Reality. Or not.
[This is a spin-off from a post entitled WYNDHAM LEWIS - PORTRAITS, RECTANGLES, JUXTAPOSITIONS from the blog of the magnificent Natalie. I need to post a picture which I don't know how to do on Natalie's blogspace.]
Right then. The blog to which I refer above led to a little exploration of “reality”. I commented that my reality had no shape. Natalie challenged me to represent this.
This representation is a funny business. What do you assume about your subject in presenting something that can never of course be your subject, but is to be seen as representative of your subject? What do you assume of viewers/listeners/those who experience the representation?
You will be relieved to know that I have considered none of of this and unabashedly present this image, not as something that represents reality but rather is some sort of springboard for me in contemplating reality. That clear to you? Well, explain it to me, please, ha ha. I know nothing of what I speak. But to the image:
[It is well worth taking the time to see a larger version of this image on that old standby Flickr.]
A bit of background here:
I live on the Central Coast of New South Wales, Australia. This is about 4.30 am or pm on the clock-face of our continent, if you can imagine that. We have superb beaches around here (and lots of other stuff) – this one is about 30 minutes drive north of us but well worth the visit. Nine Mile Beach it is called, unimaginatively. I took this shot last year, about mid-July, I think – our winter, so not many people around.
So – reality? This image makes me sense reality: wide, far, soaring, boundless (although we are constrained to a frame to represent it), our insignificance within it (hinted at by the footprints that will be washed away and the little people at a distance down there), its abstraction but with some physicality, its power to regenerate …. much much more in that vein.
I need to ask you just to contemplate the picture, preferably the large one, less I soil this with further words. Then hopefully, you will get a glimpse of reality. At least, I do.
The end!
Filed under: beach, my story, new south wales, photography | 5 Comments
Tags: beach, picture of reality, picturing reality, reality, shape of reality
Search
-
You are currently browsing the alvason's Weblog weblog archives.
the boundless ocean with its suggestion of order, the line of waves … the solid earth with its suggestion of instability, the wet sand … horizon with its beckoning light, something to yearn for, surrender too, be pulled by, because to stay present and be with the vastness is daunting, easier to move on …. the humans, small, insignificant, persistent … and who would guess at the mystery within those creatures … that they can comprehend the parts and see it as a whole
Adam, I’m so glad I asked! This is such a brilliant and multi-layered response to the subject. The photo (ie your attempt to picture your own shape of reality) is stunning, a perfect image to induce far-ranging reflections. I also resonate very much with what you wrote:
“…..What do you assume about your subject in presenting something that can never of course be your subject, but is to be seen as representative of your subject?”
This is exactly how I felt about drawing the ‘God Interviews’ cartoons and, in general, about the whole God-subject.
Mundane questions: where were you standing to get such an amazing view? Are you on a cliff? A high building? A helicopter?
Is that actually the curvature of the earth at the horizon?
Those tracks in the sand in the foreground, what animals made them? They don’t look like human feet but maybe so?
gregory, Natalie – thank you both so much for your response to my post. “Reality”, I suppose, is an abstract concept and hence can not be pictured. But I feel, as I tried to explain, that images can trigger glimpses of what reality may be and I am so pleased you have seen a little of what I was trying to convey.
Natalie – I am standing on the beach here, the tracks are human (blurred by the water as it passed in and out) – I think they are mine as I walked to this position hence not entirely human ha ha. I confess to cheating with the computer and altering the horizon for no other reason than I wanted to – the best of all reasons.
Thank you both so much. I really love looking at this picture. But of course I have also the sounds, the breeze, the smell of the sea …
Thanks, Adam. I forgot to say that I love the colours too, that special shade of lapis lazuli blue and the ochre sand. Colours often found on ancient Egyptian bas-reliefs which, of course, I am very fond of.
I have contemplate and it is perfectly clear to me
But I cannot explain as my brain is like the wet sand at the ocean’s edge.