A Slice of Time, Experience Shared: The Ethics of Seeing

PLAIN THINGS MADE beautiful. Simple things made profound. Austere things made spiritual.

It is in ordinary places and things that she finds wonder and contemplation:

... trees that penetrate the deepest secrets of the Earth, that eloquently speak to the listening heaven;

... nostalgia marbles gently rolling in memories from a faraway time and place;

... absurd storybook whimsy caught in the harsh real world;

... young facades and aging features of buildings and street people;

and in the quotidian, the insignificant, the routine, the familiar.

She sees the unadorned beauty of nature and tries to communicate that spiritual energy in her photographs. She works with the concept of light and shadow to capture and convey the sacredness of the earth and its reflection of light.

She seems to enjoy portraying them with unusual coloration or perspective, perhaps quite beyond the range of our normal and limited range of senses, to give a feeling of what may exist outside of our ability to understand.

She uses photography to make spiritual expressions.

This is how she makes the ordinary extraordinary, the dismissible noteworthy, the useless instructive, the lowly worthy, the unlovely lovable and the insignificant magnificent.

Perhaps she finds a little humility in the face of creation.

She sees with a compassionate heart and mind. Through the lenses of a tender heart she touches a desolate and weary soul with immense pathos. A dried, dusty and destitute woman is made moving simply because this photographer found her worth looking at.

For she knows It is He who makes the raindrops small…

Casting her Photographing Eye on this lowly and suffering creature, she gently prods our stubborn hearts for relenting, tender spots. Transforming the profoundly unlovely and unloved into an angel with broken wings, she hold up to us an unlying mirror: a reflection of our own worn-out souls. She stirs our human conscience.

This very ethical way of seeing is also a perfect example of how photos are momento mori in that they let us participate in a person’s mortality and vulnerability. They also have the ability to help us to see our own potential for 'holiness'.

In an age where we perhaps have lost something of our spirituality in a vain, mad attempt to satisfy our basic needs with material acquisitiveness, this is one of the rare few places that can serve as an inspiration to help bring a spirit of peace and harmony to one's life, to uplift and soothe.

This, and another humble patch, amid all the cacophony, caterwauling and endless (sometimes mindless) chatter of the Malaysian Blogosphere.

Related: The Photographing Eye, The Inside Story, A Wuanderful World

Disclaimer:

The A Slice of Time, Experience Shared blog series is not motivated by any need or desire to please or displease any particular Photographing Eye. It is just a record of my own speculations about particular images I have found remarkable or thought-provoking. The observations are purely based on my own personal interpretations and intuitions.