LAWRENCE RUSS: Soul, Art, and Society
Archives: My Photography
The Cage of the “Surreal” – Part 2 of 2
I recently had three of my photographs chosen for an exhibition called “Strange Times” at the Atlanta Photography Group Gallery . That exhibition was conceived partly with the pandemic in mind. Yet none of my selected images was made since the start of the pandemic, and none was generated by a dream or even a waking fantasy.
A New “Marion” and a New Clue
As the title of this post promises, here is the photograph that just last week joined my ongoing, award-winning “Marion under the Moon” series. Its title is “Dream of the Playground Melting into Night.” Several friends of mine, seeing it for the first time, have ha wildly differing emotional reactions to it . . . One male friend said that the image provides “mysteries upon mysteries”. . . .
Marion Magic
All of the people who know me pretty well know that I adore my wife, Marion. It’s a central fact of my person and my life. You yourself may, just possibly, have gathered this from my earlier post, “The Heroines’ Unpinned Hair” (posted February 13, 2013) https://lruss.com/2013/02/15/the-heroines-unpinned-hair/ . If you didn’t guess it before, you’ll likely guess now that she’s the model in all the images in my “Marion under the Moon” series, which began with the photograph (above) of that name. . . .
Three More Clues, Turned in Another Direction
My earlier sets of clues had to do, you might say, with the nature of reality, of being. This set has a different emphasis, though the same ground. This one looks toward decisions and actions.The first clue is a Zen story that I told in an earlier post: A Zen teacher, Nan-ch’uan, stands before a […]
A Surprise Bright Spot in My Confinement
I’m thrilled to be able to tell you that Keith Carter evidently read my three-post “Keith Carter and the Cloud of Mercy” on this site, and he posted this comment (which follows the end of Part 2): Thank you, got your thoughtful and kind review of my work. As you know, you write beautifully, and […]
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” […]
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 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 […]
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