Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2010, Page 141
mind—rejecting both sensory perception and intellectual thought as limited and defective
instruments for perceiving reality. As an antidote to that rigid polarization, with its harsh,
simpleminded negation of physicality, I have found that the act of portraiture compels me to
contemplate the close connection between outer form (face/body) and inner self. As I‘ve
suggested elsewhere,
The eyes are, as the saying goes, the gateway to the soul. I think this truth
extends more broadly to the face and to the entire physical form. Aware of it
or not, something of our depths (emotional, psychic, spiritual) is written
across our entire physical being. If our sensitivities are sufficiently developed,
we can intuit much from looking into the eyes and face of another.xii
One can, if one must, look upon the form of a fellow human as a ―bag of
stool‖ (ISKCON supplies numerous such complimentary epithets), or one can
become sensitized so as to see the eternal spirit shining through and even
transfiguring its temporal habitation. I‘ve chosen the latter, and I find wisdom
in Edmund Spencer‘s statement, ―For of the soule the bodie forme doth take /
For soule is form, and doth the bodie make.‖xiii
Because my work in portraiture focuses mainly on women, photography has been a means,
also, of removing whatever residue might have remained of years of misogynist conditioning
in ISKCON (drawn from ancient Hindu social models). Photographing women has profoundly
deepened my appreciation for the ―Divine Feminine‖: womanhood not only as a specific
gender, but an expression of a liberating spiritual principle. As I wrote in my first book of
photographs,
This collection of portraits and nudes ...begins from a simple appreciation of
the beauty of women. But for me, that appreciation opens up onto a deeper
level of experience, what I think of as a search for the Anima, my quest for
the Archetypal Feminine, both in principle and in flesh-and-blood.xiv
I like what Anna Farova, the noted historian of photography, says of Czech photographer
Frantisek Drtikol in this regard: ―[He] was fascinated by the female body ...He saw in it the
primal form of beauty, thought and the soul: the body [as] the soul‘s garment.‖xv I can
certainly identify with that view.
If I have a personal credo of photography as a creative pursuit, or, even more broadly, a
manifesto of the creative life I now pursue, it is this:
For me, the essence of photography is in the pure pleasure of seeing, the
experience of opening a more intuitive, patient, contemplative eye to the
world. It is about exploring the strange synergy between quiet receptivity and
probing curiosity. It's about appreciating the ―suchness‖ of things, as well as
experiencing their complex resonances within personal consciousness.
Photography is, for me, the cultivation of a deeper seeing, and through
deeper seeing, heightened awareness and emotion. It's about being surprised
and delighted by the ―ten thousand things‖ (as the Taoists say) of the world,
and cultivating a sense of wonder. It is both a contemplative discipline and a
hedonistic surrender to the senses. It‘s about paying homage to the perceived
object itself, and to the process of perception itself—allowing oneself to
luxuriate in the exquisite visual pleasures of form, shape, texture, line, light
and shadow.
Though photography can be—due to the inherent mechanics of the process—a
fairly literal medium for recording surface ―facts,‖ my work is, in part, an
attempt to use the camera as a tool for exploring and questioning the concept
of objective reality. Perception becomes a form of play. Apprehending the
mind—rejecting both sensory perception and intellectual thought as limited and defective
instruments for perceiving reality. As an antidote to that rigid polarization, with its harsh,
simpleminded negation of physicality, I have found that the act of portraiture compels me to
contemplate the close connection between outer form (face/body) and inner self. As I‘ve
suggested elsewhere,
The eyes are, as the saying goes, the gateway to the soul. I think this truth
extends more broadly to the face and to the entire physical form. Aware of it
or not, something of our depths (emotional, psychic, spiritual) is written
across our entire physical being. If our sensitivities are sufficiently developed,
we can intuit much from looking into the eyes and face of another.xii
One can, if one must, look upon the form of a fellow human as a ―bag of
stool‖ (ISKCON supplies numerous such complimentary epithets), or one can
become sensitized so as to see the eternal spirit shining through and even
transfiguring its temporal habitation. I‘ve chosen the latter, and I find wisdom
in Edmund Spencer‘s statement, ―For of the soule the bodie forme doth take /
For soule is form, and doth the bodie make.‖xiii
Because my work in portraiture focuses mainly on women, photography has been a means,
also, of removing whatever residue might have remained of years of misogynist conditioning
in ISKCON (drawn from ancient Hindu social models). Photographing women has profoundly
deepened my appreciation for the ―Divine Feminine‖: womanhood not only as a specific
gender, but an expression of a liberating spiritual principle. As I wrote in my first book of
photographs,
This collection of portraits and nudes ...begins from a simple appreciation of
the beauty of women. But for me, that appreciation opens up onto a deeper
level of experience, what I think of as a search for the Anima, my quest for
the Archetypal Feminine, both in principle and in flesh-and-blood.xiv
I like what Anna Farova, the noted historian of photography, says of Czech photographer
Frantisek Drtikol in this regard: ―[He] was fascinated by the female body ...He saw in it the
primal form of beauty, thought and the soul: the body [as] the soul‘s garment.‖xv I can
certainly identify with that view.
If I have a personal credo of photography as a creative pursuit, or, even more broadly, a
manifesto of the creative life I now pursue, it is this:
For me, the essence of photography is in the pure pleasure of seeing, the
experience of opening a more intuitive, patient, contemplative eye to the
world. It is about exploring the strange synergy between quiet receptivity and
probing curiosity. It's about appreciating the ―suchness‖ of things, as well as
experiencing their complex resonances within personal consciousness.
Photography is, for me, the cultivation of a deeper seeing, and through
deeper seeing, heightened awareness and emotion. It's about being surprised
and delighted by the ―ten thousand things‖ (as the Taoists say) of the world,
and cultivating a sense of wonder. It is both a contemplative discipline and a
hedonistic surrender to the senses. It‘s about paying homage to the perceived
object itself, and to the process of perception itself—allowing oneself to
luxuriate in the exquisite visual pleasures of form, shape, texture, line, light
and shadow.
Though photography can be—due to the inherent mechanics of the process—a
fairly literal medium for recording surface ―facts,‖ my work is, in part, an
attempt to use the camera as a tool for exploring and questioning the concept
of objective reality. Perception becomes a form of play. Apprehending the
