Seeting 2009 (#102)

This submission is a mea culpa.

In my prior post I allowed my beloved brother Eric a single line of recognition - his birthday was yesterday - but then, rather too characteristically, I rushed on to the next topic (that being an image I shot yesterday, about which I was quite excited). Combined with my sister Ami's astounding work as a makeup artist in the film industry, I'm blessed and amazed to have a pair of inspiring siblings.

Thus, this evening a rare offering of images of an individual . . . and what an amazing individual: my brother is one of the most broadly and deeply artistically endowed people I've ever met. I took up photography years ago in no small part because I could never manage to draw well . . . my brother with seeming ease can reproduce complex illustrations freehand. I struggle mightily to write; he is a natural wordsmith and a much deeper thinker on top of it. I can play the radio, stereo, and kazoo . . . Eric was once a solo saxophonist in a jazz band, and continues to expand his considerable guitar skills in just the latest of his bands, Pegataur.

The first image was taken as Eric and his Pegataur band-mate Aaron played, live, in the extremely cramped San Jose State University radio station. I took quite a few shots through the wire-mess safety glass of the studio door; the sturdy barrier effectively kept me out but did little to suppress the enthusiasm and energy of the high velocity notes from within. (I was particularly exited to be taking these images, as the studio is in the building immediately adjacent to the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. library, where I'd just started a new job only three days before!)

The second photograph was taken on a BART ride at the end of a San Francisco shopping experience -- I'd joined Eric et. al. to be fitted as a wedding-party member for Eric and his now-wife Sharon's nuptials.

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Eric Plays, #1933

(c)2009 James W. Murray, all rights reserved.

(click image for larger version)

Details: December 6, 2008; Canon 20D; f/6.3 @ 1/10 sec; -2/3 EV; ISO 1600; 61mm.

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Eric and BART rider, #2941

(c)2009 James W. Murray, all rights reserved.

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Details: May 2, 2009; Canon 20D; f/6.3 @ 1/60 sec; -1 EV; ISO 800; 85mm.

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Seeing 2009 (#101)

Happy birthday to my beloved brother Eric . . .

Tonight's submission is a simple study of light and shadow, as well as both obvious and subtle compositional symmetries.

It is also the result of what I term a "extemporaneously premeditated" image: without even thinking of photography I spied several of my wife's candle accessories on a white table, brilliantly illuminated by early afternoon sunlight . . . the wonderfully complex shadows cast by these glass pieces belie the superficially perfect smoothness of their ovoid forms. It was this revealing illusion of surface verses content which unexpectedly caught my eye, immediately grabbed my attention, and lead me to deliberately arrange the objects between the coincident slashing hints of the window blinds (the very same which form the basis of Post #100).

Only after taking several versions of this arrangement did it occur to me that this image has its ancestry in my earliest efforts at photography, circa 1973 . . . My very first conscious attempt to create an unexpected and surprising abstraction from an ordinary found object utilized a beautiful, squat blown-glass bottle of my grandmother's, deliberately cracked and featuring a striking continuum of hues from deep red to yellow. On a late afternoon in Tucson I cracked open the front door of my grandparents' house, noted the narrow and blinding vector of sun cutting across the deep green carpet floor, and immediately wondered what it would look like to see the jar's spidery, colored glass shadow imposed upon that surface. The resulting 4"x6" 35mm print came out far better than I'd expected (it resembled a comet streaking across a pea soup sky), and was the genesis of my penchant for abstract imagery derived from ordinary settings.

Votives, #5589

(c)2009 James W. Murray, all rights reserved.

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Details: November 21, 2009; Canon 20D; f/11 @ 1/400 sec; -2/3 EV; ISO 200; 31mm.

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Seeing 2009 (#100)

I've been contemplating the nature of this submission for several days: the image has been readied for perhaps a week now, but my consciousness has struggled to formulate the attending narrative. At this point I've little optimism that a breakthrough of sparkling clarity is forthcoming, thus I'll offer what I may tonight.

I took this image the morning after returning from the harrowing, healing, surreal and sublime trip to Arizona, barely forty-eight hours after my mother's "passing." I'd not been out of bed long when my attention was grasped by the interplay of shadows, silky textures and the striking swaths of light on the living room blinds. Barely awake, I was already aware of two things: the first hints of emotional grief -- Reality -- were beginning to set in . . . and this scene demanded my artistic attention as a therapeutic exercise.

Mortality was on my mind, and this composition evoked a strong sense of hope -- that beyond the most fundamental mystery of human existence, past the dark veil, perhaps our soul regroups and enjoys limitless bliss in choreographed dances with kindred spirits.

Thus I present here a serendipitous composition which carries complex and significant emotional weight in the context of recent developments . . . The translucent material stands in for the notion of the passage through life's end and towards the unknown; the curtains effectively blind us to what truly is on The Other Side; currents of mystery seemingly swirl around with dark places just out of sight. Yet those lovely, arcing rays of white light suggest pure, joyously rising souls, our very essence, continuing on -- perhaps to reemerge into bright and expansive spaces and (and renewed life) coyly suggested by the glow seeping between those otherwise opaque slats. Hence: Death, as an illusion.

The Blind Veil (Spirits Dancing), #5544

(c)2009 James W. Murray, all rights reserved.

(click image for larger version)

Details: November 8, 2009; Canon 20D; f/11 @ 1/60 sec; -2/3 EV; ISO 100; 42mm.

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Seeing 2009 (#99)

Tonight's submission for your consideration: intrigue from imperfection.

The past few postings concern themselves largely with mortality and its attendant pain; this entry, a macro view of a leaf, provides not only an alternative perspective but also the possibility ironically opposite dualities . . .

One interpretation might be that of an impending fertilization: a barrier is about to be penetrated by an approaching vessel, laden with long strands of encoded material from which a new form may arise, trailing a wake in an intensely organic milieu. Or: the approaching form can be seen as the container of an aging life's remains, nearing the threshold separating one existence from the next, where rising currents point to an elevated and as-yet-undefined experience "on the other side."

The Approach (Gamete), #3358

(c)2009 James W. Murray, all rights reserved.

(click image for larger version)

Details: July 19, 2008; Canon 20D; f/8 @ 1/250 sec; -1 EV; ISO 200; 56mm.

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Seeing 2009 (#98)

Excuse the absence -- tonight's offering hints at the state of my emotional interior since returning from Arizona.

The scene here is the tunnel at the junction of Highway 92 and I-280, and is another selection from the series of images I recorded during my ride home from an evening in San Francisco.

A case study in the power of life experiences to inform one's art . . . but with a surreal twist: taken a fortnight before I was faced with the task of having my mother removed from life support, this photograph acutely presages the delayed grief which seems to be where I'm headed in the wake of her passing.

For the past few days now my emotions have seemed to be encapsulated in a vehicle rushing towards the unknown -- I'm not sure who's driving and the route is unfamiliar. Usually simple matters are not necessarily so . . . I missed a much anticipated breakfast with a dear friend a few days ago which brought on considerable distress; the ensuing days have been rife with inflamed psychic nerves close to the surface.

This submission suggests a coördinated amalgamation of chaotic velocity, considerable energy and an ever changing trajectory, a certain route towards darkness. Even so, the future is not quite so pessimistic: guiding lights are present on all sides, and all tunnels eventually end with an emergence into fresh air. As I embark on the spiritual and emotional journey which is mine to experience in the coming days, weeks and months (who knows how long?), I draw comfort and strength knowing I'm surrounding by wise, compassionate, and loving family and friends.

Into The Tunnel/Impending Unknowns, #5253

(c)2009 James W. Murray, all rights reserved.

(click image for larger version)

Details: October 22, 2009; Canon 20D; f/5.0 @ 1/3 sec; -2/3 EV; ISO 400; 33mm.

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Seeing 2009 (#97)

Tonight's offering reflects the condition of my spirit after returning from a visit to my soul's origin, that being Tucson and its surroundings. The sojourn was a painful one, a call to duty to shepherd my biological mother's ravaged and tortured body to as peaceful of a demise as possible.

A decade had passed since we last saw one another; the exile which ensued was mutually agreed upon. In her final days her condition rapidly deteriorated, to the extent that she could only lie helpless in the sterility and chaos characteristic of ICU units, no longer able to enunciate her desires as to treatment. No written instructions existed; the caring physicians reached the conclusion that she was beyond recovery by the time I was sought out to play the role of final arbitrator.

To see this once powerful, vibrant, intelligent and yes, too often bellicose woman so utterly vulnerable was beyond heartbreaking. As she lay in a hospital bed, head immobile and her life sustained by a respiration tube -- a painfully ironic umbilical cord -- it was impossible to discern any longer just how cognizant she was in those last hours. My reaction to this opaque consciousness was beyond my own capacity to comprehend - my own psyche was a surreal experience, a teraa incognita.

Early in the morning of November 4, 2009, at the wise and perceptive suggestion of my loving and wholly, wonderfully and fiercely supportive wife Julianna, I took a drive out to the peace, beauty and spirituality of Gate's Pass. There I spent 90 minutes or so in mediation, prayer, and a myriad of unrecognizable emotions. I sought direction, insight, wisdom, strength and perhaps even a bit of solace, confronted with what has been by far the hardest decision to make in my life, to instruct the doctors to cease sustaining the effort to keep my mother in a state barely resembling living.

I took this image as I left the desert for my car, about to begin the drive back to the very institution where Johanna Lynn gave me birth, and thus life on this planet, where I would affirm the necessity of letting her depart this mortal coil. I do believe she is finally at peace, perhaps for the first time in her existence. Requiescat in pace, March 8, 1941 - November 5, 2009.

Peace too will eventually come to me; I am truly graced and deeply blessed with tremendous support from a host of close friends and a loving family. For now, this giant green thorny entity aptly depicts my swirling state of mind, complete with heretofore unknown and newly revealed psychic appendages.

Saguaro (A Gates Pass Denizen), #5537

(c)2009 James W. Murray, all rights reserved.

(click image for larger version)

Details: November 4, 2009; Canon 20D; f/16 @ 1/400 sec; -2/3 EV; ISO 200; 18mm.

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Seeing 2009 (#96)

For your consideration: a study of angularities, and light's transformative and revelatory nature. This submission neatly represents my favorite mode of creative expression, that being the potential of an ordinary, often rarely noticed scene to be viewed as a potent abstract canvas. The setting is one of the many study rooms located in my workplace.

The transitive aspect of sunlight is what gives this composition its primary thrust and potency. Innumerable photons ever so briefly skimmed the plane's surface, yielding a surprising beam resembling interstellar dust, its many constituent particles vanishing in a moment as the sun's attention moved on. This tableau speaks again to Impermanence: the chain's orbs and the particles are illuminated and revealed only temporarily, as is true of all things . . . as George Harrison sang, All Things Must Pass.

Abstract #5500

(c)2009 James W. Murray, all rights reserved.

(click image for larger version)

Details: October 30, 2009; Canon 20D; f/11 @ 1/60 sec; -1/3 EV; ISO 400; 33mm.

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