When the world is a dark pit, and you find yourself locked up with lunatics. Sometimes, a person needs a slice of sunshine. So that’s what this series of photos will try to capture, but alas, it’s hard to catch a sunbeam.
Then again, I don’t need my baseball glove or butterfly net. Not when I have this magical weight around my neck. It’s left the dark room behind, this is true, but I have my own just in case.
I try to explain this alchemy, as if to a five-year-old or my giant German shepherd dog, to these folks on the ward, but they just cock their heads. I talk about apertures, f-stops, and blinking eyeballs.
No respondo, Ernesto just gazes away from me and talks to people who aren’t there. All of their heads turn, and I finally have an audience.
I’m free again, on Antabuse, so I’m back with the camera therapy of nature and sunshine. The technology that I couldn’t explain to them—resting in my hands. Like a thousand picture books.
The shutter is eager to slide over its mechanical eye, snapping pictures of the sun and everything under it, but you have to be careful taking so many pictures of God.
(Farm Sunrise)
(CO OP)
(American Flag-Vet MIA)
(Kestrel)
(Landscape)
Words and Visual Music by Christopher J Ananias
Ha, yes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it’s difficult to explain it to others. I have the same problem explaining to people the beauty of Derby County Football Club. But your photos have certainly explained it here. Thanks
mick
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Hi Mick
Thanks, beauty can be subjective. Yes, it’s hard to explain the whims of the camera, lol.
CJA
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CJA
I find these all breath taking in their own ways from the sweet little Bird to the awesome sun. Each one contains life, though the silos speak of sorrow. Truly great stuff and the essay is the perfect companion.
Leila
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Hi Leila
Glad these made such an impression. It’s neat when a photo can make a person feel joy or sorrow.
Thanks!
CJA
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CJA
You truly are a GREAT AMERICAN photographer, and these pictures prove it.
The text that accompanies these is also wonderful. It is simple in the Hemingway mode, which means it has far more complexities than first meet the eye to a merely casual reader. The time frame and movement in this prose is extremely subtle and spot-on.
The TONE of this text is joyful with an almost-biblical (or just-plain-biblical) joy, like Paul after the road to you-know-where.
Casual readers might also miss the fact that you call EVERYTHING God in this piece and that your sun is not just the sun.
This also includes the “dark pit” with the lunatics (and some of us know what that is) as well as the implications of the DANGERS of an actual encounter with God.
Every angel is terrifying, said Rilke.
It’s said by some that if we have a near-death experience (officially known to science and psychology now as an NDE) and see God’s actual face, we can’t come back here any more.
But I think you’re right. All things don’t come from nothing.
(I can NOT claim to know it; but I DO often feel it; and that is good enough (for me)…)
DWB
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Hi DWB
You really hit on what I was trying to say in this little essay.
I can’t help but to add a little lunacy.
The terrifying angels and not coming back from seeing God is truly like revelations. All things are God. Even The Devil is God’s Devil.
I learn new layers of this existence every time I read your comments!
Thanks! Glad you liked this!
CJA
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CJA
Funny you should mention revelations since the Drifter’s column for tomorrow is ABOUT the book of REVELATION.
Once again, Jungian literary synchronicity.
((They say the Devil was God’s best friend “in the beginning”…))
DWB
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DWB
Yes for sure! J knew his stuff! That sounds really interesting. Revelations is a tough read–scary too.
it’s too bad how that went with G and D.
CJA
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…I don’t know how the hell you get such great pictures of folks like that Kestrel!
He IS Leonard Cohen’s “Bird on a Wire.”
How do ya do it?
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We get out there in the car. Kind of like an “On the road” camera safari. Kestrels are plentiful in central Indiana mostly on the wires, but they are flighty. It’s always exciting to get a good pic!
Cool about Cohen and the K…
Thanks!
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Wonderful essay. I like all the photos, especially the sky above wheat field.
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Thanks David!
CJA
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