LAWRENCE RUSS, Photographer: Soul, Art, and Society
The soul, spiritual matters, social justice, photography and the other arts, and the reality in which they are all joined.
If you’ve read my first post on this blog — “Welcome to Artists, Lovers of Art, and Unknown Friends” — you’ll have a good indication of my intentions here. And if … Continue Reading A Welcome to Further and Farther Voyages
Permanent link to Art and Mystery“. . . there is only one thing valuable in art and that is the bit that cannot be explained. To explain away the mystery of a great painting – if such a feat were possible – would be irreparable harm . . . if there is no mystery then there is no ‘poetry,’ the quality I value above all else in art.”
-- Georges Braque
Tomas Transtromer, the Swedish poet and psychotherapist, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2011. Transtromer, who died in 2015, wrote this poem after the assassination of President John Fitzgerald … Continue Reading An Unhappy July the 4th
Permanent link to The Poetic Image“When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.” Robert Frank
Li Bo, how could you keep your heart from loneliness, calling always to the moon?
Yes, the word “camera” is italicized in the original text of this passage from “The God of the Living” by George MacDonald. The word opens an entrance into these … Continue Reading The Body, Mortal and Immortal, as a Camera
On the front page of The New York Times for Saturday, April 21, 2018, there was an article titled “Over 700 Children Taken from Parents at Border.” It began: On … Continue Reading Suffer the Little Children to Come unto Me
“[The] notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is to be expunged; this I shall do, by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell … Continue Reading Windows and Doors and Waves and the Well
Lo, in the silent night A child to God is born And all is brought again That ere was lost or lorn. Could but thy soul, O man, Become a … Continue Reading WISHING YOU PEACE AND JOY FOR CHRISTMAS
I drove by the site late one day and took a few photos for my final-stretch planning. After dinner, when I looked at the photos on my computer, I did … Continue Reading Who Really Made That Photograph? – Part 2 of 2
There is a virtually-unkillable part of us that, when anything we’ve touched is considered successful, wants to proclaim to everyone in earshot (even if that’s only us), “Mine!,” “I did … Continue Reading Who Really Made That Photograph? – Part 1 of 2
Photographers, or artists of any kind, are probably more aware than most people are of fortuitous coincidings, of happy or regrettable appearances and disappearances: “I could kick myself for not … Continue Reading At Home in the Secret
My unhappiness with my website provider had grown ever since it was taken over by an outfit specializing in wedding mementos. Of course, the new owners assured us innocent client-lambs … Continue Reading Come Celebrate My New Site-Launch by Viewing My New Site
I wish you all for thanksgiving what, in a sense, but only in a sense, we already have — a world of wonders. Or, rather, I wish that we would all enter … Continue Reading Wishing You a Wonderful Thanksgiving
[The ink painting above, by Sengai, pictures a scene from the famous Zen koan in which the Zen teacher, Nan-ch’uan, tells his students that he will chop the kitten in … Continue Reading Alligator Intellect
I don’t know how many “favorite” photographs I have, but I know that one of the frames in my sanctum of photographic love holds Imogen Cunningham’s “The Unmade Bed.” It’s clicheish to … Continue Reading The Heroines’ Unpinned Hair
LAWRENCE RUSS, Photographer: Soul, Art, and Society 