Blog Posts - Photography by John Holliger

A New Exhibit: "Hidden Until Now, Beauty Revealed."

9/3/2019

Hidden Until Now
Beauty Revealed

Th earth was once a garden with thousand-year-old trees everywhere we looked. The waters were clear, dancing and freely flowing. The earth lived with natural rhythms and balance among all the creatures, long before the humans appeared.
We must have looked very odd to the trees, the creatures, the waters.
Those humans who listened, learned, and lived the ancient natural rhythm of the earth, taking just enough, and giving back to the earth their gratitude and kindness, those humans are now the rare ones, who are invisible and different, just as the remnants of the garden, the ancient trees, and dancing waters continue to flourish, often hidden and unseen, along paths made by deer and moose.
I live a wandering life, waking before the Sun appears, sauntering the paths of deer, the forgotten roads that have no name and do not appear on any map.
In these places I am stopped in my tracks by a glimpse of that garden, a stand of ancient trees, dancing streams, and flora as tiny as the little fingers not yet unfolded on the new fern of spring. seen in the soft light of dawn when dew and mist touch the sacred.

John Holliger ©2019

What is meant by uncreated Light?

8/28/2019

Uncreated Light

Long before
Edison’s glowing filament,
The ancients spoke of uncreated light.

In my younger, literal years,
My either/or, all-or-nothing left brain wanted
Easy, obvious steps.
A favorite cliché was,
That’s a “no brainer.”

As a protective defense,
My intuitive,
Creative,
Imaginative voice was in hiding
In fear of being heard and my essence scorned.

I was repulsed by the gibberish language of mystery,
Inexplicable Metaphors, and
Fresh images which pained my ordered mind,
My reptilian, unconscious mind
that walked the same path out and back,
Day by day,
Believed that getting back without being noticed was
a successful day.

Then this rigid manner of living collapsed,
And my voice,
Hidden so deeply for decades
Began a long journey,
One with no map.
Finding myself in a cul-de-sac
I didn’t know I had wanted to find all along,
Turned me toward a Light, Uncreated by me or any other,
Inviting me to make a new path to a distant Aura
A Presence,
A Soft
Gentle
White.

That Uncreated Light
That shown evenly through icons onto the one
Standing there, gazing back,
An Otherness
Sensed in the forest when alone,
Or at the water’s edge of a Great Lake,
From my wet feet to the other side of that horizon of white mist.

The Ancient Japanese painters knew this white, Uncreated Light,
Separating and Connecting the images of village life on those long scrolls,
Hiding and revealing the odd shaped, narrow mountains
Thrusting into the clouds beyond sight.

Uncreated Light

Revealed so dependably here and there by morning’s mist,
The midwife to a new way of pondering.
Uncreated Light
Revealing surprising, captivating visions,
Kindness
A touch
An unspoken word
That says everything.

Uncreated Light comes
From I know not where.

John Holliger ©2019

August 28th, 2019

8/28/2019

Turning onto a gravel road
in search of a stand of old growth red spruce,
I crept along for miles
swerving around emerging boulders,
riding the high mounds of eroding streams,
creating their own path across and down the gravel road,
an “unimproved road,” forgotten, neglected,
paths within this path.
Now dropping into unseen depths,
then surging up and out and forward,
skidding across ripples of stone,
Mile following creeping mile,
no map, no signs, many “posted” on trees,
an unknown distance from that first turning
onto this gravel path miles ago.
Into a patch of sunlight,
surrounded by weeds as desiccated as the gravel.

Many times,
forgotten
gravel roads,
undisturbed by humans,
Unveil unexpected songs, trickles
from springs hidden miles beyond sight upstream.
Here,
I pulled off the road and stopped.
I don’t know why, here, but something
Said, “Stop, here,” and I did.
“Get out and listen, look.”
I discovered again that refreshing feeling,
Opening the door
And standing up,
then a few steps.
I remember the joy of walking
And the compressed tolerance of sitting for a season of driving.

Standing and walking,
Crushing stems and snapping branches,
I hear chanting, coming from somewhere near.
A deep voice,
Hidden,
Vocalizing in her own language,
Her contentment and gratitude.
In her mezzo-soprano tones,
She is thanking the Earth’ s spring,
flowing water to the sea,
and her life,
Her path,
so much like my own.
No maps, no signs, no “posted” signs on trees,
But
her path
Unknown yet trusted.
Hidden beneath curling branches.
My curiosity was focused,
Longing to see the one who sang.
By moving sideways, crablike
Across wobbly stones,
I came closer to her artful presence.
Dropping beneath branches intent on protecting
Her unseen place,
Her beauty, playfully vocalizing,
A gift of freedom.

Here
In secret,
She could fall over ancient rocks,
Singing ever-changing melodies of her luscious joy.

Here,
These stones were also
Singing their own song, I could not hear,
the protecting branches chanting their song, I could not hear,
My gift was my attentive silence,
For the stones, the moss, the spring, the branches, the water,
A silence that would not disturb the chorus of joy,

Here,
in this forgotten place
of gravel and desert.

©John Holliger 2019

Cottonwoods, thoughts from Robert Adams, Along Some Rivers

5/27/2019

Quotations from Along some Rivers, by Robert Adams.

Cottonwoods can seem human—they seem to rejoice and they seem to suffer. But they also seem to know a stillness that we can[t experience.
The example of trees does suggest a harmony for which it seems right to dream. Lakota refer to the cottonwood as the dreaming tree, a place of visions.
Willa Cather wrote in the Song of the Lark, which is set on the Colorado plains, that cottonwoods are “wind-loving trees…whose roots are always seeking water and whose leaves are always talking about it, making the sound of rain.”
Edward Thomas: “Trees and us—imperfect friends.” Cottonwoods have been our friends for a long while. The Arapaho believed, for instance3, that the stars came from cottonwoods, from the glistening sap at the joints of the twigs. The Hidatsa believed that the shade from cottonwoods was healing. Everything about the tree, in fact, struck Native Americans as beneficent.

A little about Minor White,editor of Aperture magazine for 25 years

3/9/2019

Minor White’s basic commitment was to a way of life, not to photography per se…

He was basically a contemplative. Everybody knows that, but very few people in photography seem to understand what that really means.

It means that there are more important matters in his life than making pictures, and more important goals in photography, as he understood it, than making good ones.

Photography was not only not necessary to him. It was in fact something of an encumbrance. “Working among esoteric or spiritual lives, you come to the realization that your medium can’t keep up with you, you can go beyond it and a decision has to be made—or you have to keep your eyes open and see what decisions are being made for you.”

In his decision to stay with photography White was not unlike the bodhisattva, who chooses to stay and help his fellow creatures. “I realized that photography was my mouthpiece, this was the way I talked. Photography meant writing about it, editing it, teaching and making it.

It was a service thing now—a totally different attitude.

Only recently have photographers started coming out of the darkroom in any numbers and many of them are still blinking. In his teaching methods, he shows, rather than told, what he had in mind.
“Poets, actors, musicians, artists, unlike photographers, would have no trouble with what he was saying but then that was precisely why he had to keep trying to say it to photographers.

Poetry and Photography

3/9/2019

Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one’s soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself but with its subject. John Keats, Letter, February 3, 1818

A new exhibit December 1st: The Many Paths of our Lives"

11/28/2018

The Many Paths of Life
A Fine Art Exhibit
Imprints on Cotton, Created by John Holliger
“There is no path that goes all the way.” 没有一条路可以走。(Méiyǒu yītiáo lù kěyǐ zǒu.)
Han Shan, a Zen monk (627-649), uttered this simple thought many times in his short life.
David Whyte, from Wales, now living on Bainbridge Island near Seattle carries us along:
                                                                   No Path
“There is no path that goes all the way.
Not that it stops us looking for the full continuation.
The one line in the poem we can start and follow straight to the end.
The fixed belief we can hold facing a stranger
that saves us the trouble of a real conversation…
But still, there is no path that goes all the way,
one conversation leads to another,
One breath to the next until there’s no breath at all…
And then wouldn’t your life have to start all over again
for you to know even a little of who you had been?”

Antonio Machado (1875 – 1939) probably never met Han or David,
but here is one of his best-known poems:
                                                        Traveler, your footprints
“Caminante, no hay camino,    “Traveler, there is no road;
se hace camino al andar.         you make your own path as you walk.
Al andar se hace el camino,    As you walk, you make your own road,
y al volver la vista atrás          and when you look back
se ve la senda que nunca       you see the path
se ha de volver a pisar.          you will never travel again.
Caminante, no hay camino   Traveler, there is no road;
sino estelas en la mar.”         only a ship's wake on the sea.”

Most Recently, Parker Palmer, a Philadelphia Quaker (born 1939) looking back many decades noticed how confused and lost he was in his 20’s. In his 30’s one mentor came into his life for a while, then moved on once. Parker had learned what his mentor had to give him.
Another mentor appeared and ask him different questions but so right in that moment. Again this mentor deepened Parker’s sense of who he was becoming. With this new clarity the mentor invited Parker into a new direction, a new path. One after another they arrived and left. And then there were no more. He realized his leading was to become a mentor for other young men who were as lost and confused as he had been.
David Whyte gives us the pivotal question.   Where do I start?
“Start with
The ground you know,
The pale ground
Beneath your feet…
Start with the first
Thing
Close in
The step
You don’t want to take.
Don’t take the second step
Or the third,
Start with the first thing
Close in,
The step you don’t want to take”

Our paths, like mentors, can guide us so far, and then disappear.
Santiago by David Whyte
“The road seen,
then not seen,
the hillside hiding
then revealing
the way you should take…”

You will be drawn to one work of art in this exhibit.
What path or memory is evoked as you contemplate this work?

Fascinations

11/5/2018

Fascinations

How they do change over a lifetime
and yet so deep within
our fascinations are us.
My fascinations with the tiny
Have led me into new worlds of beauty and wonder.
And languages I did not know;
Palmer Amarantha, Nutledge, Basidiolichen,


My First Fascination
A child’s bare feet walking on the wet sand

I scan through this clear water for a Lucky Stone,
Floating and rolling along at my feet,
Ancient, ageless remnants of the ear bone of the white fish,
A stone of remembrance of another life of Erie,
Inscribed with a large “L.”
Reaching over to catch this floating wonder
I become connected to the ancient life that lived and lives
Here
My home.

Returning,
I enter a body of life
Far larger and other than me
To which, I belong.

Finding two lucky stones in one morning
Brought me such joy and contentment,
I do belong
To the enduring life of this Great Lake.

Looking north across the Lake
her horizon disappears
Dropping out of sight as the Earth curves round
Gifting me with wonder.

Oh, the unseen beauty and mysteries of
This Great Lake,
“Erie,”
An extinct word for Iroquoian peoples
Who lived and walked the wet sands
Centuries before.

My beginning to a life of fascination,
And all I did was stand still
In the wet sand where moving waters
Were giving up their strength on the sand
Then falling back
Returning to their home,
Erie.

All I did was stand still
Gazing at the far side of home,
Then turning back
To the here of this wet sand.

Do you long to stand still
at home
on this Earth?

Do you yearn for the wandering,
Floating freedom
0f the Lucky Stone?


©2018 John Holliger

My Spiritual Companion, Edward Weston

11/1/2018

My Spiritual Companion, Edward Weston

I can almost feel the breath of Edward Weston,
as if we are both leaning over his wet print in the final tray of fixer.
We are in his darkroom. Then he turns over the wet print and
we both gasp.
The contrast between the black soil and the white tomato plants across that expansive rising hill is dramatic,
crisp,
clear.
No wonder our breath exclaims surprise and delight.
In the early 20th century prints are made directly from the negative.
They are the same size as the negative; 6 x 12, 8 x 14.
So many negatives are awful, littering the floor for years.
10,000 I like to say.
Until something changes inside Weston,
and he wakes up one of the finest fine art photographers.

I thought I was “somethun,’” when I was ordained. All that seminary training.
But no.
It didn’t “stick,” it didn’t matter until after 10 years.
That was when something moved a mile in my sleep.
I woke up, a priest.

On the far side of 10,000 clicks of the shutter
and 10,000 deletes,
one morning along a stream at dawn,
I am the stream.
Together, we flow to the sea.

Everyone in that small Weston gallery is 12 inches from the prints of Edward Weston, so close we are not aware of anyone else in the room.
We are leaning with Weston over the wet trays of prints in the darkroom.
Photography is
intimate,
intrusive,
disarming,
so close and personal
our breath can seem like one breath.

Weston’s presence is there,
in each creation, and
we can only gaze by coming close, 12 inches away.
Weston’s negatives could be 6 by 12 inches, and so were his prints. The negative is not a technical achievement of perfection after all those duds are tossed.

He is now on the far side of technique.
The print is not created from a cookbook of recipes,
water temperatures or chemical formulas.
but there is also that other day.
He is now well beyond what any cookbook could teach him.
Walking out,
he knows what he is searching for…
his own
hidden
interior stream,
his own voice.

What he learns in that moment is what he felt, seconds before the book goes flying.
Those seconds hold a hard truth; one word: stop.
You are no longer expressing your own voice
Walk out. Walk until you find again,
your own
hidden stream,
your own voice.
Follow wherever it leads.
Do not look back.
All you’ll see is an ocean wake,
a receding wave.

Wall art? Forget it.
Weston’s work is held in our lap,
then we raise the tomato hill
up close,
12 inches close,
And we marvel at the beauty of the Earth.
We see something more we had missed in all those other times we gazed on his work.
No, this is nothing like documentary photography.
Edward Weston (b. 1886) is one of the first fine art photographers
who intuitively experiences the intimacy,
two people leaning so close,
his breath and your breath are one.

Three Lake Huron, Tawas Point, Images and Three Haiku's

10/29/2018

Broken Rocks

Curling lines in sand
Leaping waters
Sliding up then back,
New curving lines among
Broken rocks,
Here

To the vanishing horizon.

The Cover

The cover of indigo and magenta
Warm the waters beneath.
Are the waters stirring to find their favorite sleep position?
Or is this one of those other nights?

Opening Clouds

Opening clouds
Create a threshold.
Will you turn away with your fears, or
Will you enter
Bringing your fears with you?