Visual images are psychoactive. When the mind lights upon a photograph, it’s shaped by what it sees, changed in some small way.
Recently I awoke before dawn from a dream: I was looking at some of my framed photos which were hanging at a gallery. There was a descriptive plaque accompanying the images with one word etched upon it: Panpsychism. In the darkness, I fumbled for pen, wondering…is there such a word? I scribbled it down, and fell back to sleep. When I woke up I searched online and found this: “Panpsychism is the philosophical view that consciousness is fundamental and ubiquitous in the world. It states thatmind, or soul (psyche) is a universal and primordial feature of all things—it is the doctrine or belief that everything material, however small, has an element of individual consciousness.” I guess I was a Panpsychist and didn’t know it:)
When learning how to focus the camera, I would give myself an exercise to find the place within the lens that was the equivalent of the closest eye. I’d read that in portraiture, the nearest eye must be in sharp focus. This makes the image feel right even if we don’t know why. So when photographing close ups of flowers, seascapes, or crows, I would search for the equivalent of the closest eye. Eventually I started getting the feeling that nature was looking back me with a sort of a mutual curiosity. That sense of reciprocation sort of stayed with me, informing my art.
When I share the photos I take, it’s a way to take you along with me on my nature walks. I live in this sweet little hamlet along the central Oregon coast, where my neighbors are surfers, poets, painters, musicians, and all form of nature lovers. We all seem to be in love with nature. I just happen to believe that nature loves us back.
