Dukkha

The first Noble Truth In Buddhism

"Dukkha, then, names the pain that to some degree colors all finite existence. The exact meaning of the First Noble Truth is this: Life (in the condition it has got itself into) is dislocated. Something has gone wrong. It is out of joint"(Huston Smith on the Buddha's teachings)

"He [Buddha] went on to pinpoint six moments when life's dislocation becomes glaringly apparent.

1. The trauma of birth. The birth experience "involves just such a concatenation of painful feelings, of discharges and excitation, and of bodily sensations, as have become a prototype for all occasions on which life is endangered, ever after to be reproduced in us as the dread of all life's anxiety conditions"(Huston Smith).

Smith, Huston. "The World's Religions." Harper Collins. New york, New York. 1991

Huston Smith is widely regarded as the most eloquent and accessible contemporary authority on the history of religions. He has taught at Washington University, M.I.T., Syracuse University, and the University of California at Berkeley.

After taking pictures of my grandmother at just eight hours old I saw the images from the video in a different light. At first I was intent on capturing the beauty of this imagery. Afterward I could see that these pictures could take on a new meaning, focusing more on the trauma of birth. I have studied Hinduism and Buddhism in religion classes and am also studying Hinduism in more depth with my Yoga training. These pictures reminded me of the First Noble Truth, Dukkha. Many believe that this first experience in life is the root cause of all life's problems. I am not saying that this is exactly what I want my work to say, It is a possibility though. I am also interested in looking at more of Hindu and Buddhist teachings. Especially concerning life's different stages. I feel that this could add another layer to my project. I am very interested in this and it may inspire my work. It already has inspired me to look for more in this project.

John Reuter

Web Site- http://www.johnreuter.com/index.html

Bio And Explanation of Work- John Reuter was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1953. He was raised in California and moved to New York to attend SUNY Geneseo. It was there that he began to study photography and art.
"Internationally known artist John Reuter has had a consistent approach to photography since the early 1970s. He works with a variety of media to transform an existing reality into something else. Usuallly his subject matter either involves the human figure and its interaction with its surroundings, or emphasizes an emotional state." Reuter's moste recent images are digital collages constructed from nineteenth-century portraits that he found in thrift shops and combined with backgrounds from Ellis Island and the Lower East SideTenement Museum, Where he sought Detiorated rooms." (Kathleen Thormond Carr)

Interview-

http://www.johnpaulcaponigro.com/lib/artists/reuter.php

Supporting Galleries- Museum of Modern Art

Process

"As an artist who is more interested in the process than the product, who works through the medium to discover and ultimately know and understand both himself and his world, Callahan does not think of ion terms of creating photographic masterpieces, singular and complete unto themselves." Sarah Greenough on Harry Callahan

Sarah Greenough is senior curator of photographs at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. She was the founding curator of photographs at the National Gallery where she has organized numerous exhibitions, including Alfred Stieglitz (1983), On the Art of Fixing a Shadow: 150 Years of Photography (1989), Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries (2001), André Kertész (2005), and Irving Penn: Platinum Prints (2005) that have also traveled to museums around the world. Most recently, she was co-curator of The Art of the American Snapshot, 1888-1978: From the Collection of Robert E. Jackson (2007) and organized Richard Misrach: On the Beach (2008) for exhibition at the National Gallery of Art.

Greenough is the author of many publications, including Walker Evans: Subways and Streets (1991), Robert Frank: Moving Out (1994), Harry Callahan (1996), Alfred Stieglitz: The Key Set (2002), and All the Mighty World: The Photographs of Roger Fenton, 1852–1860 (2004), with Malcolm Daniel and Gordon Baldwin.
Her exhibitions and publications have won many awards, including the International Center of Photography Publications Award for On the Art of Fixing a Shadow: 150 Years of Photography and the George Wittenborn Memorial Book Award for Alfred Stieglitz: The Key Set. In 2007, she and co-author Diane Waggoner won the College Art Association’s Alfred H. Barr, Jr. award for outstanding museum scholarship for their exhibition catalogue, The Art of the American Snapshot: 1888–1978. (http://www.nga.gov/press/bios/greenough.shtm)

I found this statement very interesting. The outcome, the finished product is often thought of as being much more important than the actual process that formed the finished piece. With Callahan's work his process took most of his life. He kept on working, not looking for a "masterpiece", but working for the sake of process both technically and in his life. His subjects changed and aged with time as did his ideas, techniques, processes, and visions with his work.

I am interested in process as being a major theme in my work. Going from an 8mm film camera, to a VHS, to the television or projector, then being recorded again onto film and being reproduced in a tangible form, on paper in the darkroom. I don't feel that process is the most important theme in my project but it is an important component. In past experiences, working through different photographic processes, the process usually takes me and my work somewhere I had not expected when I first started. I am excited to start the process, with an idea, and see how things evolve with time and work.

Jock Sturges

Bio: Jock Sturges is a fine art photographer based in San Francisco, California. Best known for his nudes and extended portraits of families in Northern California counter-culture communities and on European naturist beaches, his large format images borrow significantly from classical periods in both photography and nineteenth and early twentieth century painting. Represented by 16 galleries in six countries, Sturges' work is also to be found in the collection of many of the world's museums including The Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris and The Frankfurt Museum of Modern Art in Germany.

Artist Statement: "My work is all about relationship and people whom I've known for a really long time. I'm fond of saying that 99 percent of my time as a photographer is not spent taking pictures; it's spent doing the social work that makes the pictures possible -- spending time with people, knowing who they are, helping them with different aspects of their lives, eating together, knowing them. And that makes the pictures possible"

Interview 1: http://www.amadelio.com/vlog/2008/01/10/vlog-videoblog-jock-sturges-line-of-beauty-and-grace

Interview 2: http://www.johnpaulcaponigro.com/lib/artists/sturges.php

Supporting Gallery: http://www.bernarduccimeisel.com/artistBio.php?id_artist=22

Sturges printing style is what caught my eye at first. I like the sepia toned prints and the vingetting on some of his pictures. Very Sall Mann like. His prints are seamless. The tones are beautiful. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that he works with large format cameras. I was also very drawn to his subject matter. All of his portraits are very personal. You can see that he is showing more than beauty. There is more emotional depth to his work.

Memory

"Memory is the primary instrument, the inexhaustible nutrient source." Sally Mann

"For me, those pointed lessons of impermanence are softened by the unchanging scape of my life, the durable realities" Sally Mann

Mann, Sally. "Immediate Family." Aperture Foundation Inc. New York, New York. 1992.

Sally Mann is a nationally known and respected photographer. Her work is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and many many more. Her work deals mostly with family and memories. Although her work is very personal, her subject matter can relate to all. The ideas of memory, family, death, birth, and impermanence are a part of everyone's life.

I am going to experiment with another idea for my senior portfolio project. I have always been happiest and done my best work when dealing with subjects that are close to me. Subjects that I care deeply for. I plan on working with old family movies dating from the the day my Grandmother was born all the way up through the recent past, with me as a child. Impermanence is a reality, our life will eventually consist of memories once we have passed. Time will continue and more moments will turn into memories. Families are linked through time and memories.

Emmet Gowin

To view more photos: http://photography-now.net/emmet_gowin/portfolio1.html

Emmet Gowin does not have an official but is in a number of online galleries and very well known and respected.

Explanation of Work:

Gowin first gained attention with his intimate portraits of his wife and family. His almost exclusive use of a large format camera led to both optical and darkroom experiments. Using a 4x5 lens with an 8x10 camera allowed Gowin to expose the full image circle, surrounded by a dramatic vignette, in his family portraits and rural landscapes.

Beginning with a trip to Washington State soon after Mt. Saint Helens erupted, Gowin began taking aerial photographs. For the next twenty years, Gowin captured strip mining sites, nuclear testing fields, large-scale agricultural fields and other scars in the natural landscape.

Review/interview: http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/4aa/4aa533.htm

I was not familiar with Emmet Gowin's aerial photographs. This work deals with "assaults in nature." What caught my eye were the large scale agricultural fields. He describes them as scars in the natural landscape. I found it interesting that he was making this statement in the early ninteies and so many of the senior portfolio projects, as well as mine, are dealing with this same idea of human destruction and the natural world.

Price

" Whenever I hear people say clean food is expensive, I tell them it's actually the cheapest food you can buy. That always gets their attention. Then I explain that, with our food, all of the costs are figured into the price. Society is not bearing the cost of water pollution, of antibiotic resistance, of food-borne illnesses, of crop subsidies, of subsidized oil and water--of all the hidden costs to the environment and the taxpayer that make cheap food seem cheap. No thinking person will tell you they don't care about all that. I tell them the choice is simple: You can buy honestly priced food or you can buy irresponsibly priced food."- Joel Salatine

Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore's Dilemma: a natural history of four meals.Ney York:Penguin Press, 2006.

Joel Salatin is the owner of Polyface farm in Virginia's Shenendoah Valley. He raises a ha;f dozen different species and practices a completely organic way of farming. He gave this quote in an interview with Michael Pollan, a botanist and leader in the clean food revolution.

Many people use the argument that organic food is too expensive and not worth spending their money on. Here the owner of Polyface farm discounts this argument. Uknowingly Americans are spending their money on processed, government subssidized food. Although you are buying something cheaper from a large, chain grocer you have already spent your tax dollars on the growing of industrial crops to make the processed food. The cost this has on the environment is much higher than if you bought local and organinc. So many people look at orgainic foood as being expensive, when in reality it is what food should cost.