Photographing You And ~
When You Make An Image, In A Very Real Way, You Are Photographing Relationship.
And you are photographing yourself -
Always
Those reading via Email: Click the top Banner, to open a beautiful viewing in the manner it was created and is intended for you.
So yes, I will indeed, be offering a small photography ‘e-course’.
I am not sure yet whether June - July - August, or Sept - Oct - Nov.
Six lenses of perception.
Twelve weeks.
Simple, inviting and provocative Lessons both creative and practical.
Because, I have realised the balm of the obvious:
Photography - any ‘graphy’ - is a practice of deep healing. And of Spirit.
And all of us, the all of us, our world; is nourished by balm. By Practice.
By that which grounds and locates and replenishes and wholes (heals) us.
And we need this now. We need the simple and the stability and the soothe.
It’s not that this is a first time awareness from me. Wandering rock pools most days as a tiny child navigating a terrifying home, later as a young mother with hospitalised PND and a tenuous grip on reality, later again as a mother and grandmother in the rip-sunder that is loss of daughter and granddaughters, and even further down the track in the shell shock of an intimate relational field electrically broken,
I’ve walked. I’ve made images.
Sure, as a four year old they were drawings.
Most other initiatory passages, they were with a camera in hand.
It heals me. It passages me.
And it heals us, this practice.
It brings us home, to our own bodies and to awareness of and relationship with, Others. Our Others! All of them. here with us, in this tumultuous Now.
For in reality:
they are us and we are them
we are each other.
we are joy and we are play and we are exuberance
we are deep appreciation and we are
reverence
we are a Prayer
to ourselves and to one an-other
Water. Sand. Rock.
Pools of saltwater and sandstone - and seaweeds, anemones, starfish, shells, tides, fishies. Colour. Kelp. Movement. Stillness. LIGHT! Wind.
Atmos. Ancestor. Way-finding.
Weather, and the presence of all ‘Others’. Listening to place and hearing its invitations forwards, along rock shelves, in rainforests, through tidal lagoons.
I asked a Question
A few days ago, on the place that is Instagram, I asked, ‘what you you like to explore with me - learn with me - in a photography ‘course’.
A generous individual stepped forward. Already a photographer.
They were curious about learning more abouthow to photograph light on water; and
how to image light in water.
These questions lit me up.
Because these questions get to the heart of the thing.
What I really hear, is ‘how do I translate photons (light), moving on and through that which forms both 2/3 of our planet and 2/3 of our body.
What I really hear, is ‘how can I image moving consciousness as it flows on and through form?’ (Which may not really be this person’s question, I know).
Water
Light
Movement (because neither are ever politely still).
So I made notes, harvesting my swirling childishly happy thoughts.
And then; I did what I always do:
I took the question to the Water itself.
I walked on the estuary and I asked. I listened.
And I realised . . . ahhh
It’s all so incredibly subjective.
The simple ‘reason’, is it’s YOU having the experience. Whatever you do, create, practice, engage with:
there you are
at the interface
it is you, having the experience and breathing on the cusp of imaging
it is you, in intimate entirely interwoven, conversation with a perceived ‘Other’; in this case, the one who is water, and the presence who is light.
It is you: Creating
Quantum physics speaks of the necessity for there to be ‘an observer’ for a phenomenon to exist. And therefore, for there to be at least two things always present; thing and thing observed. Other quantum physicists also maintain that actually three entities are always present;
thing 1 and thing 2 in relationship, observed by thing 3.
And that this is how the world is made form.
Yet I experience it a little differently.
I experience it as the essentiality of porosity.
Yes, I bring my ‘Narelle-ness’; the ‘me’ of my essence that is currently here.
But what I really need to do to make a photograph, is to drop that.
It’s become trendy and zeitgeist to speak of ‘interbeing’ and ‘entangled’ and ‘emplaced’ along with a lot of other words, which, yes, I also often use to attempt to language my experience for complete immersive resonance with the field I am standing within and that surrounds me. Because this is what ‘makes’ the image! This, is how I photograph.
An image might be born of lamentation. It might be born of wild joy. It might be an open question I am asking. It might be born of a reverent desire to truly ‘Altar’ that which I am standing in the presence of.
But it is always a relational field.
Me
this other (water, sand, rock . . . )
the moment:
One
Without this immersed ‘conversation’ of the kaleidoscopic dreaming;
it doesn’t exit.
I couldn’t make an image.
So, I am going to ask you here:
What would you want to ‘learn’, or open out with me,
in a photography e-course?
I do want to hear!
You can respond in the comments - more useful, since everyone can see what others have posted and reflect, respond, add their piece to this community conversation :)
or, you can email me.
Oh, and everything is born of love;
eve - er - y - thing.
Narelle
xx
so exciting!