Greetings,
He's been in Cambodia for a year. One year seems like a day. Here are six random images.
Many thanks for your support and kindness.
May your new year be filled with joy.
Metta.
Handicap International in Siem Reap. They provide rehabilitation and prosthetic devices to land mine victims.
Inee, a weaver in a Kampot training center for disadvantaged women.
Angkor Wat
Blacksmith
Clean water
all gas jupiter is close
368 million miles away
swimming with Fishes
rising at 18:49, setting at 5:45
with runners on first and third and no outs
top of the ninth at 74º (under the horizon)
there goes the runner through infinite space passing mercury
as pagodas with broken scratchy speakers chime chorus voices
monks chant four moons - io, europa, ganymede, callisto
108º
Greetings,
Turn the page away from morning, away from scattered grains of rice in a broken bamboo basket feeding wild crows. Blacker than faces hiding inside deep dark passages watching the street. Always watching. Staring with hard deep black eyes.
Their eyes, when they lived in the flat countryside covered in lost forgotten patient rice paddies waiting for a drop of water near groves of palm, coconut, banana trees surrounding bamboo thatched homes on stilts and naked children playing with dreams, watched deep shadows.
They watched. They never closed. They watched for enemies, invaders from Thailand, America, Vietnam, wives, husbands, children, strangers, soldiers, Apsara dancers. They were always on always ready to see the smallest cosmic movement across horizens, miles of land mined country or inside thick foliage.
Their eyes danced with waiting. Waiting held their eyes as lovers will, close, feeling fluttering lids, retinas trembling with visual information, data, mysteries. They cultivated patience, a necessary food. They comprehended their essential visual priorities. Watching, a national sport, is their universe.
They had a small vital responsibility living in perpetual darkness - seeing far away with telescopic acuity. Their constant vision burned up 85% of their daily energy. The remaining 15% was used for procreation, eating, speaking and laughing. Laughing burns up calories.
Eyes practice the silent art of being silent, watching past another person during a silent conversation watching each other's back being the other. How they face the other watching beyond where everything matters infinitely. For one moment in their short sweet life.
Metta.
Greetings,
I read about David Hockney's new exhibit in London. He mentioned using a painting application on his iPhone.
"It's all part of the urge toward figuration. You look out at the world and you're called to make gestures in response. And that's a primordial calling: goes all the way back to the cave painters. May even have preceded language. People are always asking me about my ancestors, and I say, Well there must have been a cave painter back there somewhere. Him scratching away on his cave wall, me dragging my thumb over this iPhone's screen. All part of the same passion."
The application he favors is Brushes. I also found another app called Sketchbook by Autodesk.
I began learning, playing and experimenting with both. Fun. As Hockney said, it's a great little portable tool. In your pocket. No mess. No rags filled with pigment, oils and the usual artistic beauty. When you're finished you turn off the machine.
Easy to upload, email, and share your art. Here are two examples of playful visual storytelling. A new iPhone gallery is in process.
Metta.
Hockney article in The New York Review of Books...read more.
Yesterday's face.
Autumn has no boundaries.
Greetings,
I began learning and experimenting with black and white photography. It was about varieties of film, Tri-X, and later Ilford. Grain. Film speed or ISO in photog talk.
Then the learning process of working in the darkroom; developing, making contact sheets, selecting negatives to print, grades and quality of paper, using various chemicals. Developer, fixer, stop-bath, water. Emulsion. A negative holder, enlarger, light management, f/stops, and a timer. Expose and process the paper through the chemicals.
Like magic, an image slowly appears. Looking for the contrast between shadows. Adjust the variables of time and exposure and play. Experiment.
It's easy to fall into the trap of using color, or does color use us? The eye is easily fooled because it is passive. Cut through the colorful clutter and express yourself through shades of gray.
As Picasso said, "I just want to know one thing. What is color?" A pigment of our retina cone imagination.
After finishing the Sapa galleries I decided to do a project documenting my neighborhood here in Ha Noi using the small brilliant laser-like Leica in the B&W mode.
No expectations, no logic. Keeping my blind eye open to light, movement and how they play. Do they play well with each other? That's a relationship question.
Some results were straight from the hip, the point-and-shoot-chance-is-all approach. No digital manipulation. Delightful. A dream dance.
A writer is lucky to get words down and try and make sense of them later. Same with making images. Here's to NOT making sense. Our brains have evolved to predict, establish meaning and detect patterns. Disorientation begets creative thinking.
Metta.
Share Article