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The Mystical Way of Photography

from Blog Tao of Photography

…the photographer searches for the picture. The slide shows an image I took last year when my wife and I visited Santorini, Greece. Why did I take this particular shot? What creative energies and motivations, internal and external, compelled me to point my camera in this direction at this time to record this emphemeral reality? Perhaps, being a physicist, I was drawn by the geometry, or entropic decay of the door? (In truth, the more meaningful question to ask is: “Why has the universe evolved in such a way as to have this image materialize at a certain point in time and space?”, but please read on…) Of course, different photographers have different backgrounds, are motivated by different needs, and have different aesthetic temperaments and creative urges. One photographer might be attracted to light and geometry; another to history and culture; still another to textures and contrasts. But in all cases, the aspiring artist is in search of some “thing,” and happy when she stumbles upon an object of interest.

…and, in the end, finally discovers herself. The (unending) path defines the photographer! Not as a passive collage of “photographs taken,” but as an active embodiment of the artist’s spirit. The creative field awakens to a new reality in which all divisions between self, path, and creation have no meaning, save for the unending process and timeless yearning to create. There is only the creative field, journeying into the infinite depths of its own self.

PSA Journal, Feb, 2002 by Timothy D. Morton

“The Tao of Photography – Seeing Beyond Seeing”

Publisher: Ten Speed Press [c] 2001, 136 pages, $24.95

Philippe L. Gross grew up in Switzerland. His early interest in photography led him to the study of optics. He studied psychology at the University of Hawaii, and is now a university lecturer, photographer and Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Transpersonal Studies.

S.I. Shapiro is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Hawaii, author of numerous articles, and the Executive Editor of the International Journal of Transpersonal Studies. He took up photography after the birth of his son.

Learning to see creatively is perhaps the hardest aspect of modern photography; today’s electronic cameras have taken over so much of the technology of photography, but the essence of the art — seeing, understanding, composing — is still the prerogative of the photographer only. So an analysis of some of the psychology of photography, by two such distinguished professionals, is a welcome text.

Central to Taoism is the concept of liberation. The authors stress that photography, as a force for aesthetic liberation, should be able to free itself from the formal constrictions that convention has imposed. The photographer should train to see beauty, order and meaning through the lens, rather than study to reproduce, in various forms, the traditional subjects and structures of the art.

The beautifully reproduced photographs and the quotations from various artists focus the reader’s attention on some of the key issues that the authors stress. They quote Ernst Haas: “I am not interested in shooting new things, I am interested in seeing things new.” Camera angle, point of view, use of shadow, willingness to shoot dark subjects — all these point to the authors’ thesis that photography is a construction of reality rather than a representation of it. And, moreover, the authors stress that the experience of a photograph is that of the viewer, not the photographer. When we “take a picture” we should realize that we are making a representation of nature that must be new and meaningful to the viewer. So, for example, a portrait by Philippe L. Gross called “Stride” shows a walking figure shot from above with only the body from below the waist visible. But it is not a portrait with the head cut off — rather it is a perception of the act of walking. Ideally, the viewer will now perceive this act differently.

Sometimes, the effect is comic, as in a picture of three mail-boxes, one closed, two open. The comic effect, however, is not in the boxes themselves; it is a perception of the incongruous which the photographer imparts to the viewer.

The text is theoretical, and not always easy reading, but the impact is strong.

Photography and Meditation

Stephen Batchelor has been taking photographs  since the age of sixteen.  Before becoming involved in Buddhism, he had intended to pursue a career as a photographer. He abandoned photography on becoming a monk in 1974.  He resumed it when he went to Songgwangsa Monastery in South Korea in 1981. From then until his return to the West in 1985 he took hundreds of colour slides in Korea, Japan, China and Tibet. In 1986 he returned to Tibet to write The Tibet Guide (1989) (see Publications) and provided many of the photographs for the first edition of the book. More recent work is found in Martine Batchelor’s Meditation for Life (2001) (see Publications), for which he provided sixty colour and black and white images.  Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art, edited by Jacquelynn Baas and Mary Jane Jacob (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004) includes Stephen’s essay “Seeing the Light: Photography as Buddhist Practice.”  An abridged version of the following essay appeared in Meditation for Life.

Taking photographs and practising meditation might seem at first glance to be unrelated activities.  For while photography looks outwards at the visual world through the medium of a camera, meditation focuses inwards on unmediated experience.   And whereas photography is concerned with producing images of reality, meditation is about seeing reality as it is.  Yet in taking photographs and practising meditation over the past three decades, I find the two activities have converged to the point where I no longer think of them as different.
As practices, both meditation and photography demand commitment, discipline and technical skill.  Possession of these qualities does not, however, guarantee that meditation will lead to great wisdom any more than photography will culminate in great art.  To go beyond mere expertise in either domain requires a capacity to see the world in a new way.   Such seeing originates in a penetrating and insatiable curiosity about things.  It entails recovering an innocent, childlike wonder at life while suspending the adult’s conviction that the world is simply the way it appears.
The pursuit of meditation and photography leads away from fascination with the extraordinary and back to a rediscovery of the ordinary.  Just as I once hoped for mystical transcendence through meditation, so I assumed exotic places and unusual objects to be the ideal subjects for photography.   Instead I have found that meditative awareness is a heightened understanding and feeling for the concrete, sensuous events of daily existence.  Likewise, the practice of photography has taught me just to pay closer attention to what I see around me everyday.  Some of the most satisfying pictures I have taken have been of things in the immediate vicinity of where I live and work.
Both photography and meditation require an ability to focus steadily on what is happening in order to see more clearly.  To see in this way involves “shifting” to a frame of mind in which the habitual view of a familiar and self-evident world is replaced by a keen sense of the unprecedented and unrepeatable configuration of each moment.  Whether you are paying mindful attention to the breath as you sit in meditation or whether you are composing an image in a viewfinder, you find yourself hovering before a fleeting, tantalizing reality.
At this point, the tasks of the meditator and the photographer appear to diverge.  While the meditator cultivates uninterrupted, non-judgemental awareness of the moment, the photographer captures the moment in releasing the shutter.   But in practice the aesthetic decision to freeze an image on film crystallizes rather than interrupts the contemplative act of observation. Aligning one’s body and senses in those final microseconds before taking a picture momentarily heightens the intensity and immediacy of the image.  One is afforded a glimpse into the heart of the moment that meditative awareness might fail to provide.
“To take photographs,” wrote Henri Cartier-Bresson, “is to hold one’s breath when all faculties converge in the face of fleeing reality. …  It is putting one’s head, one’s eyes and one’s heart on the same axis. …  It is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one’s originality.  It is a way of life.”  These words of the renowned French photographer define photography as an ongoing meditative relationship to the world.  For Cartier-Bresson, photography is not merely a profession but a liberating engagement with life itself,  the camera not just a machine for recording images but “an instrument of intuition and spontaneity.”
To be moved to take photographs, like being inspired to practise meditation, is to embark on a path.  In both cases you follow an intuitive hunch rather than a carefully considered decision.  Something about “photography” or “meditation” draws you irresistably.  While you may initially justify your interest in these pursuits with clear and compelling reasons, the further you proceed along their respective paths, the less you need to explain yourself.  The very act of taking a photograph or sitting in meditation is sufficient justification in itself.  The notion of an end result to be attained at some point in the future is replaced by an understanding of how the goal of photography or meditation is right here, waiting to be realized each moment.
Both meditation and photography are concerned with light.  Meditators speak of “enlightenment”: an experience in which “light” metaphorically dispels the “darkness” of the mind.  Similarly, by means of an odd angle, an unusual arrangement of light and shade or an adjustment in the depth of field, a photographer illuminates something about an object which had previously been unnoticed.  Such photography has nothing to do with preserving a pictorial record of things, places and people that are already familiar.  It opens up the world in a startling and unexpected way that can be both compelling and unsettling.
The photographer’s concern with light is also a real one.  For with insufficient light, one simply cannot take a photograph.  Yet the closer you attend to what is seen in the viewfinder, the more you notice how the light which illuminates and the object being illuminated are not two separate things.  An object is just as much the medium through which light becomes apparent as light is the medium through which an object becomes apparent.  You cannot have one without the other.  In taking a photograph of an object, you are taking a photograph of a condition of light.
When this separation between what illuminates and what is illuminated begins to dissolve, it becomes increasingly difficult to regard the object being photographed as a thing existing in its own right “out there.”   As soon as you make the perceptual shift to seeing the object as a condition of light, what you observe becomes as tentative, shimmering and luminous as light itself.   In paying more attention to the display of light rather than “something” illuminated by light, photography starts to move away from representation towards abstraction.   The photographer becomes absorbed by the restless contrasts of line, colour, shading, what is in and out of focus to the point where the object as a recognizable “thing” disappears.
This is where the path of photography has led me at the time of writing.  My photographs, taken over many years, reflect various stages in this journey.  They also mirror my engagement with the process of Buddhist meditation.  For both paths have served to deepen my understanding of the fleeting, poignant and utterly contingent nature of things.

Timothy Allen

Meditation The story behind the image

I shot this picture a couple of years ago whilst on a 4 week trip through the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan.  Bhutan can be a complicated country in which to travel since, as a visitor you are required to take a guided tour as your means of travel through the kingdom.  Of course, nothing is ever set in stone and it wasn’t too long after meeting my guide and driver that we agreed to modify our pre-planned  itinerary and tread a rather less travelled path through this fantastic country by visiting Bhutanese people in their own homes.

This image was one of the first photos I took in Bhutan, and still one of my favourites.  On my first day in Thimpu, Bhutan’s sleepy capital city, I asked my guide to take me to visit his relatives and on the way we passed an old friend of the family slowly trudging his way up a road quietly chanting and spinning his prayer wheel.  That day it was Neowney, a week long religious duty of mantra chanting and fasting that most of Thimpu’s elderly citizens were taking part in at the time.  The family friend agreed for us to come with him and we followed him up to Changangkha Lhakhang temple.

As a first introduction to Bhutan, I think you would struggle to find a more atmospherically charged scene than a room full of meditating people lit only by two small doorways at the front left and right sides of the room.  Needless to say, this image was one of an abundance of photographic gifts being offered at that time.  Every face in the room told a different story, but it was this lady, quietly sitting at the front in deep meditation who stole the show for me.  Later on in the day, outside the temple we showed her the image on my laptop.  In that beautiful way that only wise old Buddhists know how, she smiled and carried on about her duties at the temple, unimpressed.

Taking a photograph like this is not hard at all.  The only prerequisites are a darkish background and a suitable light source emanating from only one direction, in this case a door to the front right.  One thing you must be sure of is to remember to meter for just the highlights that you can see.  This will involve shooting with your camera set to manual and adjusting your exposure accordingly, something I would advise you to get into the habit of doing at all times if you are serious about your photography.  By exposing for just the highlights on the woman’s face, the rest of the dimly lit background disappears into complete darkness.

Another frame from the same scene. The lady is now bottom left, looking away from camera

As you can see from this second frame.  There was no shortage of images in the room on that day.  For me though, the tight framing of the lady gives the first image a greater sense of the intimacy of a quiet moment such as meditation.

Timothy Allen