“The Great Mullein and Deer Antlers,” 10"x10" (25,4 x 25,4cm) RA-4 Reversal Direct Color Print, July 18, 2023
“The Great Mullein in Flower,” 10"x10" (25,4 x 25,4cm) RA-4 Reversal Direct Color Print, July 18, 2023
Native Americans used mullein flowers and leaves for a variety of issues, including: cough, congestion, bronchitis, asthma, constipation, pain, inflammation and migraines. They used antlers to create handles for knives and hide scrapers, spear points, bracelets, combs, hairpins, buttons, and figurines.
“Life asked Death ‘Death, why do people love me but hate you?’ Death responded ‘Because you are a beautiful lie and I am a painful truth.”
“Prickly Pear Cactus Flowering and Mullein Feathers,” 10” x 10” (25,4 x 25,4 cm), RA-4 Reversal Color Print, July 1, 2023
Early historic observations and archeological data clearly indicate Native Americans relied on prickly pear for food, medicine, and as a source of needles, containers, and water. The prickly pear gets its name from the numerous sharp spines borne on the stems and the seasonal fruits known as pears or tunas. The prickly pear cactus is a symbol of hope and endurance in harsh conditions. To many Native Americans, the yellow cactus flowers are a “mother symbol,” representing a mother's unconditional love and their patience and selfless protection.
“Prickly Pear Cactus Flowering and Mullein Feathers,” 10” x 10” (25,4 x 25,4 cm), RA-4 Reversal Color Print, July 1, 2023
Early historic observations and archeological data clearly indicate Native Americans relied on prickly pear for food, medicine, and as a source of needles, containers, and water. The prickly pear gets its name from the numerous sharp spines borne on the stems and the seasonal fruits known as pears or tunas. The prickly pear cactus is a symbol of hope and endurance in harsh conditions. To many Native Americans, the yellow cactus flowers are a “mother symbol,” representing a mother's unconditional love and their patience and selfless protection.
The Denial of Death
Did you know the uniquely human fear of death has a pervasive effect on human beings’ thoughts, feelings, and behavior? Humans manage the terror of death by adhering to culturally constructed beliefs about reality that provide a sense that one is a person of value in a world of meaning, and thus eligible for either literal or symbolic immortality. The quest for immortality underlies some of humankind’s most noble achievements. It also, however, engenders some of our most ignominious affectations, including hostility and disdain for people with different beliefs; attraction to ideological demagogues; indifference to, or contempt for, the natural environment; and, the mindless pursuit of material possessions—which, if unchecked, may render humans the first form of life responsible for their own extinction. - Sheldon Solomon, PhD. Author of "The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life"
Death Anxiety and Terror Management Theory: Impacts on White Colonizers in Colorado and the Tabeguache Ute Tribe
The history of colonial expansion is fraught with complex dynamics, including encounters between indigenous populations and colonizers. One notable example is the clash between white colonizers in Colorado and the Tabeguache Ute tribe, known today as the Uncompahgre Ute. This essay explores the influence of death anxiety and Terror Management Theory on the white colonizers as they encountered the Tabeguache Ute tribe, highlighting the profound impact on their interactions and perceptions. Furthermore, accompanying photographs of flora, landscapes, and Tabeguache Ute symbols will serve as visual aids, offering glimpses into the historical context and cultural richness of the Ute tribe.
Death Anxiety and Terror Management Theory
Death anxiety, a fundamental aspect of the human condition, manifests as a fear of one's mortality and the annihilation of self. Terror Management Theory posits that individuals employ various psychological mechanisms to cope with this anxiety, seeking cultural worldviews and symbolic beliefs that provide a sense of meaning, purpose, and continuity in the face of mortality.
White Colonizers in Colorado
White colonizers who ventured into Colorado encountered a vast, unfamiliar land with indigenous tribes like the Tabeguache Ute. The colonizers were driven by ambitions of territorial expansion, resource extraction, and the pursuit of wealth. However, their encounters with the Ute tribe disrupted their established cultural worldviews, triggering a heightened awareness of their mortality and fostering a clash between different cultural ideologies.
Death Anxiety and Perception of the Tabeguache Ute Tribe
The white colonizers' death anxiety became a lens through which they perceived the Ute tribe. The Ute's spiritual beliefs, deep connection to the land, and reverence for nature were in stark contrast to the colonizers' worldview. This stark contrast threatened the colonizers' sense of cultural continuity and superiority, intensifying their anxiety.
Impact on Interactions
The white colonizers' death anxiety and subsequent terror management strategies influenced their interactions with the Ute tribe. Rather than embracing the cultural differences as opportunities for growth and understanding, the colonizers often reacted with hostility, attempting to suppress or eradicate the Ute's cultural practices and beliefs. This aggression aimed to reassert their dominance and alleviate their own existential fears.
Photographs Depicting Flora, Landscapes, and Ute Symbols
My photographs provide an abstract, visual representation of the Colorado landscape, the flora, and the symbolic richness of the Ute tribe. Prints of the majestic landscapes, aspen and pine trees, and unique flora indigenous to the region, used both medicinally and ceremonially, highlight the natural beauty that both the Ute and the colonizers encountered. Additionally, my photographs of Ute symbols, such as the Medicine Wheel, depict the cultural depth and spiritual connection of the people to the land. I often think about the Tabeguache people seeing the same flowers, the same plants, the same trees, and walking on the very same landscape that I do every day.
Conclusion
The encounter between white colonizers in Colorado and the Tabeguache Ute tribe was deeply influenced by death anxiety and Terror Management Theory. The clash between these two groups stemmed from the colonizers' fear of mortality, which heightened their perception of cultural differences as threats to their own sense of continuity. Through the lens of death anxiety, the white colonizers often responded with hostility, attempting to suppress the Ute's cultural practices and beliefs. By examining this historical context, we can gain a deeper understanding of the complex dynamics at play and strive for a more inclusive and empathetic society today.
“Find what you love and let it kill you.
Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.
Let it kill you and let it devour your remains.
For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover.”
“Prickly Pear Cactus Flowering and Stones,” 10” x 10” (25,4 x 25,4 cm) RA-4 Reversal Color Print, July 1, 2023
Early historic observations and archeological data clearly indicate Native Americans relied on prickly pear for food, medicine, and as a source of needles, containers, and water. The prickly pear gets its name from the numerous sharp spines borne on the stems and the seasonal fruits known as pears or tunas. The prickly pear cactus is a symbol of hope and endurance in harsh conditions. To many Native Americans, the yellow cactus flowers are a “mother symbol,” representing a mother's unconditional love and her patience and selfless protection.
“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”
THE GREAT MULLEIN (Verbascum thapsus)
Native Americans utilized this plant for ceremonial and other purposes. It was used as an aid for teething, rheumatism, cuts, and pain. It was also used for a variety of traditional herbal and medicinal purposes for coughs and other respiratory ailments.
Whole-plate platinum/palladium print on Revere Platinum paper from a wet collodion negative.
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.
Plate #121 - Whole plate Gold toned Palladiotype from a wet collodion negative.
Morning walks with Jeanne get me to reflect on topics I've been reading about and researching concerning my project. I always come across things that make me think or motivate me. The cool mountain air and the beauty of the changing seasons are lovely; it’s a great environment to meditate on what I’m trying to do. If there’s something that really hits me hard, when I get home, I’ll head to the darkroom and begin the process of making a photograph. Today was one of those days.
It works well on some days and not so well on others. Regardless, I enjoy the entire creative process. It's challenging trying to make visuals that support the concepts or ideas I have in my head and heart. Symbolism is my staple for this work. Yes, the content is "real" and represents what it is, but my desire is to take it to a deeper conceptual level. We’re symbolic in so many ways, and we create lives that symbolize something they’re not. I’m fascinated and intrigued by these kinds of ideas.
I love the painterly quality and color of the cyanotype (below). I’m going to explore some other organic compounds to tone these prints. I used tannic acid and gallic acid on this one. A lot of people don’t like how the tannic acid stains the paper. I like it. It adds a sense of age to the print. It feels like something else—and it kind of transcends photography.
Plate #121-Whole plate toned cyanotype from a wet collodion negative.
Homo aestheticus: where art comes from and why.
All human societies throughout history have given a special place to the arts. Even nomadic peoples who own scarcely any material possessions embellish what they do own, decorate their bodies, and celebrate special occasions with music, song, and dance. A fundamentally human appetite or need is being expressed—and met—by artistic activity. As Ellen Dissanayake argues in this stimulating and intellectually far-ranging book, only by discovering the natural origins of this human need of art will we truly know what art is, what it means, and what its future might be. Describing visual display, poetic language, song and dance, music, and dramatic performance as ways by which humans have universally, necessarily, and immemorially shaped and enhanced the things they care about, Dissanayake shows that aesthetic perception is not something that we learn or acquire for its own sake but is inherent in the reconciliation of culture and nature that has marked our evolution as humans. What "artists" do is an intensification and exaggeration of what "ordinary people" do, naturally and with enjoyment—as is evident in premodern societies, where artmaking is universally practiced. Dissanayake insists that aesthetic experience cannot be properly understood apart from the psychobiology of sense, feeling, and cognition--the ways we spontaneously and commonly think and behave. If homo aestheticus seems unrecognizable in today's modern and postmodern societies, it is so because "art" has been falsely set apart from life, while the reductive imperatives of an acquisitive and efficiency-oriented culture require us to ignore or devalue the aesthetic part of our nature. Dissanayake's original and provocative approach will stimulate new thinking in the current controversies regarding multicultural curricula and the role of art in education. Her ideas also have relevance to contemporary art and social theory and will be of interest to all who care strongly about the arts and their place in human, and humane, life.
Source: Publisher
Dissanayake, E. (1992). Homo aestheticus: where art comes from and why. New York: Free Press.