Arizona to Ohio. The allure of the open road begins to wear a little thin, however, on the fourth day of driving. This photograph taken somewhere near the New Mexico / Texas border is illustrative of the sense of alienation from everyday life that the long journey creates. Even the welcome lack of traffic is somewhat surreal. Out of sight, but close by, migrants make their journey too. Under the baking sun, we are reminded of our common origin in the solar nebula.

Stepping out of the theater after a brilliantly choreographed matinee performance of Ballet Tucson with music, movement and color, I paused in the quiet shade of the building. Looking up, I saw the contrails of a jet bisecting the deep blue sky with the modernistic architecture of the theater in the foreground. I sensed the presence of Darth Vader, cyborg commander serving the Galactic Empire in Star Wars.

Jeans is the name of a style of trousers made with a heavy blue denim fabric strengthened with copper pocket rivets and patented by Levi Strauss in 1883.
Originally designed for factory workers and miners, modern riveted blues jeans were popularized as a fashion item by Marlon Brando and James Dean in their 1950s films. Initially, jeans became a symbol of rebellion among teenagers. Today, perhaps this eighty-four-year-old is still a rebel as he throws his pair of jeans up into the air for a photograph.

This post started with a photograph of Lake Erie and ends with an image of a woman reaching into the water of the same lake.

My photograph is modified to give it a painterly impression in the style of Andrew Wyeth’s 1948 work, “Christina’s World”. Anna Christina Olson had a degenerative muscular disorder, which left her unable to walk. She refused to use a wheelchair, and she would crawl everywhere. When Andrew Wyeth saw her crawling across a field, he was inspired to paint his famous work.

by John

Summer Pairings

Here is the first Monarch to visit our garden this year. It was a welcome surprise because the numbers of Monarch butterflies are dwindling. They have started migrating from their breeding grounds in Canada on a long journey through the US to Mexico, often covering fifty to a hundred miles per day, reaching their destination near early November.

Several tornados touched down in Northeast Ohio yesterday, yet the butterfly shown above survived to replete its store of energy by extracting nectar from verbena flowers in our garden. The damaged wing is likely a result of the storm.

Another pair of reliable visitors are woodpeckers who come to feed on suet in our feeders. The first image is that of a Downy Woodpecker, the smallest species of woodpecker in North America.

The second image is that of the larger Hairy Woodpecker that gets its name from the long, thread-like white feathers that run down the middle of its black back. Like the smaller Downy it is at home at the edge of forests such as the one behind our home.

Another summer pairing in our garden is Cosmos, the familiar annual with colorful, daisy-like flowers in the sunflower family that sit atop long, slender stems. They attract birds, bees and butterflies to the garden.

Another variety of Cosmos is a tall plant with semi-double and double flowers ruffled in a variety shades – violet, lavender, white, and cream.

As I walk under the old oak tree behind the house or the tall red maple in the front, I’m reminded by some mushrooms of the microscopic network of fungus interwoven with the tree roots below the surface.

Mushrooms that I see above ground are the fruit of the fungus just below the surface. Generally, the fungus feeds on dead organic matter like rotten wood, returning its constituent matter to the soil. Its fruit, the mushrooms, are a reminder of the complex neuronal system of the tree roots just below the surface that live in partnership with fungi.

A final pairing on today’s walk around the house: Two tomatoes in a pot, green but turning red: A sign of many more warm summer days to come.

by John

The Philosopher as Artist

Photographic and Philosophical Musings

“Silently welcomed home” is how I describe the experience of returning to a grove of mesquite trees and being present among them in the Sonoran Desert of Southern Arizona. A camera marks the occasion.


Later, after selecting one of the images, I crop it into a visual matrix of fifteen smaller images, print and frame them, then mount them on a wall.

The effect seems quite pleasing.

But, tiring of ‘realism”, I remove the photographs from the frames, leaving only the black cardboard mounting boards, change the orientation from vertical to horizontal, and hang the installation in our entrance hall.

By eliminating any surface image, I frustrate any attempt to see an underlying reality other than a void. Somehow, this new installation gives voice to the futility of any attempt in art to express the inexpressible, to express any underlying reality.

Western thought is based on the idea of center – an origin, a truth, an ideal form, an immovable mover, an essence, a God which guarantees all meaning: Art, words, and language serve as signs mediating this original, irreducible object. The French philosopher, Jacques Derrida, takes exception to the assumption that signs are capable of referring accurately to a transcendent reality that exists outside of language. For Derrida, there is no knowledge of ‘reality’, but only symbolized, constructed experience. Abstract or non-objective art seeks to uncover a signified transcendent by erasing signifiers and discovering pure form.


There are fifteen frames in my installation, underscoring the view of philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard that meta-narratives with their claims to Truth are crumbling and are being replaced by smaller, heterogenous local narratives, narratives that cannot lay claim to any such knowledge.
If art is about surface and the paradox of an underlying unreachable reality, then by eliminating the surface in empty frames, the viewer is faced with the ambiguity of confronting a void.

To emphasize the paradox, I decided to hang the work in a virtual gallery challenging the viewer to question what is real.


The objects depicted in the lower right frame are duplicate images of a woman pushing a shopping cart in her unwitting search for the transcendent which, of course, is happiness.

But we can’t escape the illusion of our experienced reality, so I asked my granddaughter to pose in front of the installation. She willingly obliged, or so it seemed to me,

by John

Love Sonnet for a daughter

Lake Ontario shore, 2007

When summer joy has been in short supply
and cloudy days outnumber all the rest,
is it some lingering loss, a love denied,
or sun’s sad absence puts us to the test?
Perhaps no longer have we a claim on bliss,
our once new loves since lost with passing time
and youth’s achievements hidden in the mist
of long-forgotten days like last year’s wine.
But something sadder still is cause of pain
if joy of those we love is our joy’s measure:
It’s love itself our loved one cannot find
that makes us settle for more modest pleasure:
A cup of tea, some melody, a gentle frame of mind,
a prayer our love by love one day is found.

Ten years later, an answer to prayer. And the sun still shines.

by John

Weekend Music

Some student musicians were kind enough to visit our community during a local music festival and play for us. It was a perfect way to spend a summer afternoon, and a reassuring message about the hard work, talent and generosity of many young people today.

Then I saw a young man in the audience in front of me scrolling on his iPhone. “Oh no,” I thought. “This is a sad commentary on the youth of today.” Then I looked more closely:

He was following the score. My faith was restored.

Earlier that weekend, I had read a blog post that beautifully described a fig tree. A folksong about a walnut tree came to mind, a memory of at least ten years ago, and I spent a lot of time trying to find it on the internet. Success! Here are Luciano and Fernando Pavarotti singing La Giana with the Rossini Chorale of Moderna in 1990.

by John

The Song of a Bird

Perhaps one shouldn’t write about the song of a bird. Certainly not a poem. The birdsong is enough.

And yet, I’m compelled to share my early morning experience, walking under the trees in the half-light before sunrise last spring under the dark shapes of maple, oak, and fir. I couldn’t see any birds but I heard them, above and on the sides. Different sounds, males calling females and birds claiming their territory. For a moment I was pulled into another world. A world bursting with joy and with life.

I had my phone with me and I photograph the sky as if to say, “I see you”. Then I recorded the birds singing, as if to say “I hear you.” There was a magic dialogue.

The phone then analyzed the sounds and gave me a report. The spell was broken. Technology should have no place in the contemplative experience, at least not for this eighty-two-year-old.