Yes... there he is Icarus... the fallen apple of the stoic eye...

Greek mythology is deep in our cultural wellspring.  The Icarus metaphor shows up frequently in the arts... he has descended from the rafters of theaters, taken flight in Irish novels, singed his feathers in heavy metal music, been suspended motionless in canvas & stone...  and surprisingly for a mythological person he has been photographed many times... also by me when he shows up at the beach.

When I encounter Icarus here I get the end of the story... barely there like a mothprint on a window... he will disappear with the tide... the flight is over... the wing is already broken... 

I once had a problem with the Icarus metaphor... I don’t believe it was his fate to fall... I do not believe that extreme liberation is doomed to failure.

The failure to me is in the Stoic mind that created Icarus... he was a mirror of their conceptions and a victim of a technology that had failure as an intrinsic component of it’s design. The Stoic consciousness resided within the philosophy of ‘fly right’ and do not deviate from the middle path...  Icarus is given a structure within which he cannot manifest his true nature... the paradigm of escape is as stringent and confining as the maze.

I always photograph Icarus when I see him... but not as a spiritual metaphor of defeat... something else is going on and Icarus turned out to be for me a way to a different perception of the landscape... Icarus helped me fly.

WINGS

Often at dawn the beach is still dark and primal...

it will manifest it’s existence in unexpected ways in our consciousness.

SANDPIPERS

Oh.... pipers!

See them there... they are like in a dream... barely discernible... smeared in time.

 

Perhaps it is just poor photography... or perhaps it is the aesthetic of memory in photography... a derivative of pictorialism.

Many times I will be at the beach and a small group of sandpipers will fly in... immediately they will begin stitching the edges of the waves with their beaks looking for feed.  They are so tiny and frail and they have come so far to be here in this moment... the little pipers come from the lagoons of South America.... migrate to Alaska and then return... an ancient cycle of life... an epic journey for such a small creature.

They flow in and out... tracking the lip of each wave... each movement has such precise surety... I believe that unlike me, they have probably never experienced doubt.  Here they are on this incredible journey that they have never questioned or doubted because it is the absolute true manifestation of being a sandpiper.

I am sure that in their little hearts they have absolute faith in every moment of life and that each of these moments are exactly as they should be... a moment to be accepted and lived as part of their great migration.

I think that perhaps much of our emotional suffering comes from the perspective of doubt... so now I try to have an open heart to each moment as existence chooses to present it to me and have the faith of the little sandpipers... that things are exactly as they should be on the flyway and it is all leading to the possibility of something as wonderful as the sapphire lagoons of South America.

STAR

Let’s meet the neighbors...

No worries... I put my hand in the ocean before I picked her up... I wonder what she thinks my hand is... she and I are having very different experiences at this moment in time... I wonder if she thinks I am Annie Leibovitz... Annie Leibovitz photographs the stars.

WINDING TREE

 we pass this tree on the way to the beach...

... beauty in spite of adversity ...we all have it in us

MODERN WAVE

All of my work here at the shore hinges on this image...

Yes I know...  the camera is probably leaking light... the highlights are blown out... there are  issues with grain... the sky looks like the sand... the negative has been absolutely hammered in the developer and yes, those aren’t birds in the sky it’s dust...  This image is a photographer’s nightmare. 

Making this image is one of the most important things that has ever happened to me.  It is a hinge that changed the way I see the world... actually, if you stare at it for a minute the wave does seem a bit like a hinge of sky and land. Look at it... really look at it... it is an amazing thing... something important is happening... 

                                           It is a modern wave.

The ocean slammed this beach for eons... incomprehensible numbers of waves... a primordial rhythm... unobserved by consciousness.  Ancient people lived at this beach and the waves were codified and iconified into their stories, their art, their religion... the ocean was mystical. Waves like my wave did not exist.

What is important about this wave is that it went through a camera... it is still... but it is still in a particular way.  

No one could have perceived waves this way until the camera came along... slicing time... stacking light.  Go into the images of waves in painting... there are still waves there... but they are different... they do not have the illusory flavor of reality.  If you can find one in a Medieval painting... they are rare and they are absolutely bizarre to our consciousness.  

My wave is everywhere in the modern world... I see people photographing waves at the beach all the time... there are probably enough images of waves to paper the entire surface of the oceans... but I believe that each of them is just as bizarre as the Medieval  painted wave... none of them are real... they are perceptions... the photograph floats on a meniscus of illusion.  I am not referring to the the traditional dialectic about photography... that has become tedious... I think it separates you from what is really happening with the images.

Something amazing is happening... I am slicing time  and dividing space and stacking light with my cameras and I think I am approaching something... 

                                     suchness

lets go... I’ll show you how it happened.

BEACH EASEL

 I live above a wild shore... same thing every day 

...every day is different

FLOATING STONE

Existence... it is the big mystery... we are all in it...

no one knows what it is