gods of light and ecstasy

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

Gods of Light and Ecstasy

Photograph by Renee Beaubien

There’s an argument I constantly hear going on between photographers that quite frankly baffles me. On the one side, you have the high definition devotees. The only measure of a photograph’s worth is how sharp it is. Then you have the obvious softer side, declaring that blurriness or any other effect involving less than crystal clear microscopic reproduction of image is precisely what can make or break a photo aesthetically.

Clarity! Tone! Particularity! Texture!

Like one automatically has to override the other. What if you’re trying to take a sharp picture of the mist?

Photograph by Renee Beaubien

Obviously both arguments have their place — I don’t think any art form should be judged exclusively by any single criterion. In all fairness, the single-minded fanaticism does seem to fall primarily on the side of the high definition aficionados. Those who work with the fuzzy as well as the crystal clear generally take a broader view, incorporating both practices as proper aesthetic tools.

But we may well sigh in exasperation that the argument still continues at all. When you think about it, the dispute has been going on since the time of the Greek gods …

Or at least until philosophers and psychoanalysts decided to couch it within those terms. I recently read Rollo May’s The Courage to Create, and I extended some of his concepts to the photography argument.

Primarily I refer to the dialectical balance between the Apollonian and the Dionysian principles in creativity. In Greek mythology, Apollo was the God of Light, and Dionysus — Bacchus, really, in the Greek, but for some reason the Roman version of his name is always used in these discussions — was the God of Revels, shall we put it politely? Letting it all hang out, we would have said in the seventies.

According to Rollo, in terms of aesthetics, the Apollonian principle is that of form and rational order, and the Dionysian principle that of surging vitality. I rediscovered these terms in May’s book, but really they were first coined by good ol’ Fred — you remember Fred? — Friedrich Nietzsche, in The Birth of Tragedy. Which I read when I was nineteen, and got as much out of as I would have if someone had just bounced the book off my head. But hey. Time passes. A lot of what I thought made sense at nineteen totally baffles me now.

But I digress. It doesn’t take a genius to make the connection between the Apollonian principle and the high definition yea-sayers in the art of photography, and associate the less-than-clearly-delineated effects of those who prefer the fuzzier approach with the Dionysian principle.

Photograph by Renee Beaubien

You can understand the Apollo camp’s infatuation. Never has the current technology allowed the photographer to capture more detail more easily. Today’s cameras allow their users to photograph a super-reality. The camera sees a more highly detailed reality than the human eye could physically ever manage. The person taking the photograph never sees the full reality able to be imaged until the machine shows it back to her or him. Worship Apollo! Never has his light shone so strong!

But then …

Take the photo home and stick it into Photoshop, and Dionysus can run wild! The technology works for both sides. In Photoshop, if she or he likes, the photographer can continue to emphasize Apollo with even greater intensity, heightening clarity to truly divine impact. Or she or he can explode the image entirely and in a burst of Dionysiac revelry create something entirely new, with effects ranging far beyond mere high definition reproduction!

Photograph by Renee Beaubien

The technology is so new, the full potential of what might be done with a simple photograph these days hasn’t even begun to be explored. There is so much that anyone with even only a half-decent home computer can do, that it’s presently inconceivable just what a camera snap can be the starting off point for these days … Let your ecstasy take you where it will! Let’s go nuts! Or Bacchic, even …

But one thing does stand out to me in this proposition. The argument for Apollo has practically been lifted out of human hands strictly into the eye of the machine, while the argument for applying the ecstasy of the Dionysian principle still remains strictly within the vision and direction of the human agent.

Only the machine can see and provide the highest level of form and rational order that can be portrayed through photography these days. If a human isn’t even capable of physically perceiving the detail a scene can be captured in, than who’s really leading the process here? It’s really nothing more than a human deciding that some scene might make a good composition, but not really knowing what they’re shooting for sure until the camera tells them.

While when you want to fill a photograph with surging vitality, the human still has to be the one to step in and infuse the energy into the image. The machine is better than we’ll ever be at capturing the form and order, but it don’t care spam about surging vitality.

Photo  Montage by Renee Beaubien

So obviously I arrive back at the same conclusion I started out with. A really good photographer will understand and apply both the Apollonian and the Dionysian principles to her or his work. Only even more so with today’s technology.

But there’s still more to think about here. Let’s tackle light, ecstasy and the encounter next week.

For more photography by Renee Beaubien, go to Beyond the Prism on Flickr, at:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/128997372@N08/

*****

REALITY FICTION AND BEYOND!

The lightning continues to strike in The Electric Detective Chapter Thirteen, on Monday, June 15th, while Dusky Dredful makes an unusual step into a semi-dramatic mock up of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible on Friday, June 19th. Reality Fiction Three: The Interrupted Edition continues at:

http://realficone.blogspot.ca/

Revelations and witch trials! Flying gargoyles! An Episode presented for the first time almost entirely as a single dramatic monologue! The tension and mystery mounts …

Episodes to Date:

Episode One: Dante-Ish — Mak’s Inferno

Episode Two: Chaucer-Ish — The Hermit’s Tale

Episode Three: Malory-Ish — Le Morte de Mak

Episode Four: Doyle-Ish — Mak the Kipper

Episode Five: Carroll-Ish — Madelyn in Wonderland

Episode Six: Stoker-Ish — The Down For The Count Shimmy

Episode Seven: Tolstoy-Ish — Anna Makerena

Episode Eight: Lem-Ish — So there is …

Episode Nine: Hoffman-Ish — Dr. Hoffman’s Happy Gene Machine

Episode Ten: Shakespeare-Ish — Hamlet the Barbarian

Episode Eleven: Poe-Ish — The Usher Motel

Episode Twelve: Kafka-Ish — Metamorphos-Ish

Episode Thirteen: Finney-Ish — The Invasion of the Hotel Detectives

Episode Fourteen: Miller-Ish — Tempering the Cauldron

All with illustrations by the author. The complete roster of 34 Contestants have now appeared, so we move on to the supporting cast, the Judges, and the Guest Judges.