Nikola Tesla
My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists.
Nature may reach the same result in many ways. Like a wave in the physical world, in the infinite ocean of the medium which pervades all, so in the world of organisms, in life, an impulse started proceeds onward, at times, may be, with the speed of light, at times, again, so slowly that for ages and ages it seems to stay, passing through processes of a complexity inconceivable to men, but in all its forms, in all its stages, its energy ever and ever integrally present. A single ray of light from a distant star falling upon the eye of a tyrant in bygone times may have altered the course of his life, may have changed the destiny of nations, may have transformed the surface of the globe, so intricate, so inconceivably complex are the processes in Nature. In no way can we get such an overwhelming idea of the grandeur of Nature than when we consider, that in accordance with the law of the conservation of energy, throughout the Infinite, the forces are in a perfect balance, and hence the energy of a single thought may determine the motion of a universe.
Nikola Tesla
The Mouth of Krishna
Japan, 2016 #897 Pigments, gampi paper and gold leaf
Opticks
Polarized #54001 Toned Cyanotype emulsion on aluminium.
Looking forward for an intense but great schedule in Paris.
We will have different opportunitites to meet you during the book sessions next week. It will be a pleasure to say hi to you.
THURSDAY NOVEMBER 10
3 pm Photographic Syntax, @themthemthemthem THE (M) ÉDITIONS @polycopies
6 pm Des Oiseaux, @atelier_exb ATELIER EXB, SE9 @parisphotofair
FRIDAY NOVEMBER 11
4 pm Photographic Syntax, Des Oiseaux & Remembering the future, @esther.woerdehoff ESTHER WOERDEHOFF, E16 @parisphotofair
6 pm Remembering the Future, @editorial_rm RM, SE1 @parisphotofair
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Opticks
Polarized #55002 Pigments, gampi paper and gold leaf.
We’ll be showing new work at Paris Photo Grand Palais éphémère
10.13 NOV 2022
Stand E16 Esther Woerdehoff
It will be great to see you there!
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“Straightforward reproduction is still the nucleus of photography, but radiating from that nucleus,… are a number of facets which cannot be encompassed by drawing, etching, lithography or similar manual processes. The peculiar nuances of light and shade, with their gradations of transparency, express something other than manual painting or graphic art can convey.”
- Abstract Pictures on Film. Introduction by Franz Roh
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In 1704 the English philosopher, physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton published for the first time Opticks. With the same spirit of investigation and research, we have started ‘Opticks’ which is neither a series, nor a specific and delimited portion of work.
In Opticks, we follow our initial approach of using photography to investigate the ‘structure of reality’, ‘the why of things’. As Berenice Abbott once stated: to use photography as “the friendly interpreter of science”. The difference with our previous series is that in this case we investigate the components of Nature which are inaccessible and unviewable, except by means of experiments which render them visible.
The Mouth of Krishna
#347 Platinum/Palladium print
#348 Platinum/Palladium print
We’d like to thank @ibasho___gallery and @sieboldhuis for thinking on us to be part of the Wabi-Sabi exhibition @sieboldhuis starting on 23 September.
Japanese definitions of beauty have been developed over many generations. Japan has focused on the natural world adopting a sensitivity to and appreciation for nature.
The Japanese have developed a distinct sense of aesthetics to depict different kinds of beauty, and among them we find the concepts wabi and sabi.
After the Heian period, during the Medieval Times and inspired by Buddhism a new set of aesthetic values are developed centered in “the lack/absence of apparent external beauty”, discovering “another new beauty”, more elevated and sober based on simplicity, nature, impermanence, poverty, imperfection, coldness.
Wabi means “poverty.” To be poor, that is, not dependent on things worldly and yet to feel inwardly the presence of something of the highest value. Wabi is to be satisfied with a little hut, like the log cabin of Thoreau, to stay content with the contemplation of Nature.
Sabi literally means “loneliness.” Sabi consists in rustic imperfection. In poetry Sabi stands for “austere and solitary beauty.” Sabi suggests the passing of time and the patina this passing produces in the worldly things destined to vanish.
Wabi sabi represents rustic and desolate beauty that correlates with a dark, bleak beauty that can be easily overlooked; but that it can be found everywhere: such as a small worn-down hut hidden in the forest, the shy first green sprouts fighting their way out in the snow in a high-mountain village.
Wabi sabi is linked with a discreet beauty in the colourless, the old, and the fragile. In short, the beauty of a cold, bleak, solitary, wintry landscape that is used as a symbol representing and suggesting the impermanence of men.
We could say that new aesthetics places us on the way to an imperfect beauty that leads us directly to the infinite beauty.
