Moving Image
The ecological self
To avoid assimilating the land to preconceived categories of thought I have identified methods that allow for a reciprocity between self and environment to emerge out of my practice in a non pre-emptive way. One of these methods involves being present in the west coast environment with no fixed goals, open and receptive, and with the intention of spending time. In this enterprise the camera has operated as an appendage, facilitating a deepening of my sensory acuity. This acuity is not limited to the visual, but tacitly engages all my senses. When using this method in the field I focus on my felt bodily sensations in response to elemental forces. Drifting passively with rips and currents while recording moving image, I surrender myself to the whims of the sea. Periodically submerged beneath breaking waves and buffeted by the elements, I enter into a state of heightened awareness.
This attention draws me into a meditative reciprocity with the wider environment. I have begun to employ this way of knowing in all my photography field trips. My body enters into a dialogue with the elements as I walk the coastline, sit gazing indolently out to sea, drift with ocean currents, or tumble in shoreline breaking surf. I feel the warm sun on my face, or the wet rain on my skin. I respond with my body and through the lens. Jane Bennett has described the kind of enchantment I feel in these moments in comparable terms. “Enchantment involves an experiential encounter in which one’s critical faculties are momentarily disrupted, and a sense of fullness and enjoyment ensues”.[1]
Employing this method of mindfulness, I walk the shoreline allowing myself to be drawn into an awareness of the dynamic life of the coast. When my attention is engaged by phenomena, I stop and shoot. My attention has varied across seasons, focusing on various elemental subjects: of rippling patterns in streams brushed by the disturbing flurries of gale force wind, swirling eddies scattering sand across the beach in constantly shifting deposits; of clouds sweeping the coastline broken by glancing beams of sunlight and sheets of squalling rain; of rhythmic immersions in shoreline breaking surf, drifting listlessly with rolling ocean currents that submerge into the green ocean depths.
I regard the inter-tidal area as both a literal and metaphoric threshold, registering converging movements as they unfold between the wind, the sun, the sea, and the land beneath my feet. The shoreline is in a constant state of transformation swept rhythmically by surging surf that advances and retreats leaving constantly shifting patterns in the sand. As clouds drift through reflective pools of light, I walk the beach advancing and retreating with the sweeping surf. I respond to changing light as it glances off surface and illuminates patterns in the sand and rippling water. I regard this rhythmic movement as a dialectic between self and environment. My photography unfolds over many hours in which I become immersed in a meditative state of interactive fascination. My attention is absorbed in such a way that I experience myself as participant in an enchanted dance. The environmental psychologist David Kidner notes that “Difference and relation … together make up a sort of dance that is part of the vitality of the natural world."[2] While photographing, I am not engaged in critical thought but rather relaxing into a concentrated state, responsive to the myriad interacting phenomena in the surroundings.
It would be disingenuous of me to suggest that my photography field trips always unfold as enchanted encounters with the more-than-human world. Invariably I am attended by conflicting currents of thought ready to punctuate my contemplative methods. Often-times thought arises unbidden, pulling me this way and that in streams of conjecture. I stand on the beach surveying the surroundings and I feel oppressed by the dullness of a grey cloudy day, or I resent the lashing assaults of squalling rain showers. I might question my methods and ask myself: Where is the photograph here? Why photograph at all?
In such moments I sit in the sand dunes, or alongside streams that empty into the sea. Relaxing into an awareness of the moment, I become a conduit for interacting aspects of mind and matter, I become porous. The rhythmic sweep of the waves draws me into their presence, the eddying gusts of wind converge with the transmuting environments of my heart and mind. This is how an ecological ethic unfolds in my practice. It is an ethic of spending time, of dropping beneath projections and opening to a receptive awareness of the environment.
During this process of thinking, photographing, spending time and reflecting, the lens has served as an appendage to my self, bringing me into a deeper and closer relationship with what I observe. In the process my point of view has become less separated from the object of attention, so that I find myself intimately involved as an inherent part of the ecology, and in this sense, the ecology that I set out to explore has opened as a plain of immanent potential. In rare moments I find myself close to being 'at one' with the more-than-human world.
Endnotes:
1 Bennett, J. (2001). The enchantment of modern life: Attachments, crossings, and ethics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. P.10
2 Kidner, D. W. (2001). Nature and psyche: Radical environmentalism and the politics of subjectivity. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. P.252
To avoid assimilating the land to preconceived categories of thought I have identified methods that allow for a reciprocity between self and environment to emerge out of my practice in a non pre-emptive way. One of these methods involves being present in the west coast environment with no fixed goals, open and receptive, and with the intention of spending time. In this enterprise the camera has operated as an appendage, facilitating a deepening of my sensory acuity. This acuity is not limited to the visual, but tacitly engages all my senses. When using this method in the field I focus on my felt bodily sensations in response to elemental forces. Drifting passively with rips and currents while recording moving image, I surrender myself to the whims of the sea. Periodically submerged beneath breaking waves and buffeted by the elements, I enter into a state of heightened awareness.
This attention draws me into a meditative reciprocity with the wider environment. I have begun to employ this way of knowing in all my photography field trips. My body enters into a dialogue with the elements as I walk the coastline, sit gazing indolently out to sea, drift with ocean currents, or tumble in shoreline breaking surf. I feel the warm sun on my face, or the wet rain on my skin. I respond with my body and through the lens. Jane Bennett has described the kind of enchantment I feel in these moments in comparable terms. “Enchantment involves an experiential encounter in which one’s critical faculties are momentarily disrupted, and a sense of fullness and enjoyment ensues”.[1]
Employing this method of mindfulness, I walk the shoreline allowing myself to be drawn into an awareness of the dynamic life of the coast. When my attention is engaged by phenomena, I stop and shoot. My attention has varied across seasons, focusing on various elemental subjects: of rippling patterns in streams brushed by the disturbing flurries of gale force wind, swirling eddies scattering sand across the beach in constantly shifting deposits; of clouds sweeping the coastline broken by glancing beams of sunlight and sheets of squalling rain; of rhythmic immersions in shoreline breaking surf, drifting listlessly with rolling ocean currents that submerge into the green ocean depths.
I regard the inter-tidal area as both a literal and metaphoric threshold, registering converging movements as they unfold between the wind, the sun, the sea, and the land beneath my feet. The shoreline is in a constant state of transformation swept rhythmically by surging surf that advances and retreats leaving constantly shifting patterns in the sand. As clouds drift through reflective pools of light, I walk the beach advancing and retreating with the sweeping surf. I respond to changing light as it glances off surface and illuminates patterns in the sand and rippling water. I regard this rhythmic movement as a dialectic between self and environment. My photography unfolds over many hours in which I become immersed in a meditative state of interactive fascination. My attention is absorbed in such a way that I experience myself as participant in an enchanted dance. The environmental psychologist David Kidner notes that “Difference and relation … together make up a sort of dance that is part of the vitality of the natural world."[2] While photographing, I am not engaged in critical thought but rather relaxing into a concentrated state, responsive to the myriad interacting phenomena in the surroundings.
It would be disingenuous of me to suggest that my photography field trips always unfold as enchanted encounters with the more-than-human world. Invariably I am attended by conflicting currents of thought ready to punctuate my contemplative methods. Often-times thought arises unbidden, pulling me this way and that in streams of conjecture. I stand on the beach surveying the surroundings and I feel oppressed by the dullness of a grey cloudy day, or I resent the lashing assaults of squalling rain showers. I might question my methods and ask myself: Where is the photograph here? Why photograph at all?
In such moments I sit in the sand dunes, or alongside streams that empty into the sea. Relaxing into an awareness of the moment, I become a conduit for interacting aspects of mind and matter, I become porous. The rhythmic sweep of the waves draws me into their presence, the eddying gusts of wind converge with the transmuting environments of my heart and mind. This is how an ecological ethic unfolds in my practice. It is an ethic of spending time, of dropping beneath projections and opening to a receptive awareness of the environment.
During this process of thinking, photographing, spending time and reflecting, the lens has served as an appendage to my self, bringing me into a deeper and closer relationship with what I observe. In the process my point of view has become less separated from the object of attention, so that I find myself intimately involved as an inherent part of the ecology, and in this sense, the ecology that I set out to explore has opened as a plain of immanent potential. In rare moments I find myself close to being 'at one' with the more-than-human world.
Endnotes:
1 Bennett, J. (2001). The enchantment of modern life: Attachments, crossings, and ethics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. P.10
2 Kidner, D. W. (2001). Nature and psyche: Radical environmentalism and the politics of subjectivity. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. P.252