LAWRENCE RUSS: Soul, Art, and Society
Archives: Art and Spirit
It Is Always at Your Doorstep
The artist’s world is limitless. It can be found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep. – Paul Strand
Angels of Love and Sorrow
I didn’t know, when I started my three-post “Keith Carter and the Cloud of Mercy,” how many new reasons we would have now, in this pandemic, to pray for mercy. Our perilous state, and our pressing need for charity of all kinds, have made me think of a photograph from my “Marion under the Moon” […]
Keith Carter and the Cloud of Mercy – Part 3 of 3
It’ll be tempting for me at times to get lost in exposition or explanation, but I want to stick as much as possible to what’s central to this series of posts: an experience that I had some years ago on August 28 in Israel that suddenly came to mind as I was looking at Keith Carter’s Fifty Years and thinking about his use of shallow focus.
Keith Carter and the Cloud of Mercy, Part 2 of 3
Anyone familiar with Keith Carter’s photography will have seen how often and how extremely Carter uses a common technique that’s referred to in various ways: limited or shallow depth field, bokeh, background blur, wide apertures, and so on. What it means is that most (or sometimes, in his case, almost all) of what appears in […]
Keith Carter and the Cloud of Mercy, Part 1 of 3
First: I love Keith Carter’s photographs. Let me say that again: I love Keith Carter’s photographs. That has nothing to do with opinion or analysis, but rather with the grateful, felt experience of receiving gift after gift. I love the man, too, who speaks to us in his recorded interviews and lectures: gentle, uncommonly humble, […]
How do I love Thee? Let me count the ways. (Christmas 2019)
All ye works of the Lord, Bless the Lord, Praise and exalt Him Above all, for ever. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. […]
Happy Thanksgiving 2019, Over and Under the Moon!
This photograph, called “Lunar Eclipse,” is another from my “Marion under the Moon” series. I made it in 2017, and since then it has been selected by the Visual Arts Committee of Artspace New Haven for my on-site Flatfile folder and for the 2018 Silent Auction that is part of Artspace’s annual fund-raising Gala. The […]
We Don’t Know How
I’ve written posts before about the inspirations or events that come to us, without our having planned or willed them, to spur or add force to artistic works (you don’t need to read or re-read these for the purposes of this post): for instance, “Who Really Made That Photograph?” Parts 1 and 2 (December 2016) […]
Art and the Mad Machine: The Spirit of Life vs. The Spirit of Addiction
What you see above is a reproduction of the cover of the July 1992 issue of OMNI Magazine, for which I wrote the month’s “First Word” piece. The “First Word” name of the feature referred to its being the first piece of writing in the issue (on page 3 after the Table of Contents), and […]
A Little Guidance and a First Pair of Clues
We’re all taught – or, rather, misled – by our families, our schools, our occupational or professional training, by the ubiquitous stream of advertisements, to believe that what is unreal is real, what is real is unreal; that what is poisonous or trivial is priceless, that what is priceless isn’t worth our time. How often […]