The Diversity in My New Book

In the Shadow of Sun Mountain: The Psychology of Othering and the Origins of Evil (expected to be published sometime in 2024)

You’re going to start seeing some "comps" posted here every once in a while. These are ideas that I have for my book. As I look through the images, some of the pairings absolutely astound me; they are more beautiful and aesthetically pleasing than I could have imagined.

I’m still undecided about how the final layout will look, but I wanted to play with mixing them up—POP with RA-4 color—living with them and running some ideas through my head. I think it looks stunning. I’ve never seen POP prints paired with Color Reversal Direct prints. Gorgeous! 

Right now, it’s a 10” x 10” (25,4 x 25,4 cm) hardcover, full-color book. I expect it to be about 250 pages with over 100 images: RA-4 Reversal Direct Color Prints, Palladiotypes, Platinum-Palladium, Kallitypes (both K1 and K2 variants), Cyanotypes, Calotypes (Paper Negatives), Photogenic Drawings, and much more. The POP prints are from both wet and dry collodion as well as direct contact printing from plant material (photogenic drawings), like Salt prints.

“What do we mean by the lived truth of creation? We have to mean the world as it appears to men in a condition of relative unrepression; that is, as it would appear to creatures who assessed their true puniness in the face of the overwhelmingness and majesty of the universe, of the unspeakable miracle of even the single created object; as it probably appeared to the earliest men on the planet and to those extrasensitive types who have filled the roles of shaman, prophet, saint, poet, and artist. What is unique about their perception of reality is that it is alive to the panic inherent in creation.”

— Ernest Becker

“The Great Mullein” Whole Plate Palladiotype from a wet collodion negative and a 10”” x 10” RA-4 Reversal Direct Color Print

“Antlers Are Bone: Profile,” 10”” x 10” RA-4 Reversal Direct Color Print, and “Mountain Stone Water Dish,” Whole Plate Palladiotype from a wet collodion negative.

“Three Aspens” Whole Plate Palladiotype from a wet collodion negative and “Ponderosa Pine and Five White Daisies” 10”” x 10” RA-4 Reversal Direct Color Print

“Antlers Are Bone” Whole Plate Palladiotype from a wet collodion negative and a 10”” x 10” RA-4 Reversal Direct Color Print

“Dead Ponderosa and Granite Rock Face” Whole Plate Palladiotype from a wet collodion negative and “Dead Daisies in a Glass Graduate," 10” x 10” RA-4 Reversal Direct Color Print

“Red Rock Formation-Fremont County, Colorado,” a 10”” x 10” RA-4 Reversal Direct Color Print and “The Great Aspen Man” Whole Plate Palladiotype from a Calotype (paper negative) Greenlaw’s process.

“Turkey Feathers and Antlers,” a 10”” x 10” RA-4 Reversal Direct Color Print and “Medicine Wheel," a Whole Plate Palladiotype from a wet collodion negative.

“The Great Mullein,” a 10”” x 10” RA-4 Reversal Direct Color Print and “Meadow Barley",” Whole Plate Photogenic Drawing from the plant itself (direct contact print).

A stack of prints—almost 200 prints—color, pop, calotypes (paper negatives), photogenic drawings, etc. And I still have about 3 months of image making left this year!

Chapter By Chapter-Chapter 3 Death Anxiety

Chapter 3: Death Anxiety—This chapter is based on Ernest Becker’s book, "The Denial of Death." The book is quite dense and academically written, but it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read. It literally changed my life.

It’s my burden to unpack the ideas that Becker puts forth and present them to the reader in a way that makes sense and is applicable to their lives. I’ll also show the direct connection between the photographic work and the psychology behind these theories.

I’m writing and organizing, and then rewriting and reorganizing. There are two chapters detailing how these theories work and the underlying psychology. They are: death anxiety and terror management theory.

What is death anxiety? In a few words, it's the desire to stay alive that is in direct conflict, psychologically speaking, with the reality and knowledge that we will die. This causes a sort of cognitive dissonance; it creates unbearable anxiety, terror, and dread. We do everything we can to deny and avoid thinking about our death.

The human animal isn’t terrified of dying—not of the actual moment of death—but of being impermanent (mortal) and dying without significance. Impermanence and insignificance are what create existential terror. That’s what’s unbearable. And this comes from consciousness—the knowledge that we're here. Soren Kierkegaard (1833–1855), a 19th-century Danish philosopher, said that humans can "render themselves the object of their own subjective inquiry." Think about that! That's our big forebrain in action. And psychoanalyst Otto Rank said humans have the capacity "to make the unreal real." This intelligence is a big part of the problem we face. Some think that consciousness is an evolutionary mistake and that we, like all other animals, shouldn’t be aware of our impending deaths.

However, we’ve evolved to cope with this burden by suppressing that death awareness knowledge through self-esteem and using culture. We create “immortality projects.” According to Becker, fear—or denial—of death is a fundamental motivator behind why we do what we do.

Becker said that the real world is simply too terrible to admit. If we didn't have ways of buffering the fear, anxiety, and helplessness over our death and meaninglessness, it would paralyze us and keep us from getting out of bed in the morning. So there is a need to repress it. We use what Becker and all anthropologists call "culture" or "cultural worldview." This "cultural worldview" is a shared reality that we all believe in or subscribe to—a value and belief system that comes from our culture. We find self-esteem through this cultural worldview.

For example, our culture tells us that having a job and getting promotions is a good thing, as is earning more money, driving a certain type of car, or dressing a certain way. If we do these things, our self-esteem is strengthened, and we have a defense or coping mechanism to repress the anxiety that comes from knowing we are going to die. These buffers can be good or bad. That’s why it’s important to be conscious of these ideas and the psychology behind them. Like Freud said, "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate." We can get ourselves out of it by being explicitly aware that we’re in it. Albert Camus said, “…come to terms with death; thereafter, anything is possible." This is the crux of why I'm writing this book and doing this work.

Culture, or cultural worldviews, are defense mechanisms against the knowledge that we will die. Becker argues that humans live in both a physical world of objects and a symbolic world of meaning. The symbolic part of human life engages in what Becker calls an "immortality project." People try to create or become part of something they believe will last forever—art, music, literature, religion, nation-states, social and political movements, etc. Such connections, they believe, give their lives meaning.

Kierkegaard talked about this dread-evoking mystery. He believed that anxiety comes from our knowledge of finitude and meaninglessness. Becker concurs with this point and expounds on it. Kierkegaard said that humans focus their attention on small tasks and diversions that have the illusion of significance—activities that keep people going. If they dwell on the situation too long, they'll bog down and be at risk of releasing their neurotic fear that they are impotent in the world.

That’s a small portion that I’m working on now. You’ll see, in the end, how this all connects to every war, every act of genocide, and every act of evil in the world. Why it happened and why it continues to happen—again, this is the energy of the book, to help people become conscious of this predicament.

The Prickly Pear Cactus Print - Another Negative

It’s amazing to me how a very slight change in light can completely transform an image. This is the first cactus plate from the other day. I decided to print it and (slightly) gold-tone it. It’s interesting in its own respect. The needles look like starbursts and the deep rich black of the palladium print goes on forever.

Just a different take on the same object. I changed the light a bit and created something completely different. Collodion always has its own story to tell. The color shifts, the tonal shifts, and it responds very differently to the changing light throughout the day. It’s a joy and challenge to work in - I love it. Can you tell?

Also, I turned the comments on for my blog. Feel free to comment here if you’d like. I would enjoy hearing from you. As long as I don’t get spammed, I’ll open the comments on each post for your feedback or input.

My Testing Is Finished - The Collodion Dry Plate Processes

IT’S A WRAP!
I’ve come to the end of my technical explorations for making negatives. It’s been over a year of reading, writing, doing my YouTube shows, and testing Collodion Dry Plate processes. So what’s next? Keep reading, I’ll get to that.

I started this journey because I needed to find a collodion dry plate process for my new project. A project dealing with the land that I live on and was once occupied by the Ute Indian Tribe. Sacred places, objects, fauna, trees, etc.

The obvious reason for using a dry plate process is that you don’t need to pack a darkroom, chemicals, etc. Just the plates, camera, lens, tripod, loupe, and timer. It’s wonderful. It’s liberating. I really love it. There’s freedom with it to photograph things and places that have never been photographed this way. Some of the places I will photograph require a 45- minute hike to get to them, one way. There’s no way wet collodion can be used in this way.

I’ve settled on Thomas Sutton’s version of Major Russell’s Tannin Dry Plate process. You can find it in his book, “The Collodion Processes: Wet & Dry” London, 1862. I’ve modified a bit for my workflow and my environment (in the mountains at high elevation). Why did I select this? To me, it gives the best negative for printing Platinum Palladium and Kallitypes. I can get a 1.5 - 2.0 negative every time. Consistency is key. Collodio-Albumen is wonderful, but I want to work faster than that process allows; both in preparation and exposure. I still have a lot to figure out for the exact details of the project; they will reveal themselves as I make the work. I’m sure of it.

POETIC LICENSE
I do know that I want something “more” for this work. I’m bored by the look of a straight photograph. I originally wanted to do “f/64” type of landscape images. I know that’s not who I am and it really leaves me wanting and unexcited. I’m a portrait photographer by profession (30+ years), and, as an artist, desire that aesthetic show in this work. I’m not talking about creating artifacts or embracing technical flaws, I’m talking about an aesthetic that shows compassion, creativity, and beauty in the work. Like you’re reading a great piece of poetry or looking at a powerful portrait. I’ve often said that I’m a frustrated painter. It’s true, I’ve always attempted to show emotion in my work; subtle or bold, I’m always after something that moves me visually. The “straight” photograph doesn’t move me. It bores me for the most part, I’ve seen them so many times, they all look the same, and they do nothing for me. If you’re after a technical assignment or a commissioned work, employ that. It’s what the masses want to see. I don’t. So I’m approaching this project in my own way, taking poetic license.

Platinum Palladium Print. Ute Indians believe that the Ponderosa Pine tree brings specific medicine, food, and carries a sacred spark of the Great Spirit. If you look closely, on the center-right, you can see a “face” (profile) of a Native American looking across the image in the background. Amazing gift! My wife, Jeanne found this studying the print.

Collodion Dry Plate Negative. April 8, 2022 - Rocky Mountains, Colorado.

The print dried down. 4 minute exposure in the Colorado sun!

Looks really amazing with a matte over it. I absolutely love this print. The light up here is amazing and it shows here. Very other-worldly!