This a review of half a book. I started reading it before a summer trip and once on the road found myself too occupied with my new environment to continue reading. I might have carried on had the writing and ideas been more compelling. Frankly, I found them somewhat muddled and uninspiring and once off the road and back to my routine didn’t have the energy to start again. Perhaps another day.
If you haven’t read much on meditation or contemplative art practice, you might find this book engaging. It presents many ideas common to the subject and explored in many essays, lectures and books seeking to understand image making in relation to the existential questions of the human experience.
This is not a book-length treatment, but more of a diary or blog, with short entries on one or two ideas, many of them later reintroduced and looked at in relation to newly introduced ideas or concepts. Among the issues of concern are practicing for the sake of understanding rather than for adulation, developing a voice, experiencing stillness, and using image making to develop a more penetrating understanding of existence. Long-standing photographic concerns - Barthe’s studium and punctum, and the objectivity of photographs, for example - are examined in light of contemplative practice.
While this book might launch a few on a path of discovery, for those with some background in Buddhism or contemplative practice, Hoffman’s presentation can be appear amateurish. From the first chapter he sets out his intentions as presenting a “personal interpretation of what it means to incorporate meditation as a tool in the photographic process.” He proposes to do this through an explication of the principles and practice of Zen meditation, which he says can be used to align “yourself with the core of your inner being.” Already he’s made a dubious assertion - that Zen posits an inner being.
In Chapter 2 Hoffman says that Buddhism is free of faith dogmas, more philosophy than religion, revealing that his exposure to Buddhism has been limited to secularized presentations found in Europe and NA. He further states that Buddhism is “mainly active” today in Japan and the Himalayas, with “a presence in Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and parts of India.” The word “presence” might be suited to India, but hardly Myanmar and Sri Lanka, which are thoroughly permeated with Buddhism. He completely ignores other parts of SE Asia, such as Thailand, Cambodia, Lao, and Vietnam, where Buddhism is practiced far more widely than in Japan.
“The goal of meditation is to experience complete stillness of the mind,” he asserts. At the level of day-to-day practice this may be so, but the long-term goal is liberation, freeing the practitioner from greed, anger, and ignorance. To do this, the Buddha suggested a thorough program of ethical behavior and meditative practice that _begins_ with faith in the Buddha, his experience of liberation, and his ability to lead others to this condition.
Hoffman suggests that though the goal is stillness of mind, “it is important and necessary to have the ability to think with structure, and to have the ability to form deep philosophical thoughts.” What these thoughts might be are not explicated here, but it would be a fair guess that at least a few of them are based on what might be called Buddhist dogma, such as karma and rebirth, heavens and hells, protective chants and magical methods for transferring good fortune to the dead - all elements of canonical Buddhism.
Although in one of his early chapters Hoffman provides an overview of how to do Zen meditation, he does not offer a systematic program for starting and then using such a practice to inform one’s photography. The book teaches neither meditation nor image making, but offers one photographer’s reflections on how these intersected in his own life - and how they might intersect in yours, should you have any interest in pursuing meditation.
About the author (from the publisher's website):
Torsten Andreas Hoffmann is a photographer, author, and photography workshop instructor. He specializes in black and white photography and conceptual photography. Since 2003, he’s written articles for Photographie, LFI (Leica Fotografie International), c’t special Digitale Fotografie, and Digitalis Foto (Hungary). In his workshops, he guides his participants toward understanding and accessing their own visual aesthetic.
Hoffman is internationally known for his coffee table book, New York, New York, a subtle debate on the events of 9/11; published by Kunstverlag Weingarten. Another of his titles, The Art of Black and White Photography, published by Rocky Nook, is already in its 2nd edition. Hoffman also publishes art calendars with publisher Kunstverlag Weingarten, Dumont, and ars vivendi.
Born in Duesseldorf, Germany, in 1956, Hoffmann studied Art Education with a concentration in photography at The Braunschweig University of Art. His images can be seen in many exhibitions at renowned galleries such as: Leica Galleries, Salzburg and Frankfurt, and imago-fotokunst, Berlin. He is a member of BBK Frankfurt, LOOK photo agency Munich, and the German Society of Photography (DPPh).
#
No comments:
Post a Comment