Contemplative photography is a practice that opens us up to the fullness of life, as it is, with all its beauty and darkness, shadow and light. Our photographs become evidence of how our inner creative light (insight) matters as much as the world's outer light (sight). 

This week we will be pondering the subtle and not so subtle differences between vision, perception, and seeing. To create a common ground, we will use the word “vision” to describe the physiological process of image formation in the eye and its subsequent projection to the brain. “Perception” is the process driven by sensation and is dependent on the perceiver's situational and life experiences. “Seeing” includes the first two and can also expand into the subtle and ineffable experiences that give insights beyond the ordinary surface of things. Of course, I have not altered any of the quotes below, keep in mind that the author might have an altogether different meaning when using these words.

Together we will be exploring the following questions: 

• What is the connection between sight and insight when exploring the world visually?

• What role does insight (if any) play in making meaningful photographs?

• Can photography be a tool for helping us develop both outer and inner seeing?

This week's reading begins with a return to the work of Arthur Zajonc, author of Catching the Light. To explore the intertwined nature of sight and insight, and, more importantly, the role it plays in seeing and image-making, Zajonc begins his exploration by explaining the limitations of physical vision: 

"Two lights brighten our world. One is provided by the sun, but another answer to it––the light of the eye. Only through their entwining do we see; lacking either, we are blind.

(...)

Arguably the best-studied case of recovery from congenital blindness is the case of an 47-year-old man who had been blind since birth because of cataracts. Following the operation, they were anxious to discover how well the man could see. When the man's eyes were healed, they removed the bandages. Waving a hand in front of the man's physically perfect eyes, they asked him what he saw. He replied weakly, "I don't know." "Don't you see it moving?" they asked. "I don't know" was his only reply. The man's eyes were clearly not following the slowly moving hand. What he saw was only a varying brightness in front of him. He was then allowed to touch the hand as it began to move; he cried out in a voice of triumph: "It's moving!" He could feel it move, and even, as he said, "hear it move", but he still needed laboriously to learn to see it move. 

Light and eyes were not enough to grant him sight. Passing through the now-clear black pupil of the man's eye, that first light called forth no echoing image from within. The man's sight became a hollow, silent, dark, and frightening kind of seeing. The light of day beckoned, but no light of mind visually replied.

(...)

According to Zajonc, all vision relies on this "calling forth of an echoing image from within". As photographers, our unique set of experiences shapes how we perceive the world – for better or for worse. 

Sebastiao Salgado, one of the most emotional and empathetic photographers of our time, reminds us that great photographers have "a way of photographing what is inside them." Equally, Elliot Erwitt believes that photography has "little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them." 

But what of the things we don't see. How do our cultural habits of perspective limit our vision and determine our connections and perceptions of the world? Are there times when the light of the mind hides more than it reveals? And times when the shadow reveals more than we ever imagined?

We all have shadow areas of our lives where we hide from the experiences and feelings that arouse vulnerability, fear, judgment, criticism, insecurity, etc., either internally or externally. If there are areas of our inner life that we can't touch, does that impact the quality of our image-making? Are vulnerability and emotional honesty critical when making photographs? And if so, what role can photography play in expanding our capacity for inner and outer seeing?

Arthur Zajonc, in his book Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry, speaks about insight as a form of love that arises through the act of making. For him, love is an intentional and thoughtful practice of acceptance, where the opposites find wholeness. 

Next week we will be taking a deeper dive into his book and the recommended practices for seeing, and accepting. Until then, Tom Rankin, photo educator extraordinaire, offers us this: 

 "Photographers—and photographs—get all they have from embracing the darkness and light equally, shadows adjacent to highlights, contrast next to flatness, what is present alongside what has gone, low valleys juxtaposed with the peaks. The opposites are coequal and mutually dependent, elemental to how we see. The last line from Psalm 139:12: "the darkness and the light are both alike to you." Alike, I argue, in that both offer us a frontier to explore, render, and move to reveal, a time and place to take full visual advantage of the mystery and the unknown."