"Everything in the world
has a hidden meaning.
Men, animals, trees, stars,
they are all hieroglyphics.
Then you see them you do
not understand them.
You think they are really
men, animals, trees, stars.
It is only years later
that you understand."
— NIKOS KAZANTZAKIS
Sudden Stillness / Portfolio - The book contains over 350 images from 19 portfolios (all created between 2005 - 2015, and most of which are introduced by a short essay), and concludes with updated versions of the 10 most popular essays that I have previously posted on my blog on the subject of creativity, and its role in photography. Among the images that appear are those that have been published by Lenswork (issues #71, #76, #95, and #105), Black & White magazine (issues #41, #56, #80, #87, and #95), Black and White Spider Awards (2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010), the winter/2013 edition of Stone Voices (as well as many other on-line publications).
Sudden Stillness / Sampler - Fine-art photography portfolio "sampler" designed as a promotion brochure to give out to prospective curators, galleries and customers. This book contains 14 sample portfolios (including two in color), with accompanying information that includes when and where a given portfolio was published, and how many total images it contains. Each portfolio contains one large sample, and four smaller representative images. Works include those that have appeared in juried solo and group exhibits, Lenswork magazine, B&W magazine, B&W Spider Awards, and private collections. Fine-art prints are available via my website and blog.
Synesthetic Landscapes - Synesthesia derives from the Greek syn, meaning “union” plus aisthaesis, meaning “sensation,” and thus means "joined sensation," such as when something that is ordinarily "seen" is tasted as well. It is a condition that appears in some form in up to 1% of the population. In my case, up until about the age of 10, I vividly remember perceiving numbers (and, less frequently, letters) as colors. Sadly, I now only rarely experience this phenomenon. I call this series Synesthetic Landscapes because of the suggestive manner in which reflections / refractions of otherwise "unappreciated" streams of light evoke the synesthetic experience of vast landscapes, seascapes, and other "majestic" vistas.
Micro Worlds - The images in this photo portfolio collectively weave an extraordinary and mysterious cosmos out of the ostensibly "ordinary" everyday world. The project that produced these photographs cannot have started more innocently or unexpectedly. One day, as my family and I were sitting down to dinner, my wife placed two small acrylic candle holders on the table and reached for some matches to light the candles. A veritable universe of nested "worlds within worlds" of trapped air bubbles immediately grabbed hold of my eye, my soul, and - of course - my camera. A selection of these images have been published as a featured portfolio in Lenswork (Issue #76, May/June 2008).
Swirls, Whorls, and Tendrils - A portfolio of abstract patterns of dispersive structures of a single ink drop in water. Each ephemeral form is unique, surreal, and exquisitely beautiful. The images reveal what looks like "organic" life-forms, that develop as though some hidden “rule” (or genetic code) is guiding their evolution. Tellingly, even as each delicate form is “perfect” onto itself, what starts the whole process going, and what is most responsible for the diversity of patterns, is imperfection. It is because the ink drops are not perfect spheres, because they assume a variety of randomly distorted oblong shapes as they fall, and because they have unpredictable and shifting densities of ink inside of them, that each sequence is a unique creation that unfolds just once, then vanishes forever.
Abstract Glyphs - Glyph = "a symbol, such as a stylized figure or arrow on a public sign, that imparts information nonverbally" (Merriam-Webster's on-line dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com); derives from Greek glyphe = carved work and from glyphein = to carve. The images in this portfolio consist of "discovered" glyphs; otherwise hidden in the context of the everyday: paint splotches on textured rubber dinghies in the Port of Piraeus in Athens, Greece; cracked concrete on suburban roadsigns; and reverse negative imprints of currents of moonlight reflected in lakewater in the Adirondacks, NY. At first glance, these glyphs may appear completely random and devoid of all meaning. But a deeper inspection reveals the stirrings of ineffably hidden harmonies.
Mystic Flame - The images in this portfolio depict the mysteriously alluring and ephemeral patterns of fire. Aesthetically, fire is mesmerizing, as it displays complex nested tonal gradations and textures, adorned by graceful (and strangely organic appearing) whirls and tendrils of pure, raw energy. The most striking feature of these photographs, philosophically speaking, is that they provide a glimpse of the unseeable. Since the exposure times for most of these images lie between 1/500th and 1/4000th of a sec - which is a slice of time far shorter than what our eyes need to "see" (and/or discern) patterns - they depict a reality that is fundamentally inaccessible to us. More poetically, the patterns of fire may be likened to the abstract brushstrokes of illumination.
Elements of Order - This book is a visual meditation on one of nature’s basic patterns: perceived order. The images collected here were all captured partly with a physicist’s "eye" for objective order as a manifestly physical property of nature; and partly with an artist's appreciation of subjective order, whose meaning is local and intensely personal. I hope that this book can also serve as a palimpsest of the author’s, and reader’s, process of self discovery: as elements of order are quietly revealed. 27 of the 84 photographs in this book were exhibited in a solo show at the Books & Books art/book store, Coral Gables, Florida in 2007.