Title
Notions of an Icy Line to Reasonable Reason
Artist
Terrance DePietro
Medium
Photograph - Photograph
Description
That I see into an image and find forms and configuration is not so important or even so odd; what that seeing into 'orchestrates' with the event is the crux of the issue, even if words alone become inadequate! What is loosened from the confine of the static instant, that now is made mobile and suggestively endearing, is the freeing of the zeitgeist that is pure sympathia; as it metaphors all and other which is 'also' reality - if only that reality is premised with newly activated potential, or call it the future in its awakening.
But to get to such a hoped for condition what attentiveness is required? Is this 'the' path of understanding? Surly not, yet it is one path of all others that await, merely a mindset, that is freely unfolding onto the knowledge from before, with the attention of the now, and the faith of yet tomorrow...
All so romantic, all so subjective, and all so merely basic in a conceptual premise of creative process - no matter it’s apply. Here, the apply, is in the observation of winter's magical imply; and how it hints the delicate changes that await perception; add that perception is joined in questions where 'what-else' is concerned; what else is represented - in its slowness to unfold, change or merely happen. In the case of our titled image: How is it, that such a line might form; does the line purpose anything within the process?
Or is the line merely an 'oddity' provided to stop a perceiving eye, long enough that it can take a question - bring mind to free itself from 'realities grip', to be treated to a dose of actual otherness...?
Surely the line of ice in the Kaaterskill that cold January day set the scene. Surely again, these words were nowhere formed in mind at the time. Or might they have been; might they have made their mark deep in a fold or crevasse that was wanting a reason, a reasonable-reason, to come into the light of a day? A day, as today, where the world outside plays its silly games; and I, avoiding such cold, find it more tolerable to go back in time viewing a singular relic of the cold winter of 2009
What arrived then; and from what corners of the static replica now so moves me still? Eight years after the icy line has surely melted away what is still resonating? What makes the little oddities so important – if only telling of my peculiar perspective and its perceptions?
And so, those are but a few questions; a few implications that steer mind and imagination. But surely there is more?
Exceeding the expressed implications, is a mode in which one approaches image prior to ideas or imagination. In other words, the intuiting magnetism which ‘supposes’: presumes feeling before its ‘wordiness’. And like a hand pasted in front of eyes locked in a stare: Snap! Disjointing the immobilizing fixation... It happens, un-expectantly; jars a focus; but not enough to shake off what was being attended; or better yet, was being: ‘graced’ with. In any case, focus mired in effect of what – a feeling, or deeper still an Intuition?
Along with any such feeling; also needs to be asked: to what purpose? Is ever intuition not of purpose? I certainly cannot separate the two – even knowing well that the answer is most often invisible – invisible in the instant or the extended moments that follow. So I ask: What else is this oddity of a frozen line, in a frozen moment, that freezes attentiveness, to take-on other issue; presumptively of a mode, mood, mind; subjectively of other purposiveness?
If it has not already come to mind, from the amass of questions alone let me give the complexity a set of issues by stating: that the mind wondrously compressed all the implications into a wordlessly-understood outward appearance (image); and at the same instant an inward idiom [paradoxically not schismatic but seemingly bridging linguistic, cultural, societal space; and historical time all at once] - yet devoid of form, apparent structure, et al.
Amazingly all of this overstatement is really not stated strong enough, if only because we glance over it, without realizing that a huge process is working on our every waken moment - not that we have to fixate on it but perhaps at least realize the necessity to take into account 'subjectivity' as an important party to our perceptions.
As I passed in review of the many snapshots of that year long project (preoccupation more than expressly a project, since no goal other than to capture a cycle of nature as independent particulars existed), the activity still had no solid ambitions. Other perhaps, than to find images that raised a touch of intuitive glimmer and set those thoughts to pen. And this image, evidently, has a bushel of suggestions that play into all the other attendants of my attitude concerning perceptions. The attitude takes into account the wondrous perceptions and the poetics of metaphor, symbol; associations and correspondences that meld nature's realities to the abstraction of/in mind; furthest even to imagination or one of its extensions of fantasy, fable; mythos or imaginal installment unto the beyond.
To voyage so, I harness a base of correspondences that might relate - in one fashion or scheme - to the image's shape, trajectory and its gathered particulars. What might have suggestibility or meaningful coincidence; or might be positioned with another element, that together presents a larger phrase? The facets are not checked off a list or inventory; they are freely suggested within the context and texture of the image itself. And interesting, the entire context can change given the state-of-mind at the moment I surrender my attention over to the image. A month or year from now much will have changed; not of the image; but of my mindset; and I am well aware that the narrative is merely an episode of converse; never the saga's end. It is, for me, the most wondrous part of conversing with this companion, this image – or any other liken to it!
To describe my companion, I might very well say: The directedness is passively horizontal in orientation; yet the activity within, that sparks first attention, is a contradicting feeling suggesting a reading of bottom to top - vertical, and therefore active. All that is easily acknowledged, so there is a hermetic inclination - a touching on three regions ('worlds' in mythic terms; or alchemistic as 'stages' ascending or descending, given the posture of the day). Hermetic here is of course in reference to the god Hermes, as messenger between the nether world, earth and heavens above. But there is more...
The water, with all its elemental associations and possibilities of change is present. In fact, it is the very presents of water, in particular frozen water that alerted the mind to a pending narrative association. So a ‘timing’ is struck into the image; fidget, cold and solidifying - e.g., arresting; which narrows the conversation to all that arrives in winter's chapter of a cycle of nature. As well, begging what the perceptive eyes are doing in such an inhospitable place?
A quest of sorts might be a reasonable-reason. I'll say it to be true; if only to move on that the icy line is only one aspect of the water's announcement. The water is in a creek; there is then, a constant movement at hand; evidenced on the surface certainly; but more actually, beneath - out of view, but not mind - the ice and flowing here from bottom to top [again our vertical active principle]...And that presents us with another of water, ice's characteristics, 'reflectiveness'; so another of the obvious elements needs attention 'light'.
Light naturally, is our pathway to observations; all what it touches takes on luminous splendor for eyes to perceive the discernible particulars of nature. Herein, light, is not in its magnificent extensiveness but rather in its moody nuance; more specifically in its temperament of morning-light, breeching dawn at a distance from our scene and still not lifting the shadowy blue veil that tepidly lessens, until directly effecting a subject and embellishing it with specific shades for its own.
A mood of an event inevitable to arrive is signaled here; so I might even say this image has consequence of ‘future’, or becoming, in its plot. So the plot, or plots as I propose, thus far are characterized of directedness, both passive and active; timed by its cold reality; water in two of its three discerned states but dynamically solid marking the viewer’s readiness to transcend reality to a symbolic appreciation; and light, in its necessity, and again its provisional state of privation. Each so listed, at the temperament of the observer; the consequential relativity of each other; and all subject to the coincidental associations of a range of applied methodologies physical, theoretical or metaphysically intended. What more might we discern and add?
Thus far we stepped seemingly upward into the light; perhaps we might now pass downward into the dark; making certain not to have missed important attributes. And simply proposing it, after stripping away a few obvious aspects, there is, in the upper third, a tapering noticed – of the creek in perspective – that had focused attentiveness to the distant water that concentrated the theme of light. Reading downward we find the reflectiveness is no longer warm of morning sunlight; rather it is as cold as the ice itself; and its reflective quality is gradually disappearing. The nude reality of the cold air that fostered the icy crust is focused; then again, there is depth suggested, in the icy texture and beneath it, by the irregularity in the thickness of the crust – translucency and opacity; thinness and thickness; above; and therefore beneath - where we know movement exists (even to this day) and life flourishes even in this most barren time.
I might leave it to that list of features, if one other was not so apparent and disturbing to the composition: the bottom right quad of the image is most conspicuous. It outweighs its counterpart at left textually, tonally and is tenacious in its pulling the eye from most any pivot that attention might try to rest. Even if one focuses to the top-edged, most lit remoteness; that dogged quadrant tugs – as if it alone was the focus of all narrative or leisured contemplation! Yet, I love it so!
And I am certain, to the heart, that when I took the photo it dogged my notice; but something still insisted it was necessary to the collection – poor as it made the composition. Luckily I require more from my labors than objectiveness and depiction. Fortunately the language of image (for my type) extends into a symbolical parlance nuanced in mythic thinking; with appetite for prospecting of subjectivity, intuition and imaginal otherness – all correspondences my type appreciates.
The single-mindedness of that corner is the epitome of one-sidedness – the virtual plague of the twentieth, and seemingly, twenty-first centuries: one-sidedness! As a most poignant display of inequity, in this case far-right, it begs attention along the horizontal path; and therefore counterbalances the vertical previously discussed. At the same time, one might easily apply it to notions of balance; thesis or antithesis; Aristotelian principle of ‘mean’; divisions along the ‘platonic line’; or most any other notion necessitating a balance perspective. Or metaphor where re-shaping, truing a trajectory or eradicating something gone awry, might find necessity of being reminded.
Even if more is evident of that fraught corner or something has been overlooked in our list; the nature of this exercise has well been established. Object reality is not perception in its round; without inquisitive mindedness, perceptions (captured as images) are merely two dimensional empty shells; not even worth to be referred simulations. When the senses, all six, are enlisted, there is a chance that something more is being proposed or said; might even be heard, if only in mind’s shadowy subjectivity leading to a next and next and next…
In closing, I pose one question alone. What then of the meager list, might stir a viewer to his own imaginal narrative; might there be a multitude? -19mar17 tdp
POEM
'Ethos in a Perception'
So I moved through,
A passive horizon
Veiled of Blue Shadows,
Upon a Line,
Of Frozen Movement
Yet was effected...
Of Morning's Light
Taking me from the Darkness
Of Yesterday Night,
To the Reflective,
Luminous of Ascending Today
That would Voyage...
To where after
The Freezing to Form,
Of an Instant,
In the ongoing Saga
Of One-Sided Next-ness
...Today!
[Out-coming from the photo, 'Notions of an Icy Line to Reasonable Reason' [2009], -tdp, 19mar17]
Copyright 2017 Terrance DePietro, all rights expressly reserved.
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March 19th, 2017
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Comments (1)
VIVA Anderson
Hello Terrance. perhaps you'd like to know my immediate reactions to this lovely image before I read your dissertation ? Two things struck me. Firstly that again I am made to acknowledge your vertical line, as evinced recently in your cloudscape, as a strong effect I cannot ignore, and, out of the corner of my eye, I almost felt, rather than saw, the right foreground object not submerged completely, it spoke to me saying it is the anchor here. Shall be back once I've read your insights, purposes, and just to calmly admire this beautiful moment....the reflections, especially...'Tis the light, of course. ...VIVA
Terrance DePietro replied:
I dare say we 'both' will be in for a surprise...Given your first thoughts! I often leave all to the viewer; and stay back from my interpretations. But here I expose the type of subjective notioning which 'can' be applied to an image; thereby gaining the symbolical impressioning...I am doing this because it appears to me that the social norms, today, are suggesting that reading into an image is Folly - making it merely other than art's intend and cataloging it to the realms of psychological impressioning, et al. The institutions of art have no time to develop these human issues...But I do. En tout cas, I will be happy to hear your ideas - Most Assuredly! Terrance