Lose thoughts – Dietmar Tallroth

Meaning

In Art & Photography / Article / General / Lose thoughts

Two Modes of Narration

Recently, Kathleen Jamie wrote in The New Statesman :

“… But how can time break? Surely time goes on like an arrow, through one damn thing after the next.
Well, maybe it doesn’t. This extraordinary book will win devotees among that minority who don’t see “stories” everywhere, who resent the hegemony of narrative, and who perhaps experience time more like a spiral …”
(from the review of Hugh Raffles book “The Book of Unconformities : Speculations on Lost Time“

I found this deliciously well observed. This was the first time I read someone pointing out the deep connection between our sense of time and our fondness for narratives. Still, it is good to remember that things might not be so clear cut. A juxtaposition of linear and circular views of time is not necessarily sharp-edged. Asian cultures are known for an emphasis on circular movements in time. One of the most famous of such movements being the “wheel of reincarnation” in Buddhism. But even in these cultures the life of Buddha e.g. is told as a normal, linear-timeline-narrative. The difference, of course, is that the wheel of reincarnation is an idea about reality, while the life of Buddha is a historical narrative. But one can ask any farmer in the West as well: he will be quite able to manage circular (e.g. seasonal) timelines along with linear one’s. Finally, the horizon of any circle may look like a straight line (to our perception) if the circle is just large enough.

Still, I have been one of those complaining about the increasing hegemony of narrative (oh, so wonderfully put!) in the visual arts (and elsewhere). This, however, has to do mostly with an insight that there is not one mode of narration, but two. Let me explain: the first mode of narration is a tool of communication between humans. This mode seems to me very fundamental to human thinking and it is easy to imagine how it might have evolved: look!, tiger comes from the wood, looks to us, gets closer, will eat us, run!!! Later at the fire, this story of their escape might have been repeated to the others in the group. It is this mode of narration that led to the stories of world literature we all love.

From early on, there has been, however, a second mode of narration: stories that pretend to be perception, stories that construe meaning from what we observe. It is the use of that mode of narration that has been much overdone in my view, which I consider even dangerous and would like to call here (with all intended negativity) false narratives. Before we turn to these, though, we might have to look at what we (ehem, I) mean by meaning.

The Meaning Of Meaning

The term meaning is maybe best understood when looking at its (probably original) uses: with signs and symbols. There is nothing inherently stop-py in a red light but we all know that a red traffic light means that we should stop. The stoppiness of the red light might still have deep roots, though. A red, ripe apple makes one stop to eat, a green, unripe one makes one to move on. That red apples are ripe is an observation, while saying: “Mother Nature has painted these apples red for us so we know which one we can eat” is a narrative (and a classical example for a false one). Both, observations and narratives are ways in which our mind makes sense of what our senses sense (I am so full of puns today…) and both assume that, beyond the sensory input, there is a second level of insight – and that second level of insight is the important one. Not the red light, but the implied order by the state to stop is the decisive level of reality.

So far so good, if and when we are in fact dealing with signs and symbols as in the traffic light example. Not so good, in my not so humble view, in case of the red apple. The problem is that if we exchange observation with narrative, all we might end up with is a fantasy world – and never more as when we start to treat matters as narratives like in “the meaning of life” (Ah, now you start smelling where this is heading). Anyhow, it is time to go back to the false narratives now.

False Narratives

Our minds (mine, if you prefer) are filled to the rim with false narratives. Religions tell us that our life is part of a “bigger story”. Politicians, historians and philosophers tell us that there are nations, which might have “destinies”. Marketing tells us that this cream makes us younger, fitter, whateverisher. (And ah, I have written earlier a lot about false narratives regarding things and consumerism.) All of these have in common that they cloak narratives as observations. All of them construe a reality beyond our sensory input or interpret it on our behalf. Just recently we have seen where this can lead: that large parts of populations in certain countries indeed believe that red is green and green is red.

On a more innocent level, I have been working for some time on a (unpublished) project about “Stories in Nature” where I (ironically and) playfully superimposed false narratives on observations in nature. If you follow this blog, you might remember e.g. the “Little Icehog”.

But let us summarise at this point: 1) False narratives replace observations. 2) False narratives suggest that there is a second level of reality, not reached by observation but which can be reached by interpretation and thus unlocking meaning.

If that is so, what then do we mean by the meaning of life (or meaning in life) and why do quite a few psychologists suggest that there is a “Crisis of Meaning”, making people sick. Yep, now we get to the hairy questions.

The Meaning in Life

This is, of course, a topic we might not be able to attack head on. Let us first circle it a bit like a predator before the jump. As I explained, using the term meaning already implies that we don’t just live but that there is an inner, truer story about this simple fact in need of unlocking.

Did it ever occur to you that all questions around identity would be moot if we only would stop discriminating against each other? Yes, I think, what we see as identity and its suppression is based on a whole bunch of false narratives. If we wouldn’t construe narratives about identity, if it just wouldn’t matter at all if we are man or woman, white or black, straight or gay, left or right, what we believe in or not, if we just could be humans (and more so) there would be no need to identify with anything but ourselves. But that is, of course, not the world we live in (and still John Lennon was right: just imagine).

Equally, if we could stop treating life as a symbol or a timeline (you see we are back to the linearity of narratives!), indeed if we could stop treating life as a narrative in the first place, the question of its meaning, or how to life a meaningful life, would become far less urgent.

Reading obituaries is a clear sign of ageing; nevertheless I have started to read a few of them and noticed that almost all weave life as a narrative. (S)he went to school there and there, the parents were this and that, then came marriage, the right amount of children, a career, then retirement, membership in hobby clubs and then – the end. Is life no more than a CV? (Ok, that might be inherent in the genre of the obituary, but still.)

Isn’t life about the “lateral” events, those that go across the timeline of our ageing. The moments of tenderness, understanding, insight, learning? The hand on the shoulder of a friend in distress, the random act of kindness, the word of advice, watching leaves unfold in spring or experiencing the dance of cranes on the ice of a lake. Isn’t that what will survive us because it will continue to reverberate in others long after we died?

Now, I will make a bold statement: what we are looking for (in vain) in false narratives, in the search for meaning, we can find in the simple act of experience. Which leads us, obviously (…), to: the river.

The River

Also the river has been mightily abused by narratives: as it springs from its source to the happy end when it reaches the sea (and don’t we all love Smetana’s Vltava for that reason already?). The problem is only: we are left no wiser for what a river actually is.

What then, is a river. A river, first, is water. Water that interacts with land (as clouds are water interacting with the air). A river becomes sea, or clouds, or a lake, a drink in our glas and thus part of our body. We might see it as part of cycle (Caution! False narrative alarm!) but in the end it is just water – and water is everywhere, all the time, the same water. A river is water in movement, sometimes uproar, it is water showing its muscles its (and gravity’s) unrelenting force.

Since I stood up to the hip in rivers while fly fishing, the almost spiritual experience of the river’s force haunts me. I do not have to have more from the river than the memory of this experience. Since then it has become one of my obsessions (and a kind of yearly spring ritual) to photograph the river in its force.

I titled the picture “Across”. If you remember from a few paragraphs above, I wrote about: across the timeline. So, I admit, the title is absurd; it is a dadaist play with the absurd because I superimpose (half of) a narrative on the nameless. But my recommendation is: stop worrying about meaning. Visit the river.

Rivers and Waves

September 22, 2020 By Dietmar Tallroth With 0 Comment

In General / Lose thoughts / On Location / Seasons

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Recently I visited the valleys of two of the northernmost rivers in Finland: Utsjoki and Teno. As on previous occasions, I became enchanted by majestic beauty of these lesser known and definitely remote landscapes.

Nature rarely does straight, but in these valleys everything is curved: the wide rivers, their sand banks and the surrounding, softly rounded mountains that continue layer after layer into seeming endlessness. Ones view can get lost in these rolling shapes and only the constantly changing light checkers and structures the landscape. A mountain that one moment was looming dark above, suddenly catches light and starts to glow in autumn colours of yellow and red only to fade again into grey a few moments later.

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I don’t know, why there my soul starts to softly tremble. True enough, I was born among the hills and on the banks of a river. But, maybe, there is an even deeper connection here. Haven’t in pre-historic times humans colonised Central Europe through its river valleys and settled among the hills surrounding the Danube river? Maybe there is something about such landscapes that promises a home to humans. A place to fish and hunt, a place that gives shelter from cold winds and provides drinking water throughout the year.

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Whatever the reasons might be. The weary soul finds rest there on the bank of the river with its endless sound of time. Looking out from an elevated point I often thought that the mountains look like waves on an ocean which in the shifting light appear and disappear and seem strangely alive. It is in these moments I deeply understand how the crust of the earth is a living and moveable thing and that in nature all formation is unified and alike in a certain rhythm.

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And can one not compare our lives to waves? Waves that raise in our youth to softly ebb away in age. And whatever small eddies, currents, distractions and hindrances there might be: allowed its natural course the wave will forcefully roll through time and then slowly ebb away to again merge with the ocean of human hope, aspiration and longing for meaning. How fleeting, how fragile, how ephemeral our lives appear in light of these seemingly eternal mountains. And still, both are part of an endless flow and I cannot help but marvel at these wonders. In the back of my mind a tiny voice tells me that maybe, just maybe all this longing for meaning is meaningless and what I am supposed to do is to just let my heart flow among the mountains and the river. And thus the soul catches a ray of light and starts to glow.

The Ethics of Balance IV

May 6, 2020 By Dietmar Tallroth With 0 Comment

In Art & Photography / Lose thoughts

2020-05-02-Mäntysuo-0003 In this last part of this series, it is time to have a look at the implications of an Ethics of Balance for making photographs. In the previous part I mentioned, again, that there is no photograph without a point of view. I also argued that this viewpoint is not merely a location, but signifies the photographer’s overall approach. This approach consists of the photographer’s aesthetic model, his/her worldview, beliefs and convictions together with both emotional starting conditions and reactions. All of these elements together with the scene form an event that leads to a photograph.

Ok, ok, I have to de-construct and untwist this.

On part of the subject, the way it presents itself is much dependent on the lightning and, in case of landscapes, the season, weather and so on. One can’t look at the same scene twice! But also the photographer arrives at the scene in a certain mood and processes, and reacts to, what is seen. It is this interaction with the scene that makes a picture of a lonely barn in a field from just a scene of a barn in a field during inclement weather.

How the photographer shows the scene is what I call the aesthetic model about which I have written often on this blog. I call these my Asian influences but in fact the aesthetic model forms from all the sources from which a photographer has learned composition, use of colours or tonality and, more generally, acquired an aesthetic taste.

But back to the example of the lonely barn: In my view there is a dormant problem there. If the picture starts to be only about the loneliness of the scene, we are actually at a picture of a mood or an idea of the photographer. The scene itself becomes, kind of, replaceable and secondary.

This, I think, is what happened in Western Art at the beginning of the 20th century. As I mentioned earlier, Piet Mondrian, in the 1910s and 1920s, went from painting ever more simplified trees to, what he called, a depiction of “pure reality”, which was for him best expressed in radically simplified forms, colours and tones. This pure reality, he wrote, consisted of a balanced relationship between general principles that underlie a tension, like mind and nature, or what he called the male and female principle. But when I then read that the vertical lines are supposed to show the male principle and the horizontal lines the female, I can’t help thinking: really? While one can dismiss this kind of approach to the sexes as early 20th century male thinking, there is still something noteworthy here: In his abstractions, Mondrian actually turns to pictures of ideas. His “pure reality” suddenly appears to be a reality of the mind, his inner view of reality.

After Mondrian this kind of introspective approach to art became at times strong in movements that were mostly psychological: from Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism to what we generally now call Conceptual Art. Don’t get me wrong, I still am very much fascinated by Mondrian’s work and introspective art has produced many fine works. At the same time I can’t help thinking that these art forms somehow encapsulate the anthropocene, the geological epoch of humans, and very much are part of the problem of anthropocentrism. And I, at least, think we have gone too far in this respect.

I think, it is time we were somewhat less excited about ourselves and try, again, to be more excited about the outside world. And personally, I admit, I start to get quite tired of the whole “pictures of ideas” thingy one especially sees in photography galleries a lot. Sorry.

At the same time, as I have laid out at some length in this series, the obsession with the human sphere has something ethically objectionable to it – because, in the end, it always sets us first and everything else second – and that is what brought us into trouble in the first place. The world, nature and creatures shouldn’t become mere props to express human ideas.

So what is then the way forward? As I admitted, the photographer is always part of the photograph – we can’t cut him/her out of the picture. Still, a practiced Ethics of Balance, would also in the creation of visual works at least try to keep a balance between the human sphere of the ideas and moods and the dignity of the subject.

Maybe, I come to think, it is really this idea of “dignity of all things” that could be the key here. If we can find and show dignity outside of the human sphere it might help us to understand (in mind and heart) the fundamental unity between ourselves and the world around us. Art doesn’t change the world. But art influences our understanding of the world – and if we decide to become citizens of the world I think there is still a lot we have to learn and understand.

The Ethics of Balance III

April 8, 2020 By Dietmar Tallroth With 0 Comment

In Art & Photography / Article / General / Lose thoughts

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.

Article 1, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, December 10, 1948

Human dignity is inviolable.

Article 1 (1), Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany

In the second part of this post, I speculated about the need to search for a new ethics of balance, an ethics where we are not anymore the one and only ends of ethical concern.

If we then approach this strange and exotic world created by an ethics of balance, what has changed? One thing that hasn’t changed is the “human condition”. None of us has been asked before we were born. As Sartre formulated, we are all “thrown into existence”. At the same time, we all have been programmed by evolution with a hunger for survival – and an even deeper and mysterious yearning for meaning.

These basic parameters of the human experience are the foundations for the assumption of dignity, that is worthiness in its own right, regarding all human existence. This dignity is both tragic (because we are exposed to our biological existence without reprieve) and hopeful (because we can transcend our existence through wisdom, love and beauty). But most of all, we are all in the same boat.

What now, if under an ethics of balance, we assume that the boat is much bigger than we thought and we’re in it together with all living things (or like Naess would say just about everything else)? What if animals and plants, who share the same tragic of existence also would have dignity? Do they also in some way share the yearning for meaning? We don’t know – but we do know, that many of our long hold assumptions about other living things weren’t quite right. Who’d have thought that rats can be compassionate and refuse acts that would harm other rats? What I am trying to say is that our still persisting ignorance regarding many aspects of non-human existence should not lead us to arrogance in assuming only we have value and dignity.

In 2008, the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology (ECNH) produced a most remarkable document titled “The dignity of living beings with regard to plants”, which I warmly recommend for reading as it addresses quite a few of the topics I mentioned here. There are many astonishing findings there, like the one that we aren’t quite sure anymore that plants aren’t sentient. It also concludes, among other things, that arbitrary harm to plants is unethical. In its foreword, the paper mentions an objection to the effort of the committee based on that “human life would become morally too demanding and too complicated if this area of human action had also to be justified”.

But hasn’t that always been the case in ethics? For sure, assuming dignity in slaves, people of colour, women, the poor, those with disabilities and those with differing sexual orientation has been “a moral complication” for those in majority and power. Ethics are often a damn nuisance for those in charge. This is a reason why we still struggle with the concept of universal protection of human dignity to this day. But this is also why I call ethics as a tool to position oneself. Who do we want to be? Do we only accept the tragic part of our existence or do we also embrace the hopefulness of our potential? And there comes a, I feel much neglected, point that we can’t become better humans if we not also consider the non-human sphere, if we don’t become better citizens of the earth. When, however, we do assume dignity in all living or even non-living things, do we have to stop eating, wearing clothes, building houses and tools, or even fight against diseases? I don’t think so. I don’t think a lion is “wrong” in hunting prey – and we are predators likewise and haven’t chosen to be so. What we would need, though, is a whole new level of consideration and justification for what, why and how we do things. We would have to balance our needs with those of all other living things, like we have to balance in ethics and law our own rights against those of other human beings.

Let me take up then a last point on this: Dignity as presented here is an individual concept, it applies to individual entities. But there is the aspect to reality that all is connected and interchanging. The water in our drinking glass might once reappear in a cloud. We not only “burn” food but use it also to build the very cells of our body. And when we die, our body not only nourishes other things but also our thoughts and interactions continue to live on in those we interacted with. We are at the same time distinguishable waves and still part of the ocean. And as A.N. Whitehead once wrote, even mountains are just waves in the right time perspective. This means we are not only, as I wrote above, in the same boat with everything else but everything is just a single ocean. There have been many names for this insight during the centuries of human thought. For myself I prefer to call it the unity of reality because unity is also a concept in aesthetic theory and thus helps me to think of it in terms of visual concepts. And there is the first hint then to why I write about this in a photography blog.

There is no picture without a point of view. And that is not necessarily a physical point but one that is rooted in an aesthetic framework, the ethical position and an ontological assumption (that is an assumption about the nature of reality) of the artist.

Let me give an example: photojournalists are often driven by concerns regarding human dignity and by showing “what really is happening” (vs official propaganda) for example in reporting about war zones. How they depict this is always dependent on the aesthetic framework they have chosen, like Henri Cartier-Bresson did with strong geometry.

So what I am trying to do here in this series is to explain where I come from, not what you should do. This is a manifesto, not a teaching. Art is also always a hunt rather than a statement. The war photographer not only postulates human dignity she also searches for it in the circles of hell.

Before I end this part of the series, I have to address, however, one last related point (oh yes, I know this is already far too long…). A friend recently asked me regarding the “abstractions” I mention in my last book and whether I think they are real or just a construct of the human mind. This is a very good (and old) question. Are we making abstractions like dignity, beauty, ethics or unity just up, are they language artefacts or artefacts of our way to think? We can’t really tell, says Kant, they are at least realities of our mind. Others say that everything is anyhow just a huge illusion. Some things, quantum mechanics says, happen only when we observe. How can we decide, which is right? We have no tool to observe anything from outside our mind (which was precisely Kant’s point). The laws of physics, for example, are abstractions. They assume a ball rolling down a hill always behaves in a calculable way not only in the concrete instance we observe. Are then the laws of physics “real”, that means attributes of reality, or just superpositions on reality by our mind. No one can say with absolute certainty. We are just sufficiently convinced they are real because of a shared experience based on the ability to make predictions. We thus reduce the possibility of delusion without being able to completely eliminate it.

There remains an element of conviction and belief no matter how rationally we proceed. This even applies to other abstractions in science. Astrophysics currently struggles mightily with this topic with regard to theories (like the multiverse) that can neither be proven nor disproven by experiment and prediction. We just have to be infinitely more careful in postulating shared experiences or abstractions without predictability because there is always the possibility of a shared delusion.

During the years I have been photographing and observing, I have developed a growing suspicion, maybe even conviction, that the concept of beauty is not just in the eye of the beholder, an evolutionary artefact or simply wishful thinking. I meanwhile think it is a true attribute or aspect of reality itself. There is no method to prove this. What art, however, can do is to create shared experiences (where possibly a viewer comes to similar conclusions as the artist) – and then see whether these experiences stand the test of time. Only so can art validate itself and its underlying assumptions. Which now, finally, makes a nice bridge to the last part of this series. Stay tuned for part IV…

Spirit and Form

February 25, 2020 By Dietmar Tallroth With 0 Comment

In Art & Photography / General / Lose thoughts

Bodhidharma, 2020

Life is sometimes strange. I had planned for another blogpost when I came over one of the fabulous video lectures by the late art historian James Cahill. There he made a remark that triggered a kind of avalanche of thoughts and so I started on this post. Finally, I noticed that this text might actually serve as a sort of preface to the one I originally wanted to write. And so be it.

Well, anyhow, Cahill said in that lecture that ideologies, philosophies and religions do not create artistic styles. Artists do. These are wise words. Even great ideas need actors. And these actors shape and develop the expression of great ideas. In the case of art, actors are the artists and their audience. The latter is quite important as during many periods of art history they commissioned works and paid to have certain expectations fullfilled. Artists didn’t always just express themselves. The self-contained artist is a recent phenomenon – if (s)he then exists at all. All of this, I think, is true.

And still.

At least the question remains, why certain artists and audiences considered certain styles as adequate expressions for certain ideas. In addition, there is the question why certain forms of expression seem so succesful that they become paradigms of their underlying ideas. I suspect that this happens when an expression aligns with the “feel” of an idea and not only its rational content.

But before I get too theoretical on you, let me give an example (or actually: two).

The dead Christ and three mourners.*tempera on canvas.*68 × 81 cm .*1470-1474

Andrea Mantegna: Lamentation of Christ, c. 1480

Liang Kai: Huineng cutting bamboo, c. 1205

These two paintings belong to the group of “influential” pictures in art history, which means they were style-forming and excerted stylistic influence on later artists and works. Mantegna you might realize is at the beginning of the Renaissance. But it might surprise you that there is a line of inheritance leading from the Liang Kai painting to Japanese design, to the Bauhaus and all the way to the design of the iPhone.

These two pictures have also a couple of things in common. Both constitute religious art (and I’ll explain that in a second). Both also were quite radical new forms of expression for their times. That they seem so familar only speaks for the power they excerted over later artists. Technically, both were quite innovative. Mantegna’s painting is one of the earliest examples of the use of foreshortening perspective in Western Art. Liang Kai’s picture is the first (known) to use “abbreviated brush strokes” (or sketch style, “Xie Yi”) that became a staple in the art of Zen Buddhism.

We in the West are familiar with the religious content of Mantegna’s painting but Liang Kai’s subject needs explaining. In his painting, Liang Kai depicts the (anecdotal) moment of enlightenment of the Sixth Zen Patriarch (the spiritual leader of the sect) Huineng while cutting bamboo. Huineng, however, was a rather obscure figure, which rose to prominence only some two hundred years after his dead in order to proof the spiritual legitimacy of the Southern School of Zen. This was a pivotal point for Zen as it then almost ceased to be a Buddhist sect and became a teaching all of its own. Huineng remains until today one of the most revered figures in Zen.

Montegna’s painting also marks a pivotal point: the birth of Humanism in the Renaissance. We see here for the first time the celebration of the human form (and implicitly the human spirit and potential) that became so familar to us through later works like those of Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci. Humanism today is, in the English speaking world, often associated with an anti-religous stance. And while that was not part of the original program of the Renaissance, it was one of its (unitended) consequences as the ideas of “Man” and “God” started to merge.

Both pictures thus actually mark points of departure from the strictures of organized religion up to that point. And I don’t think I am going too far in suggesting that in both cases people set about to redefine their place in the universe.

Religions can be grouped very crudely into certain categories. A common starting point for Buddhism and Christianity is that something is wrong with humankind. Adam and Eve eat from the tree of knowledge (!) and thereafter are in need of redemption. In Buddhism our mind serves us constantly illusions about reality and it is these illusions we have to be redeemed from. Human sentience, our perceived otherness from the rest of nature, seems in both cases the problem and one kind of understands how we sentient apes crawling down from the trees and looking around got the idea…

But, just for perspective, there are of course religions with a radically different outlook. In Shinto (or many other so-called animistic religions), for example, nothing is wrong with humankind. Instead we are just part of an interconnected world of spirits. Religion there is about our “social relations” with the rest of the natural world. The emphasis thus is on keeping a balance between all the interacting forces in nature, including Man.

Humanism’s answer to the question (or the otherness) of sentience was: more of it. The “divine spark” (did I mention Michelangelo already?) was to be fully developed. This, in the end, led us to modern science. Redemption did not mean going back beyond Adam and Eve but going forward to become god-like ourselves.

The Southern School of Zen Buddhism (attributed to Huineng) recognized “Buddha-nature” (the state of enlightenment) as not only a human opportunity but as the true inner state of everything. Our redemption just meant to wipe away the delusions in our minds. This didn’t require prayers or certain practices; in the right mind-set it could happen anytime, anywhere e.g. while cutting bamboo. Buddhist Sutras (teachings) were no help, only distractions. In another painting of Liang Kai, Huineng tears a sutra apart. The result would be the Non-Ego (because our personality had been an illusion), a state that Buddhists (confusingly for Westerners) call Nothingness but is more like an ultimate re-unfication of Man with reality.

Thus, while the starting points for the Southern School and Humanism had similarities, the aims and goals where basically opposites. I think the two paintings express these views splendidly. The Lamentation of Christ looks to me like humankind triumphant, beautiful even in death. The death of Christ seems to be not only an act of redemption. It looks like a start on the way to perfection, an aspiration and a re-confirmation of the divine spark.

In the Liang Kai picture there seems less of everything. Individuality merges into pure energies and lines. Contemporary Chinese thought everything in this picture was “wrong”, especially the brush work. But, just as a practice, try to figure out where the weight of the Huineng figure is in Liang Kai’s painting and how “weight” overall is suggested in the painting. If the underlying idea is that reality is empty and form is an illusion then this idea has found a perfect expression in the picture. And, indeed, from then on, what we call “Zen-painting” has been more concerned with balances between spaces, the “weight” of empty space and relations between object masses than with any concrete subject matter. No wonder this led to the first “abstract” paintings and was so inspiring for modernism in art.

In our time, I think, humankind again has started to (and has to) re-think its place in the universe anew. We are in need of new ideas and ways to communicate these ideas. What then is the adequate form of expression in our time?

While this post is already far too long, I owe you an explanation for the title of the picture at the top. Bodhidharma was the First Patriarch of Zen, a man from India who brought Zen to China. According to legend, Bodhidharma tried in vain to convince the Emperor of China of his teachings. Having failed, he retreated to a cave where he silently meditated facing a rock wall for the next nine years. In his conversation with the Emperor, Bodhidharma was asked “What is the highest meaning of the noble truth?”. Bodhidharma said “There is no noble truth, only emptiness.” The emperor then asked “Then, who is standing before me?” and Bodhidharma answered “I know not”.

I don’t know about you, but I sympathise with the answer “I know not” to the question on who we are. Maybe, we should head for the rock face, just saying.

Resilience

January 31, 2019 By Dietmar Tallroth With 0 Comment

In Art & Photography / Lose thoughts

I once saw a documentary about Bhutan and how it had changed the measurement of its government’s success from the gross domestic product (GDP) metric to a metric of gross national happiness. As if that alone wouldn’t be intriguing enough (and I do think others should follow that example), there were scenes from a school were children had written on the wall lists of the most important values. One of these values, prominently written in large letters was: resilience.

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Memories

November 14, 2018 By Dietmar Tallroth With 0 Comment

In Art & Photography / Lose thoughts

Since introduction of the Kodak Brownie camera in 1900, people have used photography to document their lives, to create memories. I never quite embraced that. I don’t enjoy seeing myself in photographs but also on many occasions I preferred being in the moment rather than documenting it through a lens.

Recently, however, I attended an event that made me think.

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Inspiration

November 6, 2018 By Dietmar Tallroth With 0 Comment

In A Tale of Five Painters / Art & Photography / Lose thoughts

2018-10-25-Kopparnäs-0002 In short-bios I often mention that my work is inspired by the monochrome ink paintings of China and Japan. But there doesn’t seem to be much stylistic similarity between my photographs and these paintings. So people ask rightly what is this inspiration based upon and how does it show?

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Abstract

September 24, 2018 By Dietmar Tallroth With 0 Comment

In Art & Photography / Lose thoughts

The term “abstract” has this interesting double meaning as denoting pure shape and form (“abstract art”) but also as a summary (of e.g. a scientific article).

I rarely undertake to make abstract pictures. But seemingly they are all around me and somehow I come back from many shoots in nature with at least a few pictures one could call abstract. Hm, I am taking pictures without intention. What’s going on here?

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The Gentle Law

August 28, 2018 By Dietmar Tallroth With 0 Comment

In Art & Photography / Lose thoughts

The world is going to pieces and people like [Ansel] Adams and [Edward] Weston are photographing rocks!
Henri Cartier-Bresson

You know why the beetles and buttercups so please you?
It is because you do not know the human soul, you do not see the stars!
Friedrich Hebbel

There is no denying: we humans love drama. Every nature documentary needs some of it. Will the young duckling survive? Will the antelope escape the lions? Mostly, however, we love drama involving ourselves. That might be a reason why artists, filmmakers and writers have and still do produce so much works about war. War as the ultimate human drama. Both quotes above were written at times of war. The Cartier-Bresson quote is from the time of WWII and Hebbel wrote at the dawn of the German Revolution of 1848.

Both quotes also sharply criticize artists that in such times of human drama do not pick up on this drama but continue to make nature the theme of their work. To me the criticism seems to be that such nature-artists don’t get their priorities straight. Is this right? Is there an implicit supremacy of human affairs over nature? There is an answer to that.

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