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Aliveness
October 08, 2019 - Three Tomatoes, 2019
Formae Organicum Series
In her provocative book, On Beauty and Being Just, Elaine Scarry expl...
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The Little Grove of Coast Live Oaks
April 20, 2019 - Coast Live Oaks Trees, 2019
To see creatively we must learn to relax our expectations. Only then will we encounter th...
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The Economy of Useless Things
October 23, 2017 - Mississippi River Botanic Series, No. 14
"We are saved in the end by the things that ignore us."
-Andrew Harvey [1]...
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After the Miracles are Gone
August 05, 2017 - After the Miracles are Gone, 2017
"Do we know what it means to be struck by grace? It does not mean that we suddenly...
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The Jewish Boy
June 13, 2017 - The Jewish Boy, 2017
"The face opens the primordial discourse whose first word is obligation."
*****
"The Other fac...
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With the Ancient Desert Monks behind the Happy Mexican
March 22, 2017 - Razor Wire and Broken Fence behind the Happy Mexican Restaurant, 2017
Two fish were swimming side by side in the ocea...
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Let the Little Children Come to Me
March 03, 2017 - Boulders in the Surf, No. 2
Every summer when I was a boy, my parents would take us on vacation to Santa Cruz, Cali...
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On the Beautiful and the Sublime
February 13, 2017 - Boulders in the Surf, 2017
I cannot photograph sound.
And yet, twice in the past year I have desired to do so. In...
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Why Beauty Matters
August 13, 2016 - Train Cars, Rudyard, Mississippi, 2016
Ours is an age that has come to think of beauty and art as luxuries easily done...
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Pied Beauty
August 09, 2016 - California Sea Otters, Mother and Pup, 2016
When I was a boy, I raised pigeons. I enjoyed releasing them many miles fro...
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On Pine Needles and Politics
July 28, 2016 - Toadstool and Pine Needles, 2013
In My First Summer in the Sierra (1911), John Muir offers the following account of ske...
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Alas, His Feet Are Bolted Firmly to the Ground
July 26, 2016 - Big John, 2016
There stands Big John firm against the brilliant sky, tall and hollow, alone and happy. He's been there...
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On the Danger of Poets and Noble Lies
July 12, 2016 - Poet, Minstrel, Muse, 2016
The shadow of Plato's Republic falls long across the imagination of western philosophy, theo...
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Of Dandelions
July 06, 2016 - The Point, Morro Rock, 2016
In his wonderful book, From Nature to Creation, theologian Norman Wirzba maintains that "ho...
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Spilled Beauty
June 23, 2016 - Surf at Moonstone Beach, 2016
"… [W]hatever is and whatever comes to be, is and comes to be on account of the beautiful...
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Because Angels Belong to the Sky
March 24, 2016 - During 2016, I am serving as the David McCrosky Photographer-in-Residence at historic Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis, Tenne...
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Desire and Silent Rebellion
March 21, 2016 - "Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee, O God."
-Augustine, Confessions, Bk. 1, Ch. 1.
"...[A]s...
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The Shattering of the Vessels
March 02, 2016 - Pottery and Shard, Madrid, New Mexico, 2011
In the sixteenth-century writings of the Jewish mystic, Rabbi Isaac Luria...
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Storefront Windows and Cognitive Flexibility
November 26, 2015 - Wheel in the Sky, 2010
For the better part of the last decade, I have been photographing on and near Main Street in d...
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Reflections on Black Women, Funk, and Beale Street
May 30, 2015 - Funk on Beale Street, 2015
I will never understand what it means to be a black woman in America, at least not fully....
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The Allure of Film in the Digital Age
January 01, 2015 - Photo made with a 1954 Rolleiflex Automat K4B, Fujifilm Neopan Acros 100 film, 2 second exposure
I became a photograp...
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Beauty, Cows, and Gnats
December 03, 2014 - In Lawrence and Meg Kasden's 1991 film "Grand Canyon," there is a scene in which Mack, a wealthy lawyer, and Simon, a wo...
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Deliverance from Temptation
November 24, 2014 - Photography is my discipline for learning to be fully present to the world. When I take up the camera, I go exploring, t...
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R.I.P Yolanda
November 17, 2014 - Last Saturday, I was combing the backroads of northwest Mississippi, looking for worthy photographs. This is the land of...
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Making a Mountain "Look How it Feels"
November 06, 2014 - In April 1927, Ansel Adams spent a day hiking up toward Half Dome in Yosemite. The trip was long and hard, and by the ti...
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Kairos, Chronos, and the Granite Dells
November 03, 2014 - It was by chance that I discovered the Granite Dells in Prescott, Arizona in 2010. But when I did, I was struck by the a...
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On Kinesthetic Knowledge
October 26, 2014 - When as a child I watched my great grandmother knit, I was mesmerized by how quickly and instinctively her hands moved t...
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The Lost Art of Beholding
October 21, 2014 - We used to "behold" things. We don't anymore. Somewhere along the way, Behold fell out of our vocabulary and doing it fr...
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Sampling Ernest Withers's "I Am A Man"
October 15, 2014 - Ode to Ernest Withers, 2014
I knew Ernest Withers's photographs long before I ever knew it was he who had made them. Wi...
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Photographing Things "For What They Are and for What Else They Are"
October 12, 2014 - The great mystically minded photographer Minor White claimed that "one should not only photograph things for what they a...
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Edward Weston, California, and What's Worth Photographing
September 22, 2014 - The great photographer Edward Weston once remarked that "everything worth photographing is in California." He was wrong,...
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