Photography
If an average person looks at a low energy, even unloving, painting he will be put into that negative state. But if he closes his eyes for, say, a few minutes, then he will behold it as an Instance of God.
From the Greek tropos, a turning, is derived our tropism, a turning movement of an organism. So phototropism is an organism, especially a plant or a tree, turning towards the light. And as a photographer, I turn to the light: always aware of it, always relating to it.
I dislike the word subject for whatever, whoever, I photograph. It is so cold, clinical – and can have a sense of being subject to me, as if I am in command, its master.
I have been looking for a word to use for all my pictorial endeavors: painting, photography, and the placing – or throwing – of objects to then be photographed. I cannot find one in English. So I am led to the Chinese shih hua.
Outside the supermarket I was immediately attracted to – by – some wondrous patterns on a white traffic line. Of course, I started to photograph them.
A new word: Tendaify. The Japanese Buddhist sect of Tendai that originated in China as T’ien-tai, was brought to Japan by Saicho (767-822). Its central thesis is “the notion that the absolute is inherent in all phenomena, and that each separate phenomenon is but one manifestation of an unchanging reality.”
The old Afghan photographer accosted me outside the camera store. Gripping my arm – he seemed like the Ancient Mariner – “Photography is Light!,” quoth he.
Saicho (766-822), the Japanese founder of the Tendai school, taught of the Buddhahood of all phenomena. Whenever I photograph, I seek the Buddhahood of the subject, whatever it may appear to be.