Photography has played a major part in the trajectory of my life. My goals in photography evolved into a singular need to explore the medium’s unique ability to capture a moment of time in its context. I prefer monochrome photography for this reason. The lack of color liberates the form and textures of light and shadow by reducing the image to its most basic elements.

The basic elements of the three-dimensional image scene are light, matter, and the space it occupies. Photography transposes these onto two-dimensional film or sensor, often referred to in art as a representation. What the mind does with these representations has been a controversial topic. I’ll explore those in future journal entries.

For this entry, I’ll briefly touch on how I see it. There are two fundamental realms of space, one in which matter exists, and one in which consciousness exists. They seem different but are really part of the same space. In my youth I wasted considerable time on the idea of the existential separateness of the human condition. That separateness is more likely just an artifact of the attachments humans form as they try to differentiate themselves.

Let’s take a look at it from a different perspective. The active ingredient here is time. The component of time alters how we experience space. Instead of a singular moment, we experience past and future. Kant argued that experience was only possible in the continuum of time that produces relative events. For Kant, space was the a priori medium for experience to exist. There was no experience in physical space without time.

How about the space of consciousness? My experience of consciousness is that of inner space and indeed time is required for experience, but an experience such as intuition is more expansive and inclusive. For example, Feng Shui based on the concept of Qi considers space to be experiential in that it’s energy is woven into its surrounding energies. A form of meditation is required to understand this experience. It is the experience of space relative to space and mind, in which time is not an active ingredient. That may be splitting hairs on my part, but the point is Feng Shui is an encounter of the very singular form.