Spiritual Seeing
by John L. Gronbeck-Tedesco
Moving human vision beyond habitual ways of seeing the material world and into the spiritual involves a good deal of editing. I use the term spiritual to name a realm of experience that is unavailable to the everyday perceptual habits organized by our senses and brain, in cahoots with cultural norms.
Connections between art and spirituality have a long history. Take, for example, Michaelangelo’s remarks on sculpture based on the theology of beauty, or the commentary of the Symbolists (especially Baudelaire and Mallarmé, who relied on the poetics of E. A. Poe), or the purposes of painting explained by the German expressionist Hans Hoffman. The upshot is that the visual arts can reeducate perception, showing that perhaps there really is more to reality “than meets the eye.”
Visual art can serve as a bridge to a place beyond the physical world, and creative editing is one pathway for that journey.
Within the Aurora #4
Within the Aurora #4 granulates color into small particles that, in part, reveal a spiritual dimension to the scene by making these small bits of color seem to be actual substances. The original image was captured on a digital camera and then digitally edited to alter color and density.. Finally, I cropped the photo, leaving only the center section where the granules of color were the most dense.
Light Echoing on the Shore.
Light Echoing on the Shore emphasizes both the seams and connections between sea, earth, and sky, which is where the spiritual resides. The editing process became a search for the separation and unity, visible in a way that defamiliarized an ordinary beach scene, so that the final image could evoke a second (and maybe a third) look. Editing included the conversion of color to silver tones and an emphasis on contrast and definition. I cropped the photo to make the boundaries of the frame seem irrelevant. I hope the image enables earth, sky, and water to impart wonder, which is the first step toward a spiritual experience.
John L. Gronbeck-Tedesco’s photographs, poetry, stories, translations, and plays have appeared in a variety of publications and venues. Some of these include BarBar, Wyldcraft, One Sentence Poems, Scintilla, The Connecticut River Review, the Experiment Will Not Be Bound, Business Casual Productions (NYC), the Kansas Theatre Project, Karamu House Theatre, the Cleveland Public Theatre, and the University of Kansas.