From the Introduction to Discovery: Inner and Outer Worlds, Portfolio II of the Friends of Photography, 1970.
SPACE AND TIME
1962 Photography, Vol. 17, No. 9, pp. 42-49.
For a number of years I have felt the need for being consciously aware that nature is not alone a three dimensional world of external appearances that our physical senses perceive as objects, but equally a world in which all things have a fourth dimension. This added dimension is perceived by still undefined senses that make up the mind. This has led me to search for the meaning of the fourth dimension.
I am convinced that for the creative painter or photographer to interpret an object in terms of its external surface dimensions is to see the object superficially. Searching deeper into the nature of things, I ask myself what makes one person more interesting visually than another person or one tree different or more meaningful than another tree.
Ordinarily, objects are seen and felt most easily and strongly in the ever-recurring now of time. Seen in this way the meaning of a particular tree is imprisoned in an attitude of mind that tends to limit its reality to its surface appearance. The five senses on a physical level can only react by outside stimulation in the ever-recurring now. They cannot bring back the past or respond to the future reality of anything because three-dimensionality is the function of the senses. So reality to the physical senses always remains only a tiny fraction of the reality of the tree.
This level of reality is a static experience which only the mind can make dynamic by blending past, present and future into a greater measure of reality. The present is only an intersection in the time of every event in the universe. It is like the single frame of a motion picture film. When the single frame is seen the motion stops. It is a function of the creative mind to overcome the inertia of the (now) perceived reality.
When Cartier-Bresson referred to the decisive moment of taking a picture he meant, I feel, the mirrored moment that expresses the object so as to evoke in the mind of the viewer significant and inner qualities.
Once the mind is aware of the profound difference between seeing an object for its three-dimensionality only, and seeing it fourth-dimensionally as an event in time and space, only then does the mind search for and find symbols to express this added dimension.
This is a desired goal in all mediums of art expression. The greatness of music in large part is related to the fact that it is not basically a three dimensional medium of expression. It seeks its meaning in the infinite and invisible world of sound, which in itself is a fourth-dimensional event. It differs from the object world as a source of material for the creative mind, in that the object on the visual level is limited by its own meaning as an event. As such this acts as a limitation in terms of creative expression. Sound, on the other hand, is an event of far greater magnitude related in fact to all objects and all space, thereby offering unlimited creative possibilities in terms of source material.
Visual expressions of all kinds in terms of fourth-dimensional meanings have been held back, relative to music, because of the many utilitarian and practical reasons for expressing objects literally. However, in the last hundred years painting has advanced rapidly in freeing itself from this practical emphasis to one of abstract expression that relates it more, in terms of freedom of expression, to music.
As a result, its meaning has become more profound and subtle by making the painting or picture itself, through the basic visual elements it employs, expressive of higher dimensional meanings found in nature. More specifically, visual elements such as dots, lines, planes and forms, when used abstractly or non-objectively, can be used as an expression of their own basic meaning in nature itself.
The use of these elements can in fact be related almost directly to music in terms of meaning. A dot can be used, as Kandinsky has pointed out, as an equivalent to a sound effect but on the visual level. For example a dot in the center of a circle is a silent sound. Dots arranged within the frame of a picture can express an order of staccato sounds as well as creating inner tensions related to space and time dimensions.
If so simple a means can produce such a profound difference, think of the unlimited possibilities inherent in dots and lines to picture frame. These possibilities are directly related to the qualities of movement, rest, grace, awkwardness, order, space and time, etc., which define the meaning of the dot and linear character of objects in the physical world. It should be understood that dots and lines and the three-dimensional forms together with all the means required to express them within the picture frame are the true inhabitants of this world. Used otter than for their own qualities diminishes their meaning.
Proof of this, not on a theoretical, but on a purely practical level is evidenced by the fact that varying degrees of abstraction or even complete non-objectivity have become the dominant style of painting today.
But what about photography? Until very recently any attempt to bridge the gap between the literal object world and the world of abstract images has been spoken of as experimental. This adjective
was applied by no less an authority than Beaumont Newhall to the work of our great name photographers Man Ray and Moholy-Nagy. It is true that techniques used, such as solarization and photograms, were experimental in the sense that the exact final result could not be determined at the time of taking a picture. Many of the methods popularly used today, such as moving the camera during exposure, photographing fast moving objects, recording light patterns on moving water also have this limiting control factor, and I believe that this is a weakening of the creative process.
It is most interesting to note, however, that during the past few years there has been a vital new interest in abstract photography. This can be seen in the work of a small but select group of photographers in America. Minor White and some of his advanced students, Walter Chappell, and the pioneer in the field, Aaron Siskind, are representative. One of the largest and most important exhibits in New York City at the Museum of Modern Art, called "The Sense of Abstraction," was an important recognition of the trend.
The favorite techniques used today include solarization, photograms, close-up photography of objects that destroys their literal meaning but employ abstract qualities of the image, and equivalents. I find many of the pictures made by these methods visually provocative but I am led in a different direction for the following reasons. The element of chance inevitable at the time of taking these pictures is one. Another is the lack of plasticity inherent in creating images of objects. This is less a factor in close-up photography than it is in conventional distances, but it still has a degree of weakness. And such weaknesses are not found in either music or painting.
In my own work I feel that I have found a way of overcoming some of the weaknesses previously mentioned. It is the technique of producing light pictures. Amazing the way light and sound are found to have equivalent virtues for creative expression. Sound is everywhere. It is completely plastic, it has psychological and physiological impact. Its levels of meaning and dimensional qualities are so great it need not be subservient to practical uses. It has great time and space dimensions. All of these things make it great as subject matter in its own right.
Let us examine light. Light is everywhere. It is completely plastic and lends itself freely and instantly to all dimensional levels of expression. It has psychological and physiological impact, like sound, -both being vibrations. It need not depend on imitation. It has all the visible colors and, in itself, far greater time and space dimensions than sound. I think, without a question of a doubt, that in the future light pictures viewed as transparencies and backed with a luminous glass (that is now being developed here in America) will hang on the walls of homes, offices, and public buildings just as abstract and non-objective paintings do today. Such pictures will
have a scale of color values not possible by any pictures seen by reflected light and in actuality will be in a sense a live picture. I find it gratifying that my interest in these pictures is shared by a large number of people connected with colleges and professional photographic associations. Recently I was given the highest award of the Northern California Professional Photographers Association for contributions to professional photography as a fine art. My light pictures were an important factor in deciding the award.
These are made with a 35mm Exakta with extension bellows for close-up work. Many people who do close-up work wish to preserve the physical identity of the objects used. I do just the opposite. I wish to destroy the object reality and create the reality of the world of light. All the dimensions of the physical world, plus the full spectrum of colors together with time and space dimensions combine to make up this world. I use a light source (sunlight or tungsten) and direct it on any objects that have an affinity for light, such as water, cellophane, and glass. I use the ground glass of my camera as the painter uses canvas. I know how light reacts to my materials and arrange them roughly in front of the camera’s lens. With this done I begin to move them slowly one way or another, controlling the action of light so as to create the picture desired. I use only straight photographic methods and so have control of the medium at all times.
I am convinced that for the creative painter or photographer to interpret an object in terms of its external surface dimensions is to see the object superficially. Searching deeper into the nature of things, I ask myself what makes one person more interesting visually than another person or one tree different or more meaningful than another tree.
Ordinarily, objects are seen and felt most easily and strongly in the ever-recurring now of time. Seen in this way the meaning of a particular tree is imprisoned in an attitude of mind that tends to limit its reality to its surface appearance. The five senses on a physical level can only react by outside stimulation in the ever-recurring now. They cannot bring back the past or respond to the future reality of anything because three-dimensionality is the function of the senses. So reality to the physical senses always remains only a tiny fraction of the reality of the tree.
This level of reality is a static experience which only the mind can make dynamic by blending past, present and future into a greater measure of reality. The present is only an intersection in the time of every event in the universe. It is like the single frame of a motion picture film. When the single frame is seen the motion stops. It is a function of the creative mind to overcome the inertia of the (now) perceived reality.
When Cartier-Bresson referred to the decisive moment of taking a picture he meant, I feel, the mirrored moment that expresses the object so as to evoke in the mind of the viewer significant and inner qualities.
Once the mind is aware of the profound difference between seeing an object for its three-dimensionality only, and seeing it fourth-dimensionally as an event in time and space, only then does the mind search for and find symbols to express this added dimension.
This is a desired goal in all mediums of art expression. The greatness of music in large part is related to the fact that it is not basically a three dimensional medium of expression. It seeks its meaning in the infinite and invisible world of sound, which in itself is a fourth-dimensional event. It differs from the object world as a source of material for the creative mind, in that the object on the visual level is limited by its own meaning as an event. As such this acts as a limitation in terms of creative expression. Sound, on the other hand, is an event of far greater magnitude related in fact to all objects and all space, thereby offering unlimited creative possibilities in terms of source material.
Visual expressions of all kinds in terms of fourth-dimensional meanings have been held back, relative to music, because of the many utilitarian and practical reasons for expressing objects literally. However, in the last hundred years painting has advanced rapidly in freeing itself from this practical emphasis to one of abstract expression that relates it more, in terms of freedom of expression, to music.
As a result, its meaning has become more profound and subtle by making the painting or picture itself, through the basic visual elements it employs, expressive of higher dimensional meanings found in nature. More specifically, visual elements such as dots, lines, planes and forms, when used abstractly or non-objectively, can be used as an expression of their own basic meaning in nature itself.
The use of these elements can in fact be related almost directly to music in terms of meaning. A dot can be used, as Kandinsky has pointed out, as an equivalent to a sound effect but on the visual level. For example a dot in the center of a circle is a silent sound. Dots arranged within the frame of a picture can express an order of staccato sounds as well as creating inner tensions related to space and time dimensions.
If so simple a means can produce such a profound difference, think of the unlimited possibilities inherent in dots and lines to picture frame. These possibilities are directly related to the qualities of movement, rest, grace, awkwardness, order, space and time, etc., which define the meaning of the dot and linear character of objects in the physical world. It should be understood that dots and lines and the three-dimensional forms together with all the means required to express them within the picture frame are the true inhabitants of this world. Used otter than for their own qualities diminishes their meaning.
Proof of this, not on a theoretical, but on a purely practical level is evidenced by the fact that varying degrees of abstraction or even complete non-objectivity have become the dominant style of painting today.
But what about photography? Until very recently any attempt to bridge the gap between the literal object world and the world of abstract images has been spoken of as experimental. This adjective
was applied by no less an authority than Beaumont Newhall to the work of our great name photographers Man Ray and Moholy-Nagy. It is true that techniques used, such as solarization and photograms, were experimental in the sense that the exact final result could not be determined at the time of taking a picture. Many of the methods popularly used today, such as moving the camera during exposure, photographing fast moving objects, recording light patterns on moving water also have this limiting control factor, and I believe that this is a weakening of the creative process.
It is most interesting to note, however, that during the past few years there has been a vital new interest in abstract photography. This can be seen in the work of a small but select group of photographers in America. Minor White and some of his advanced students, Walter Chappell, and the pioneer in the field, Aaron Siskind, are representative. One of the largest and most important exhibits in New York City at the Museum of Modern Art, called "The Sense of Abstraction," was an important recognition of the trend.
The favorite techniques used today include solarization, photograms, close-up photography of objects that destroys their literal meaning but employ abstract qualities of the image, and equivalents. I find many of the pictures made by these methods visually provocative but I am led in a different direction for the following reasons. The element of chance inevitable at the time of taking these pictures is one. Another is the lack of plasticity inherent in creating images of objects. This is less a factor in close-up photography than it is in conventional distances, but it still has a degree of weakness. And such weaknesses are not found in either music or painting.
In my own work I feel that I have found a way of overcoming some of the weaknesses previously mentioned. It is the technique of producing light pictures. Amazing the way light and sound are found to have equivalent virtues for creative expression. Sound is everywhere. It is completely plastic, it has psychological and physiological impact. Its levels of meaning and dimensional qualities are so great it need not be subservient to practical uses. It has great time and space dimensions. All of these things make it great as subject matter in its own right.
Let us examine light. Light is everywhere. It is completely plastic and lends itself freely and instantly to all dimensional levels of expression. It has psychological and physiological impact, like sound, -both being vibrations. It need not depend on imitation. It has all the visible colors and, in itself, far greater time and space dimensions than sound. I think, without a question of a doubt, that in the future light pictures viewed as transparencies and backed with a luminous glass (that is now being developed here in America) will hang on the walls of homes, offices, and public buildings just as abstract and non-objective paintings do today. Such pictures will
have a scale of color values not possible by any pictures seen by reflected light and in actuality will be in a sense a live picture. I find it gratifying that my interest in these pictures is shared by a large number of people connected with colleges and professional photographic associations. Recently I was given the highest award of the Northern California Professional Photographers Association for contributions to professional photography as a fine art. My light pictures were an important factor in deciding the award.
These are made with a 35mm Exakta with extension bellows for close-up work. Many people who do close-up work wish to preserve the physical identity of the objects used. I do just the opposite. I wish to destroy the object reality and create the reality of the world of light. All the dimensions of the physical world, plus the full spectrum of colors together with time and space dimensions combine to make up this world. I use a light source (sunlight or tungsten) and direct it on any objects that have an affinity for light, such as water, cellophane, and glass. I use the ground glass of my camera as the painter uses canvas. I know how light reacts to my materials and arrange them roughly in front of the camera’s lens. With this done I begin to move them slowly one way or another, controlling the action of light so as to create the picture desired. I use only straight photographic methods and so have control of the medium at all times.
By WYNN BULLOCK
2008-01-01 20:52:19
