STORYSHARDS

SARIS ARE THE COLOR WHEELS OF INDIA

The divine Diana Vreeland, legendary editor of Harper’s Bazaar and founder of The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum, affirmed, “Shocking pink is the navy blue of India.”

Enroute to the Ganges, I tucked my father’s cremains in a dreary black bandana for a final puja in the tide facilitated by stoned jungly priest. Greedy, too, they were. The bright marigold lei dressed JSJ’s aged snot-rag. The elephant vessel was purchased at a gas station souvenir shop. At Varanasi, the essence of the dead smoked and surrendered the last of their embodiment at the riverside ghats. Abstraction for sure.

Having been to the subcontinent many times before, from Himalayan heights clear to the shores of Kerala, I knew that India is the place to get my photo-color-on, and frame it through an eye for optical intimacy and abstraction. Whether in stuffed bags of saris bound for market, upside down color wheel turbans, or a portrait posed against a sari background, in India,

color–saturated abstraction is there to be seen and captured.

Color is form, color is content. Color blocking became the “it” of modern art and fashion design very early in the 19c. So why not in photography, where color was not accepted as fine art until the 80s?  As for abstraction: it transcends literal subject matter – creates another window into the creative imagination. All those traditional pictures have been taken; just take a look at Instagram and Pinterest. As for India, corruption, pandemics, poverty and overpopulation, and nationalist belief systems have transformed this fantastical holy land, once so open and conducive to form, color, and abstraction. Nevertheless, the color wheels of saris remain aswirl – and in the  embers of memory.

Paris always delivers photo surprises to me. Imagine my delight when entering

the ladies lou at The Arab World Institute. Visible behind the glass wall, a metallic screen unfolds with moving geometric motifs, a la moucharabieh. The motifs are actually 240 photo-sensitive motor-controlled apertures, or shutters, which act as a sophisticated brise soleil that automatically opens and closes to control the amount of light and heat entering the building from the sun. The mechanism creates interior spaces with filtered light – an effect often used in Islamic architecture with its climate-oriented strategies.

Winning the Aga Khan Award for Architectural Excellence, the innovative use of technology and success of the building’s design catapulted architect Nouvel to fame and is one of the cultural reference points of Paris.

Several ladies in line were in full burka. Not needing the lou, I maneuvered gracefully to access the original flat gray-day images, which I later affected in Lightroom. Discovering CUT–UPS as a sound track was a creative surprise, as well. I synced the shots to William Burroughs’ voiceover from CUT–UPS, his rad Paris-based radio show of the 1960s.

23AMAZES HOW UNLIKLEY ELEMENTS COME TOGETHER IN CREATIVE SYNERGY.

A visit to Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial is a haunting experience conducive to contemplation of being unseen and lost in of site covered with 2,711  concrete slabs, or stelae, arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field.  Designed by architect Peter Eisenman, the compound roll makes exploring the alleyways a bit of a whoopsy-do. But not for the kids playing hide-and-seek among themselves and faking out parents. I was lifted from a somber state when I tried to capture the kids on camera running between and ducking behind the huge stelae. I got a fix, as well, on the chiaroscuro shadow play on the concrete blocks.

It’s a wonder how elements come together creatively. With a collection stark images from the Holocaust Memorial, I entered them into Lightroom and got to work. Kids clothing brightened the overall pale. Shifting the hue added mood, as well. Then what? One day, while editing my book collection, I came upon KAKURENBO, by my Zen friend  Eido Frances Carney. Subtitled, “Or the Whereabouts of Zen Priest Ryokan,” Carney treat riffs on Ryokan’s favorite game of hide-and-Go-Seek.  She writes, “Now you see me, now you don’t. Look, I’m here; no, I’m over here. What are we getting ready for in such play? We play along, we listen, and learn, coming again and again to new hideouts, new games, new gates.”

What’s the music? KAKURENBO became an evocative video segment in my StoryShards retreats. You can imagine how the conversation rolled with the compound roll of the terrain beneath the Holocaust Memorial, and the shifting shadows along the stelae.  And not to forget the holocaust victims’ souls remembered in the crypt beneath all the hiding-and-seeking.