Photography is a bit like electricity: We know how to use it, but we don’t really know what it is. My yearning is to get deeper and deeper within the medium to ideal picture that’s “A Photograph,” not an example of what photography can do or how it’s applied but what “A Photograph” would be. Don’t tell me what it looks like, or how it’s done. What is it? And I know in answering that question successfully one would not only define the medium but would make a photograph unlike any we’ve previously.

You see, if you’re making a painting it’s additive - you keep adding on brush strokes until you finished. When I do photography I’m more like the guy who’s chipping away - subtracting at the sculpture, chipping away at the stone block. I take as much out of the picture as I can. So I get into it just what I really want. The graphic quality in a photograph is only as good as the feeling it produces.

Samuel Goldburn really put it very succinctly when he said: “If you have a message send a telegram.” Well, I don’t have a message to another person in my photographs whatsoever - I’m simply working with the medium.

What people like to refer to as “The Message” is all about my personal dialogue, introspection, self-communication. Now if you must call that a message, go right ahead, but it’s not a message in the normal context of the word. A message is from one person to another.

Ralph Gibson
A Few of the Legend. A Series by Peter Adams
LensWork No.43

I must admit that is not a photograph, it is a snapshot. But still I like it. It is funny, it is kind. It brings smile to your face. What more can I ask for? There is a little story behind it, there is not much to tell, but at least it explains weird wigs and girls excitement. That was summer of 2003 and I found myself in Minneapolis, Minnesota at Twin Cities Open Dancesport Championship. The tradition of such competitions is to mix actual dancesport rounds with little shows presented by dance studios. The movie “Chicago” based on the Broadway show with the same name was a hit that year. Every dance studio on every dancesport competition I was that year felt obligated to do its own interpretation of “Come on babe - Why don’t we paint the town? - And all that Jazz!” These girls were about to enter the dance floor when I slipped in front them drawing their attention with my camera and big bracket flash. Photographer! Say “Cheese!” - somebody said. The girls happily obliged and put on a huge smile, I snapped my picture and the next moment they poured out on the dance floor. “And all that Ja-a-azz!”

Yesterday I had a privilege of attending an opening of a group show in Atlas Gallery on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. It is one of the most prestigious contemporary art galleries in Chicago.

One of the artists is Vladimir Pailodze, whom I have an honor to call my friend. He is extremely talented artist. His paintings are unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. They are radiant, warm, very kind with a great sense of a humor.

I was lucky enough to be introduced to another brilliant artist - Sergey Tyukanov. His paintings overflow with boundless fantasy: sausages and hotdogs fighting with human kind, flying castles which look like shoes or half moon, high fashion for cats made with kitchen utensils, fish bones, musical instruments, alarm clock and fruits. Sergey’s exquisite and delicate watercolors and etchings are so full of details that gallery supplied a magnifying glass for better viewing. We talked and talked. About things like making art is process of constant self-education, how hard and dreadful it can be to actually produce what is called art, at what moment the work comes to a finished state… It was a great pleasure.

The show was a great success. The gallery could not even fit all the public. The population of shrimp was severely depleted and the barman seemed to have four hands pouring out all the wine and Champaign.

Vladimir Pailodze in a heated discussion in front of his gorgeous canvas “Daydreams” (or just “Aunty Sonya”).

Sergey Tyukanov arguing about landing spot for his Flying Shoes Castle.

Excitement of the public flew high. After floating in rivers of Champaign and splashing in chocolate fountain some of distinguished representatives of the honored public could not contain themselves and had to be carried away from an unbearable light of the Great Art.

Sergiy,

I truly appreciate your very honest and sincere comment to the previous entry in my blog. Not very often people talk and discuss such things as meaning of life. I started to write you an answer but it grew up in something bigger than a simply reply. I took a liberty of quoting your message and posting it along with my answer to you as separate entry in my blog. I hope it is ok with you. I believe these things are important and I don’t want them to get lost somewhere in comment archives.

Here it is:

I knew you were going there. All your recent posts showed it clearly and it was just a matter of time when the main question was going to be posted - the meaning of life. I bet everyone in their life has asked this question once and so have I. Sure enough; it was painful to find a satisfying answer. Nothing seems to be right or make sense at all. Then I figured that that was exactly the problem. Trying to find the reasoning, I mean. Sounds strange, doesn’t it? But it worked! Well, at least for me.

When one is looking for the answer to the meaning of life he or she is never searches for the answer to the meaning of death. Why, indeed? Death is the natural end of life. It’s clear and hence does not require an answer. Period. But is it really the answer? Does one really know what death is? You can’t really answer this question until you are there and when you are there you cannot communicate back to those who are alive. Meaning what? Meaning, we don’t ask ourselves this “meaningless” question and rather focus on searching the answer to the meaning of life instead.

If you are asking where the heck I am getting at, I tell you to the answer I found for myself, my friend. The meaning of life is merely life itself in its infinite variety of biological forms including us, human beings. It is as simple as it gets. I believe that the answer mustn’t be complicated. I think simplicity rules the Universe. One can like it or not, but on that scale nothing matters at all. All is everything and everything is all.

The Why we live is not a question to me, but the Why we think is. Human’s mind is the biggest mystery to us, life forms.

* * *

Same as you were I was searching for an ultimate answer to this ultimate question. And at age of sixteen or seventeen I came to a logical conclusion similar to yours but more “mathematically rational” in a sense: there is no answer since the question is stated incorrectly. It does not meaning that ultimate question to the meaning of life does not exists, nor does it exists for that matter. It only means that we are asking an improper question. It reminds me and old anecdote: An airplane pilot asks his navigator - “Course?” and navigator answers - “33!”, “What’s 33?”, asks the pilot and the navigator replies - “But what’s the course?”

The fascination I found in Viktor Frankl’s ideas is that he completely turned around tables on you. He writes:

Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, rather must recognize that is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.

What does it mean? It means that we should stop asking ultimate question of meaning of life but instead give answers since we are who being questioned. What questions you may ask? The questions we are faced every day, every hour. We may not even verbalize these questions, but they do exist. We, humans, are proud of the fact that we are the only beings on this planet who possess consciousness, free will. We make conscience decisions and actions every day, every hour. They constitute our life, our being.

Unlike an animal, man is no longer told by drives and instincts what he must do. And in contrast to man in former times, he is no longer told by traditions and values what he should do. Now, knowing neither what he must do nor what he should do, he sometimes does not even know what he basically wishes to do. Instead, he wishes to do what other people do… or he does what other people wish him to do…

So, the questions are: Why do you do what you do? What is the meaning of your daily conscience decisions and actions? What is the purpose? We have been told that we have a free will. But what is the meaning of things we are willing? What is that you want and WHY do you want it?

It may seem that we made a circle and we are back to the same old question about meaning of life. Not at all. There is a very distinct difference between an old search for ultimate question for meaning of life and answering questions about meaning that life asks you. The quest for meaning of life, if you dig deeper, refers to life as a fate, mission, or destiny, extrageneous and indifferent to you, your wills and desires. You must fulfill it. Period. It is forced upon you. There is no escape. It is like death. On other hand, being questioned by life is intimately personal and ultimately unique. It comes to a simple question: What is that I want in my life? And the question the life asks you in turn: Why? What is the meaning of it? Often we are lost to answer even to the first question. And sometimes it might take a lifetime to answer the second one…

That’s what I think about it…

A couple years I was driving from Mount Rainier to Palouse in Eastern Washington. I was looking forward to see for the first time Palouse region which suppose to be looking like my beloved Tuscany in Italy. I wanted to get there by sunset and I was focused on the road and did not pay much attention to surroundings. Till I saw this windmill on a top of the ridge somewhere after Yakima. A flock of perfect puffy clouds was streaming across aquamarine blue sky, endless yellow wheat fields rolled through the hills up to horizon and this windmill - it was like an exclamation point to all this wonder. I stopped my car, got out, tried several compositions and hurried again towards Palouse. What a pity! I found nothing even comparable to this place in Palouse. At least at that day. Now, two years later I discovered these pictures again. I made panorama from seven vertical frames and posted it to my website. And I found myself returning to this photograph again and again. There is something magical in it for me. Even though I am very critical to my photographic creations I must say - I like this photograph. I am proud of it.

I’m on the second book by Viktor Frankl - Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning. I usually skip forewords and prefaces but this time few sentences have caught my eye and I read Preface to the book very carefully. The offered passage is quite big but I like very much Viktor Frankl’s flow of thought towards religion. It cleared some mess in my head and I found it very helpful, well, at least for me.

* * *

The concept of religion in its widest possible sense, as it is here espoused, certainly goes far beyond the narrow concepts of God promulgated by many representatives of denominational and institutional religion. They often depict, not to say denigrate, God as a being who is primarily concerned with being believed in by the greatest possible number of believers, and along the lines of a specific creed, at that. “Just believe,” we are told, “and everything will be okay.” But alas, not only is this order based on a distortion of any sound concept of deity, but even more importantly it is doomed to failure: Obviously, there are certain activities that simply cannot be commanded, demanded, or ordered, and as it happens, the triad “faith, hope, and love” belongs to this class of activities that elude an approach with, so to speak, “command characteristics.” Faith, hope, and love cannot be established by command simply because they cannot be established at will. I cannot “will” to believe, I cannot “will” to hope, I cannot “will” to love - and at least of all can I “will” to will.

Upon closer investigation it turns out that what underlies the attempt to establish faith, hope, love, and will by command is manipulative approach. The attempt to bring these states about at will, however, is ultimately based on an inappropriate objectification and reification of these human phenomena: They are turned into mere things, into mere objects. However, since faith, hope, love, and will are so-called “intentional” acts or activities, along the lines of the terminology coined by Edmund Husserl and Max Scheler, the founders of the school of “phenomenology”, these activities are directed to “intentional” referents - in other words, to objects of their own. To the extent that one makes intentional acts into objects, he loses sight of their objects. Nowhere, to my knowledge, is this brought home to us more strikingly than with the uniquely human phenomenon of laughter: You cannot order anyone to laugh - if you want him to laugh, you must tell him a joke.

But isn’t it, in a way, the same with religion? If you want people to have faith and belief in God, you cannot rely on preaching along the lines of a particular church but must, in the first place, portray your God believably - and you must act credibly yourself. In other words, you have to do very opposite of what so often is done by representatives of organized religion when they build up an image of God as someone who is primarily interested in being believed in and who is rigorously insists that those who believe in him be affiliated with a particular church. Small wonder that such representatives of religion behave as though the saw the main task of their own denomination as that of overriding other denominations.

Certainly the trend is away from religion conceived in such a strictly denominational sense. Yet this is not to imply that, eventually, there will be a universal religion. On the contrary, if religion is to survive, it will have to be profoundly personalized…

To all appearances, religion is not dying, and insofar as this is true, God is not dead either, not even “after Auschwitz,” to quote the title of a book. For either belief in God is unconditional or it is not belief at all. If it is unconditional it will stand and face that six million died in the Nazi holocaust; if it is not unconditional it will fall away if only a single innocent child has to die - to resort to an argument once advanced by Dostoevski. There is no pint in bargaining with God, say, by arguing: “Up to six thousand or even one million victims in the holocaust I maintain my belief in Thee; but from one million upward nothing can be done any longer, and I am sorry but I must renounce my belief in Thee.”

The truth is that among those who actually went through the experience of Auschwitz, the number of those whose religious life was deepened - in spite of, not because of, this experience - by far exceeds the number of those who gave up their belief. To paraphrase what La Rochefoucauld once remarked with regard to love, one might say that just as the small fire is extinguished by the storm while a large fire is enhanced by it - likewise a weak faith is weakened by predicaments and catastrophes, whereas a strong faith is strengthened by them.

Viktor Frankl
Preface to the First English Edition
Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning

I’m reading Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl and I cannot put it down. I am a fast reader and usually I quickly scan page after page. Here I found myself reading and re-reading paragraphs and pages again and again. I wish I have read this book when I was sixteen. I realize now how much we were deprived of books back in the Soviet Union even though we were “the most reading nation”. But that is another story.

Viktor Frankl was an extraordinary man. Like so many Jews during World War II he was cast into the Nazi network of concentration camps. Miraculously, he survived. Later he became an accomplished scientist, the founder of Logotherapy and Existential Analysis, a meaning-centered and humanistic approach to psychotherapy. In his book Viktor Frankl describes his experiences as a concentration camp prisoner and offers his way in finding meaning in life, even it is lived in the most sordid conditions. He quotes the words of Nietzshe: “He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.” The prisoners who gave up on life, who had lost all hope for future, who had lost the Why were doomed. They were dying less than from lack of food or medicine but rather from lack of hope, lack of something to live for. As terrible as it was, Viktor Frankl’s experience in concentration camps had brought him to his most powerful idea: life is not a quest for pleasure and happiness, but quest for meaning.

* * *

What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We have to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life - daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment. Thus it is impossible to define the meaning of life in a general way. Questions about meaning of life can never be answered by sweeping statements. “Life” does not mean something vague, but something very real and concrete, just as life’s tasks are also very real and concrete. They form man’s destiny, which is different and unique for each individual. No man and no destiny can be compared with any other man or any other destiny. No situation repeats itself, and each situation calls for a different response. Sometimes the situation in which a man finds himself may require him to shape his own fate by action. At other times it is more advantageous for him to make use of an opportunity for contemplation and to realize assets in this way. Sometimes man may be required simply to accept fate, to bear his cross. Every situation is distinguished by its uniqueness, and there is always only one right answer to the problem posed by the situation at hand.

When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.

For us, as prisoners, these thoughts were not speculations far removed from reality. They were the only thoughts that could be help to us. They kept us from despair, even when there seemed to be no chance of coming out of it alive. Long ago we had passed the stage of asking what was the meaning of life, a naive query which understands life as the attaining of some aim through the active creation of something of value. For us, the meaning of life embraced the wider cycles of life and death, of suffering and of dying.

* * *

…the story of the young woman whose death I witnessed in a concentration camp. It is a simple story. There is little to tell and it may sound as if I had invented it; but to me it seems like a poem.

This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. “I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard,” she told me. “In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously.” Pointing through the windows of the hut, she said, “This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness.” Through that window she could see just a branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. “I often talk to this tree,” she said to me. I was startled and didn’t quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. “Yes.” What did it say to her? She answered, “It said to me, ‘I am here — I am here — I am life, eternal life.’”

Bosque del Apache is national wildlife refuge just one and half hours south on I-25 from Albuquerque in New Mexico. Here, in lakes and marshes along Rio Grande River is a place where tens of thousands of migratory birds including sandhill cranes, Arctic geese, and many kinds of ducks gather each fall and stay through the winter.

The most spectacular thing to watch in Bosque del Apache is the morning flyout. It occurs at sunrise when the first rays of ascending sun hit the Rio Grande valley. Exactly at this moment every morning thousands of geese wake up and take off simultaneously in one thunderous explosion of thousands of wings. It sounds like a jet fighter taking off. It is an awesome sight: the pond empties in only a few seconds, and multiple layers of geese fly low overhead at different altitudes and slightly different headings, frantically calling and honking to keep family groups together.

Bosque del Apache is prime spot for congregation of bird photographers as well. They flock here in dozens and line up every morning along the pond waiting for the flyout. With expensive cameras and huge telephoto lenses. It is a photographic subculture. Everybody seems to know everybody. They come to Bosque del Apache year after year. Oh, and if you have lens less than 400mm you are, well, not really cool.

I was there too. Following the crowd I mounted the biggest telephoto lens I have on my camera and set it up on a tripod. Made several frames waiting for the flyout. And then it came to me - the main subject is not the birds, it is the photographers. Their grotesque silhouettes and silhouettes of their tripods against the bright hues of sunrise sky created a perfect picture. I quickly changed telephoto to wide angle lens on my camera and literally started to crawl on the ground looking for the right composition. I found it with one of the photographers using his handheld medium format camera surrounded with his other two cameras on tripods. And at this moment the flyout happened. It lasted only few seconds but I’ve got my picture: a silhouette of photographer against the mass of ascending birds in the morning sky.

I have open channels for communication on my website. I try to communicate: I make and post to the website my photographs, I write this blog. Everybody can see my photographs and read my blog. And everybody can communicate back to me - write comments for the photographs or blog entries, send me emails. This is a communication back to me. It is like a walkie-talkie: you talk into this thing in hope that somebody will hear you, then you say “over” and listen. Well, most of the time all I hear is just radio static, but sometimes I do receive communication back - emails, comments, notes. From friends who watch my website. Thank you.

Recently I run into a problem. I received a negative communication. Well, at least I understood it as negative. It was quite unexpected. I am trying to project positive energy and expecting in return a positive feedback. Apparently my efforts could be interpreted in negative sense, with distrust and suspicion.

So, what do I do? Do I fight back? Or drop everything because some people think that what I do is bullshit, and I am just a lair? This is the first natural reaction, acute stress response: fight or flight. Doing so is losing your path, your true self. It is in fact an open permission for others to manipulate with you, your soul. Fighting back creates nothing but negative energy. Wars start from simple misunderstandings. On other hand, hiding away in a cave and eating yourself out is not an option either. Creating positive energy is a constant process, it is a duty. Doing nothing eventually destroys you.

The answer is - face your fears, engage yourself in battle. The battle within youself…

BK: You once mentioned to me, and I think it’s a great term, that you try to make your prints “sing”.

JS: I think a print should invite the viewer to look at it, engage the viewer, and sustain the viewer’s attention. I have seen prints by others - and perhaps a few that I’ve done myself - that have etched themselves into my mind’s eye, and find it difficult to stop looking at the print. Occasionally I have seen black-and-white photographic prints that appear to be illuminated from within, that seem to have a life of their own beyond that of the subject matter, a radiant energy and luminosity. I like to think of the process of photography being as much about “listening” as it is about looking. Not necessarily listening with one’s ears, but being receptive with one’s being.

BK: Not looking, but seeing.

JS: Exactly. Experiencing what is in the image itself, in the light, in the dark, in the shades of gray. Just as music is not only the notes - but the silence and the resonance between the notes - the same applies to a photograph. If you’re lucky and everything comes together there’s an ambience, a radiance, of not just luminosity, but of inspiration.

BK: So do you think a great photograph is about the feeling it evokes?

JS: Absolutely. You can have a piece of writing that tells a story in a concise and compelling way and is quite informational. You can also have a piece of writing that tells the same story, but it’s inspirational. The latter will be the story that will be remembered. It’s not just about information, it’s about the ability to inspire - to expand one’s knowledge, awareness, and understanding. I think that great writing, great music, great photographs, great paintings, have a universal quality. I don’t know that you can consciously interject that into an image - the only way you might be fortunate enough to occasionally accomplish that is to make a lot of photographs.

BK: How important do you think it is in life to be inspired?

JS: I think that inspiration is a positive force in the world and is something that human beings can bring to the planet. Inspiration stimulates hope - it’s hope for a better future, it’s hope that tomorrow I’ll feel like I’ve done something better than today. I think that photography can, in an uplifting way, show us a promise of a better tomorrow. It can also, in a terrifying way, show us the importance of things that didn’t go right - it can inspire us to prevent those things from happening again. In the best circumstances I think we can inspire one another, and when you’re inspired you have the opportunity to do something worthwhile.

An Interview with John Sexton
Interviewed by Brian Klligrew
LensWork No. 46