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Repetition is one of the stabilizing things in our lives. We need it in order to learn. We need it in order to feel secure. We need routines to give our lives structure—we need reoccurring events that we can rely on. The sun comes up everyday as it has everyday we have been alive, and all our living depends on the belief that it will continue to do so. Summer always follows spring, and it has never failed to arrive. Repetition is also an important part of ritual. It is both the idea of ritual itself—that we repeat a series of actions we have done before— and it can also play a part within a ritual. From western rites we know the form of a litany: a repeated phrase sung or spoken after varying intervening phrases, often prayers. From eastern rites we get the chanting of mantras: the sounds made by vocalizing words or phrases that become conduits for higher powers. We humans also tend to repeat the same words or phrases when we are at a point of desperation. Repetition is also highly important in music composition; it is a unifying factor in most forms throughout history by way of motives, themes, subjects, countersubjects, or entire sections which return to give closure. In music, repetition gives the listening ear something to hold onto and something to expect.
In all cases, we tend to repeat things which are important in some way. But it is important to repeat the right things. Repetition can also be a sign of obsession or compulsion. Repetition of the wrong thoughts and actions can be just as harmful as repetition of the right things can be helpful. Unfortunately repetition can also end in boredom. To avoid this, it is often helpful to explore the same thing in different ways, and these photos strive to do just this, both in relation to taking pictures and in relation to viewing things we would normally look at only in their prime state.
Colors are at the center of my work. Rich colors have been what has driven me to art for as long as I can remember. Intense colors cause my throat to feel thirst when I see them in the world around me, and it is thirst for richness, intensity, wetness, and naturalness that I wish to pass on to my audience. My creative process (being photography) is visual, yes, but just as when the eyes encounter a mulberry pie still steaming behind the glass of the baker's window, it is not only the eyes that respond, but the nose and mouth and fingers.
Colors interact with each other too. In design and color theory we learn that colors opposite each other on the color wheel (red-green, blue-orange, yellow-purple) go well together, and also adjoining colors. While these color combinations appear very often in nature, nature can also surprise us. A single plant never seems to produce different colors that are hard to see together.
Reflection has to do with viewing an image against itself, or in light of itself. As a mental process reflection is searching one’s self. It is a self-contained process. In a photograph composed of reflections, the image is also self-contained. It is perceived quite differently than the original photograph was: the lines form symmetry, the colors are exactly balanced between two halves of the photograph. Reflection can form completeness. It is not mere repetition. With two identical photographs side by side we see two images. With an image and its reflection we see one image that is neither the original nor its reflection. As in music, reflection can take three different forms. A reflection in the vertical dimension is an inversion. A reflection in the horizontal direction is a retrograde. And the third is both dimensions simultaneously which produces retrograde inversion. The original image itself is referred to as prime. When taking photographs with reflection in mind, more consideration is given to the edges of the frame and the corners than when taking a photo that will be a work unto itself. When searching for an image that will be reflected, special thought has to be given to where the corners will meet to form the center—and which corner. Two edges of the photo will also meet when reflected into a four-part composition such as these photographs. Consideration is given to what elements in the frame will extend all the way to (and past) the edge to form the connection to the photo’s own reflection. Without this in four-part work, the composition struggles to find identity as a single work and instead gives the viewer a sense of seeing a teleidescope (a fine thing in its own right, but not the mission of this project).
Reflection is a sort of examination; it can cause us to change course.
Containment draws our focus to the center of an image. When things are concentrated in the center, or when there appears to be a central object in the nearest level of perception, we sense that things are drawn together, that they are under control and complete in the present moment. Explosion draws our attention outward—to the edges of an image or even beyond, and we may sense that the purpose of the photograph is not even represented within the frame of the photo itself.
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