The Birth and Death of Meaning & Photogenic Drawings

AMARANTHUS RETROFLEXUS (PIGWEED)—a Kallitype print from a wet collodion negative.

THE BIRTH AND DEATH OF MEANING
Ernest Becker was a cultural anthropologist. He's best known for his death-centric perspective on human psychology. He’s also known for eliciting the creation of the Terror Management Theory (TMT). He died in 1974.

He wrote several books in his lifetime. “The Denial of Death” was the first book of his I read. In this book, Becker builds on the works of Søren Kierkegaard, Sigmund Freud, Norman O. Brown, and Otto Rank to discuss the psychological and philosophical implications of how people and cultures have reacted to the concept of death.

The three most potent books for me are “The Denial of Death” (Pulitzer Prize 1974), “The Birth and Death of Meaning,” and “Escape from Evil.” Together, they provide insight into human behavior that changed my view of what it means to live and the meaning of, and in, life. These theories have also answered profound questions about my pursuit of making art. I always tell people that these books are life-altering. And that’s not an exaggeration. As they say, once you leave the cave, you can never go back in.

MEANING. SIGNIFICANCE. TRANSCENDENCE.
In chapter nine of his book, “The Birth and Death of Meaning,” Becker talks about self-esteem. I’m willing to bet that your definition of self-esteem is not how Becker defines it.

THE NATURE AND FUNCTION OF SELF-ESTEEM
William James wrote about self-esteem in the late 19th century. He said that self-esteem is based on two elements: our actual achievements and our aspirations. Becker was well aware of his theories and took them a step further. Why is it that human beings need to feel good about themselves? According to Becker, self-esteem is a death anxiety buffer. What are the sources of self-esteem? Primarily, we get our self-esteem from our culture. Becker calls it our “cultural worldview.” A good culture will have many different ways that a person can find their self-esteem. Cultures that don’t provide opportunities for self-esteem have major problems. People will suffer from depression, anxiety, and all kinds of mental health problems.

WHY HAVE PEOPLE HISTORICALLY BEEN UNABLE TO GET ALONG WITH PEOPLE WHO ARE DIFFERENT FROM THEM?
This is the second question Becker seemed preoccupied with. He talks about colonizers using methods to strip culture from native or indigenous people. Once they lose their self-esteem, they are easy to dominate. These are methods used by all colonizers. Everyone needs culture to provide them with self-esteem or ways to acquire self-esteem. If that is removed, the people will have a hard time not assimilating to the colonizers’ ways.

I’ll do an essay on the book. “The Worm at the Core: The Role of Death in Life,” but wanted to share this excerpt about self-esteem. “If there were any doubt that self-esteem is the dominant [human] motive... there would be one sure way to dispel it,” Ernest Becker wrote, “and that would be by showing that when people do not have self-esteem they cannot act, they break down.” What makes it difficult to acquire and maintain self-esteem? And what happens when self-esteem is lacking?

There are two main ways self-esteem can break down. First, individuals, or groups of people, can lose faith in their cultural worldviews. Such disillusionment can be precipitated by economic upheaval, technological and scientific innovations, environmental catastrophes, wars, plagues, or unwelcome intrusions by other cultures. For example, before the arrival of the first Europeans, the Yup’ik people of Alaska belonged to a thriving culture ruled by deep customs, traditions, and spiritual beliefs. Their tribal and individual codes of conduct were defined by what they called the Yuuyaraq (“the way of being a human being”), which told each member how to behave in any situation. When the Europeans—carrying guns, germs, and steel that killed a majority of the population—imposed their Christian worldviews on the Yup’ik, the aboriginal people lost their identity. The medicine men grew ill and died, and with them the ancient spirit of the Eskimo and the code of Yuuyaraq. Everything the Yup’ik had believed in failed, and their whole world collapsed.

Such catastrophes occurred all over the world where indigenous cultures were subject to colonization. But other circumstances can erode faith in a cultural belief system as well. Even the United States may be in the midst of such erosion in the wake of economic uncertainty, church and sports scandals, and political polarization. As of this writing, seven in ten Americans believe that the country is on the wrong track; eight in ten don’t agree with the way the nation is being governed. Church attendance, even in as strongly religious a country as the United States, has steadily declined. Public schools, particularly in urban areas, are in disarray. “We have lost our gods,” Laura Hansen, a sociologist at Western New England University, told reporters for The Atlantic. “We lost [faith] in the media: Remember Walter Cronkite? We lost it in our culture: You can’t point to a movie star who might inspire us, because we know too much about them. We lost it in politics because we know too much about their lives. We’ve lost it—that basic sense of trust and confidence—in everything.”

When people lose confidence in their core beliefs, they become literally “dis-illusioned” because they lack a functional blueprint of reality. Without such a map, there is no basis for determining what behaviors are appropriate or desirable, leaving no way to plot a course to self-esteem. (The Worm at the Core: The Role of Death in Life: Page 44-45)

Medicinal plant—a photogenic drawing. Teller County, Colorado

The Great Mullein (leaf)—a photogenic drawing. Teller County, Colorado

Meadow Barley—a photogenic drawing. Teller County, Colorado

“Meadow Barley”—a Palladiotype print from a wet collodion negative.

BLUE GRAMA GRASS—a photogenic drawing. (the glass on the contact printing frame broke during the exposure, hence the “lines”)

It can be ground into a powder, mixed with water, and eaten as a mush, often with corn meal. It is also used to make bread. It is also an important food for mule deer, elk, and bison, all of which the Ute/Tabeguache hunted and relied on for food, shelter, and tools.

Blue Grama Grass—a Palladiotype print from a wet collodion negative.

Fringed Sage—a photogenic drawing. Teller County, Colorado

Fringed Sage (detail)—a photogenic drawing. Teller County, Colorado

Fringed Sage - Palldiotype

The Imperfect In Art: The Pinnacle of Beauty & Meaning

“What art is, in reality, is the missing link, not the links which exist. It’s not what you see that is art; art is the gap.” -Marcel Duchamp, 1975

I know this is probably an old and tired topic for some of you. Hang with me for a minute. I’d like to try and add something new to this philosophy as it applies to art and photography.

Almost everyone in the art world has heard of the Japanese word (or is it words?) wabi-sabi. It’s most commonly used as a platitude for justifying bad art. That’s not what it means. It has a deeper, richer, and more enlightening purpose. And I believe it’s directly connected to the denial of death and death anxiety.

Wabi-sabi is a worldview that is centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. In fact, it finds the pinnacle of beauty and meaning in both. I see this philosophy as a death anxiety buffer. And it’s a very good one to employ in your life and art. Thinking deeply about our animality and our imperfection will allow us to come to terms with our fate. Albert Camus said, “There is only one liberty, to come to terms with death; thereafter, anything is possible.” I believe this is at the core of the Wabi-sabi philosophy.

The philosophy consists of these ideas: nothing is permanent, nothing is perfect, and nothing is complete. Sit with those for a minute. Allow them to seep in. If you live in the digital photography world today, or even the film world, you are bombarded with technology to make your photographs better, even perfect. As humans, we strive for perfection, which is never attainable. We want sharp focus, clean surfaces, amazing composition, and flawless light. We even want big, huge prints (physical). Everything we’ve learned about what’s important in photography is based on concepts that are exactly the opposite of wabi-sabi. That in and of itself should speak volumes to us.

“Plate #121, Bullet Holes & Feathers”-Whole Plate Palladiotype from a wet collodion negative.

As I said in the second paragraph of this essay, I believe we do this because of our denial of death. I can easily argue for that position. The desire for perfection staves off the anxiety of impermanence. We find comfort in the perceived permanence of our (archival) images. We symbolically live beyond our physical selves. Perceived perfection is achieved by the use of technology to meet cultural expectations for what the world wants, like size, sharpness, etc. And finally, completeness. Answering all of the questions both visually and philosophically as we understand them from our cultural worldview requires a kind of certitude that doesn’t really exist. We literally fool ourselves, albeit unconsciously, about what we’re doing and why. The point of all of this is to build self-esteem (to find meaning and significance in our culture), which in turn, quells our anxiety about our mortality.

Let’s talk about content as it applies to the denial of death. Have you ever seen portraits of young naked women? Have you seen luxurious scenes of wealth and affluence? Perfect prints of El Capitan or Yosemite Park? A beautiful, perfect rose or flower? Any image that shows perfection, youth, power, and strength can be directly connected to Ernest Becker’s theories on the human condition and is in direct opposition to the philosophy of wabi-sabi.

These images exist and are “popular” because they shield us from death anxiety. When I post a picture of a dying plant, a blurry portrait of a horse with poor composition, or a landscape where genocide occurred, it gives the viewer pause. The reason for this is that this kind of content acts as a death reminder; it unconsciously raises the dander (if you will) in the viewer and reminds them of their mortality. Their death anxiety is moved from a shielded place, safely out of range, to the forefront of their (subconscious) minds. And they may not even be aware of it.

I might argue that these kinds of images are not beautiful, they’re not ideal, and they’re not made to celebrate life. They are made to mask what is real. They’re made to make us hide behind an illusion that we’ll live forever, that death has no hold or power over us. They’re fake and fraudulent in the most direct ways.

Does all of this mean that you should break all of the “rules” in photography? Yes, it does. Or at least try to refrain from them having such a grip on you that you can never make pictures that are “good” enough. Allow the viewer to feel the work as much as they see it. I would recommend being open to imperfections that support your narrative. After all, they represent your own human imperfections. There is beauty in that. We resist and unconsciously dislike anything that represents our animality. Becker called us “gods with anuses." What an accurate description of how we think and what we deny.

“White Horse-Teller County, Colorado”-Whole Plate toned Cyanotype from a Calotype (paper negative).

In "Escape from Evil," Becker said, “Man is an animal who has to live in a lie in order to live at all.” He goes on to say in his book, “The Denial of Death,” “The real world is simply too terrible to admit. It tells man that he is a small trembling animal who will someday decay and die. Culture changes all of this, makes man seem important and vital to the universe. immortal in some ways.” And finally, "The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity—designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny of man."

This is a difficult concept to process, let alone be aware of—it feels counterintuitive, or maybe even that it’s not applicable to you. Yet it is very true as you come to realize how these ideas sit together in the reality of your life, and they are all applicable to every human being.

If we step back and objectively look at how we live, what we think, and how we behave (see Socrates and self-examination), we’ll quickly realize that we have a distorted view of life and living. If we pick bad illusions or immortality projects, we can end up doing a lot of damage to humanity. However, if we try to come to terms with our death (see Camus quote above) and our imperfections, even celebrate them in our art and life, I think we’ll have a better, or healthier (psychologically speaking), view of our life and our death. In the end, we’ll make better art, and moreover, we’ll have empathy and compassion for others’ imperfections; think wabi-sabi and find beauty and meaning in the imperfect. After all, that’s who we are.

Qualia & Art: My Definition

QUALIA - “THE MOLYNEUX PROBLEM”
What defines art as art is the ongoing question we wrestle with. How do people react to it, and why do they react in the manner that they do? What senses do they use to experience art? What are they inwardly processing and projecting onto the artwork? Finally, what can, or can’t, they perceive? These are significant and ambiguous questions. Some of these queries can be answered to some extent by the theory of qualia. And if you research this concept, you might be able to potentially apply it to your work. At least in some indirect way.

The first time I heard about qualia was in a story about a girl called Molly. She was born blind. She never saw a shape or color in her life. For years, she carried around a die and a marble. She thought they brought her good luck. When she was older, the doctors performed corneal lens surgery, and she was able to see.

The die and marble were placed before her, and she wasn’t able to identify either one. She had never seen these objects before; she only had the internal experience of feeling and touching them. It sounds strange that the shapes weren’t obvious to her; she had carried these objects for years. If you are sighted, you would have never experienced this phenomenon. It shows that what we perceive internally versus externally can be very different. This is the age-old question of qualia and how we know what we know.

Qualia: n. ( sing. quale) 1. characteristics or qualities that determine the nature of a mental experience (sensation or perception) and make it distinguishable from other such experiences, so that, for example, the experiencer differentiates between the sensations of heat and cold.

Plate #124 - “Ute Lodge” whole-plate wet collodion negative.

Qualia are the subjective or qualitative properties of experiences. What it feels like, experientially, to see a red rose is different from what it feels like to see a yellow rose. Likewise, hearing a musical note played by a piano and hearing the same musical note played by a tuba. The qualia of these experiences are what give each of them their characteristic “feel” and also what distinguishes them from one another. Qualia have traditionally been thought to be intrinsic qualities of experience that are directly available to introspection. However, some philosophers offer theories of qualia that deny one or both of those features. (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

This is a very interesting topic as it relates to art and photography specifically. As I said above, the question we’re always asking is what makes art, Art? How do people respond to it and why do they respond a certain way? Qualia can start to answer some of these questions. And, if you study these ideas, you may be able to incorporate them into your practice, at least theoretically.

What is the qualia argument?
It rests on the idea that someone who has complete physical knowledge about another conscious being might yet lack knowledge about how it feels to have the experiences of that being. It is one of the most discussed arguments against physicalism.

Qualia as phenomenal character. Consider your visual experience as you stare at a bright turquoise color patch in a paint store. There is something it is like for you subjectively to undergo that experience. What it is like to undergo the experience is very different from what it is like for you to experience a dull brown color patch. This difference is a difference in what is often called ‘phenomenal character’. The phenomenal character of an experience is what it is like subjectively to undergo the experience. If you are told to focus your attention upon the phenomenal character of your experience, you will find that in doing so you are aware of certain qualities. These qualities—ones that are accessible to you when you introspect and that together make up the phenomenal character of the experience are sometimes called ‘qualia’. C.S. Peirce seems to have had something like this in mind when he introduced the term ‘quale’ into philosophy in 1866 (1866/1982, para 223). From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

INTROSPECTION
Introspection is the process by which someone comes to form beliefs about their own mental states. We might form the belief that someone else is happy on the basis of perception—for example, by perceiving their behavior. But a person typically does not have to observe their own behavior in order to determine whether they are happy. Rather, one makes this determination by introspecting.

When compared to other beliefs that we have, the beliefs that we acquire through introspection seem epistemically special. Though the term “introspection” literally means “looking within” (from the Latin “spicere” meaning “to look” and “intra” meaning “within”), whether introspecting should be treated analogously to looking – that is, whether introspection is a form of inner perception – is debatable. Philosophers have offered both observational and non-observational accounts of introspection. Following the discussion of these various issues about the epistemology and nature of introspection, the third section of this essay addresses an important use to which introspection has been put in philosophical discussions, namely, to draw metaphysical conclusions about the nature of mind. (IEP)

APPLYING QUALIA TO ART (PHOTOGRAPHY) - TRANSCENDENT ART
What does this all mean in terms of looking at and experiencing photographs? This is where words really do fall short. You can’t write about something like this very well. It’s a very personal, intimate experience that you “feel” more than you see.

Think of the feeling of love or the private pleasure of watching a sunset as examples of qualia that make their way into the domain of our conscious awareness. We try to describe them even if we can't. When words fail us, we turn to making photographs and prints, painting, sculpting, creating musical compositions, and a variety of other artistic mediums to express ourselves.

So, the preservation of the artist's own qualia must come first in their artistic endeavors. Inspiration comes suddenly and transcends time and space. It must be honored and kept in order for the location of its origin to be visited in the future, even if it will never happen again. I try to keep qualia at the forefront of my mind when exploring ideas for an image. I try to stay conscious of when I experience this and then act on it as quickly as possible. In the end, I know I only share a shadow of the qualia I experienced, but, to some extent, it is preserved in the images that I make. It is, in fact, second-hand qualia. That’s all it can ever be.

It’s up for debate whether or not some qualia ought to be retained. The question of whether art is successful or "good" is unaffected by whether it is enjoyable or unpleasant to experience. For instance, all it takes is a quick glance at one of Vincent Van Gogh's self-portraits for someone to feel what it feels like to be so depressed that they amputate their own ear.

Immortalize your qualia, that’s the goal. Transcended art is what qualia refers to-getting the closest we can to the most intimate experience in creating art and showing it the best way we know how. That’s the definition of qualia to me.

Plate #124 - “Ute Lodge” whole-plate toned cyanotype from a wet collodion negative.

Death Reminders & Terror Management Theory

DEATH REMINDERS
Albert Camus said, “The day when I am no more than a writer, I shall cease to be a writer.” Those words sit solidly with me. I can really feel what he meant by saying this. I feel the same way. I think we should always strive for our work to be more than just what it is. Whatever medium we work in, we should go beyond the medium itself. Art should transcend the materials, in other words. That’s why the concepts are so important; they carry the work to a bigger and more important place.

If you follow my blog, you know that my project (“In the Shadow of Sun Mountain”) is based on the human response to death anxiety. Specifically, what the European colonizers did to the indigenous people (Ute/Tabeguache) in the 19th century in Colorado. My photographs hold these places, plants, and objects as reminders of the behavior of the colonizers. The colonizers had a common worldview, or set of beliefs. This allowed for the justification of killing the Native Americans and stealing their land. You’ll read about Manifest Destiny in a couple of paragraphs. This is death anxiety and the denial of death played out and acted on in the worst way possible.

Ernest Becker’s theories are clear about why people do these kinds of things to “the other.” There are many reasons to feel threatened by people who are different. It can be as simple as physical appearance or as complex as what “god(s)” you believe in, or not. Or a combination of things.

Cultural worldviews drive these beliefs. Politics, socioeconomic status, and all kinds of cultural standards can provoke these threats. A person will feel secure in his/her/their environment if they’re sharing the same beliefs and acting on the same worldview—all shared experiences and beliefs. They find meaning and significance in common cultural activities. Look at the holidays—any of them. People find a great death anxiety buffer in participating in these kinds of things (see TMT below). If someone doesn’t participate or believe in the same kinds of things, this presents a problem. It’s a threat. When a person’s worldview is challenged, it provokes either conversion or confrontation. If the person that feels challenged can’t convince the “challenger” to come to their beliefs, bad things can happen. In the words of Sheldon Solomon, “My God is better than your God and I’ll kick your ass to prove it.” This is death anxiety acted out.

The colonizers thought that “God” had given them not only the right but had actually commanded them to take this land by force and kill the people here (“the other”). Manifest Destiny, a phrase coined in 1845, is the idea that the United States was destined—by God, its advocates believed—to expand its dominion and spread democracy and capitalism across the entire North American continent. That meant committing genocide on the Indigenous people here and stealing their land and resources. The Indigenous people that survived were moved to prisoner-of-war camps, also known as reservations.

This isn’t the first time this has happened. It’s been going on since the beginning of humanity. And it’s not the most recent instance of this kind of behavior either. It happens all of the time, all over the world. It’s our human condition that drives us to commit these atrocities and to believe that we’re justified in doing so. It’s our denial of death, our death anxiety that’s at the root of it—the driver or motivator for it. We are so terrified of not existing, we make up stories, hide behind material stuff, try to gain status and money, we try anything and everything so that we can quell the anxiety of mortality salience—or the knowledge of our impending death.

Susan Sontag wrote in her book, “Regarding the Pain of Others,” ”Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question of what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. If one feels that there is nothing 'we' can do -- but who is that 'we'? -- and nothing 'they' can do either -- and who are 'they?’-- then one starts to get bored, cynical, apathetic.”

I want my art to evoke these feelings in the viewer. I want to encourage them to consider their own existential crisis—their own death anxiety. This is the purpose of my work: to offer some “food for thought" on these concepts.

TERROR MANAGEMENT THEORY (TMT)
Terror management theory (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, and Solomon) holds that people specifically feel threatened by their own mortality, so to allay their anxiety, they subscribe to meaningful worldviews that allow them to feel enduring self-worth. TMT is a dual-defense model that explains how people protect themselves against concerns about death (mortality salience). According to TMT, the specific manner in which people respond is dependent on whether the concerns are conscious or unconscious. Conscious concerns about death are combated by proximal defenses aimed at eliminating the threat from focal attention. Once this goal has been accomplished, distal defenses become the primary method of protection. Distal defenses diminish unconscious concerns about mortality via a sense of meaning (i.e., worldviews) and value (i.e., self-esteem). Such defenses are also activated when death concerns are primed outside of conscious awareness. (J.K. Thompson, ... S. Chait, in Encyclopedia of Body Image and Human Appearance, 2012)

Plate #122-”Fringed Sage (Artemisia Frigida)” whole plate cyanotype from a wet collodion negative.

Plate #121 - In the Shadow of Sun Mountain

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.

Immortality Projects & Being Tranquilized by the Trivial

My work always references the human condition. My goal is to have every photograph represent, in some way, mortality salience. I’m attempting to do that both indirectly and abstractly. It’s a big order to fill. Sometimes, as I review the prints I’ve made, the images I thought worked well seem to fall short. And the images that I thought wouldn’t make the cut suddenly have new life. I'm more drawn to the work's narrative quality than I am to its technical skill. I simply care more about making a body of work that is cohesive, interesting, and communicative. I believe the more you learn about what you're doing, the more your aesthetic desires change. And it seems that the images themselves start to morph and change in the context of a clearer and more precise narrative. It’s progress in the best way possible.

SYMBOLIC IMMORTALITY & IMMORTALITY PROJECTS
Ernest Becker wrote a lot about “symbolic immortality.” It’s the only type of immortality human beings can pursue. Symbolic immortality is achieved through the projects we devise to buffer us from the anxiety of our mortality.

This symbolic self-focus takes the form of an individual's "causa sui project," (sometimes called an “immortality project,” or a “heroism project”). Causa sui is a Latin term that denotes something that is generated within itself. The pronunciation is “cow-sa swee.” I like the term, “immortality project.” I think it clearly describes the objective. It’s important to remember that all of our immortality projects are based on illusions. In the end, none of it matters. It’s important, however, that we keep the (good) illusions and projects going. We can find meaning and significance in our culture through them. In 1844, Soren Kierkegaard explained anxiety as the dizzying effect of freedom, of paralyzing possibility, and of the boundlessness of one’s own existence — a kind of existential paradox of choice. Anxiety can be either destructive or generative. The point is to select the latter.

A person’s "causa sui project” acts as their immortality vessel, whereby a person creates meaning or continues to create meaning beyond their own life span. (Becker's Synthesis – Ernest Becker Foundation, ernestbecker.org.) By being part of symbolic constructs with more significance and longevity than one’s body—cultural activities and beliefs—one can gain a sense of legacy or (in the case of religion) an afterlife. In other words, by living up to (or especially exceeding) cultural standards, people feel they can become part of something eternal: something that will never die as compared to their physical body. This, in turn, gives people the feeling that their lives have meaning, a purpose, and significance in the grand scheme of things, i.e., that they are “heroic contributors to world life” engaged in an “immortality project.”

TRANQUILIZING WITH THE TRIVIAL
Immortality projects are one way that people manage death anxiety. Some people, however, will engage in hedonic pursuits like drugs, alcohol, shopping, the pursuit of eternal youth, and entertainment to escape their death anxiety—often to compensate for a lack of "heroism" or culturally-based self-esteem—resulting in a lack of contribution to the "immortality project". (Becker, Ernest, “The Denial of Death,” Chapter 1).

Others will try to manage the terror of death by “tranquilizing themselves with the trivial,” i.e., strongly focusing on trivial matters and exaggerating their importance—often through busyness and frenetic activity. Becker describes the current prevalence of hedonism and triviality as a result of the downfall of religious worldviews such as Christianity that could take “slaves, cripples, imbeciles, the simple and the mighty” and allow them all to accept their animal nature in the context of a spiritual reality and an afterlife. (Becker, Ernest, “The Denial of Death,” chapter 8). Soren Kierkegaard said that they "tranquilize themselves with the trivial" so they can lead normal lives.

Humanity's traditional "hero systems,” such as religion, are no longer convincing in the age of reason. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) said, "God is dead! And we have killed him! How can we console ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? The holiest and the mightiest thing the world has ever possessed has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood from us?" What did he mean by this? He was actually referring to our collective belief in God. Our religious beliefs acted as a buffer for our anxiety about our mortality. Nietzsche saw that this collective belief, post-enlightenment, the industrial revolution, Darwin, etc. was waining and no longer sustainable as a buffer or immortality project.

Becker argues that the loss of religion leaves humanity with impoverished resources for necessary illusions. Science attempts to serve as an immortality project, something that Becker believes it can never do because it is unable to provide agreeable, absolute meanings to human life. The Denial of Death states that we need new convincing "illusions" that enable us to feel heroic in ways that are agreeable. (Podgorski, Daniel, October 22, 2019. "The Denial of Life: A Critique of Pessimism, Pathologization, and Structuralism in Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death". The Gemsbok).

But Becker doesn’t provide any definitive answers, mainly because he believes that there is no perfect solution. Instead, he hopes that the gradual realization of humanity's innate motivations, namely death, can help to bring about a better world. He argues that the conflict between contradictory immortality projects (particularly in religion) is a wellspring for the violence and misery in the world caused by wars, genocide, racism, nationalism, and so forth, since immortality projects that contradict one another threaten one’s core beliefs and sense of security. (Becker's Synthesis – Ernest Becker Foundation. ernestbecker.org.)

MY THOUGHTS & HOPES
I am very grateful for my life. I’m in awe every day. I do my best to be satisfied with what I have. I’m in want of nothing, and that’s very humbling to me. The older I get, the more I want peace and understanding in my life. Material things are becoming less and less important to me. Social status, professional status, and all things related to notoriety are gone. I couldn’t care less about those kinds of things.

I would, however, like to contribute something to the “big” discourse. This is where my art means a lot to me. I want it to be my voice and a catalyst to open a dialogue about being decent to one another and being considerate to all living things and our world in general. In light that we’re all suffering from death anxiety, it would be fantastic for all of us to come to the “proverbial table” to acknowledge that. Simply understanding and accepting that it’s our condition would make a big difference in the world. That’s what I would like to be a part of, and I hope my art contributes to that in some small way.

That doesn’t mean I’m without concern in other areas of life. To me, America is on the precipice of a major change for the better, an “awakening” if you will, or it’s in the most dangerous place it’s ever been. Most days, I consider the latter to be more accurate. Look around. You can see the conflict between our cultural worldviews; they’re colliding and creating a very volatile situation in our country and worldwide. We’re siloed—we’re being fed the news and politics we want to hear and agree with, nothing else. No challenges, no thoughtful or critical thinking. We’re constantly seeking to reinforce our own cultural worldview. It gives us security, meaning, and significance. It keeps death anxiety at bay. This is one of the things that A.I. (artificial intelligence) and (social media) algorithms have played a big part in making happen. In my opinion, it’s a dangerous world we’re living in. We could be in for a major societal collapse if things don’t change.

As Becker said, “Each person nourishes his immortality in the ideology of self-perpetuation to which he gives self-allegiance; this gives life the only abiding significance it can have. No wonder men go into a rage over fine points of belief: if your adversary wins the argument about truth, you die. Your immortality system has been shown to be fallible, your life becomes fallible.“ (Escape from Evil-page 64) He goes on to say, “All power is, in essence, power to deny mortality. Either that or it is not real power at all, not ultimate power, not the power that mankind is really obsessed with. Power means power to increase oneself, to change one’s natural situation from one of smallness, helplessness, and finitude, to one of bigness, control, durability, and importance.” (Escape from Evil-page 81)

I try to be optimistic, but I understand how history repeats itself. And I understand the nature of humanity and what motivates people to do what they do. The German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, said, “A pessimist is an optimist in full possession of the facts.”

“A River of Wood”: The delicacy of this paper makes it difficult to work with. I love the results. Because the paper is transparent, the white matboard behind it makes the blue color very vibrant. The metaphor is wonderful as well. It’s a whoie plate cyanotype on Canson vellum/tracing paper from a wet collodion negative.

Helenium Autumnale

I would like to recommend two books for you to read. The first one is called “Homo Aestheticus” by Ellen Dissanayake. And the second one is called “The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body,” by Steven Mithen.

Homo Aestheticus
“Dissanayake argues that art was central to human evolutionary adaptation and that the aesthetic faculty is a basic psychological component of every human being. In her view, art is intimately linked to the origins of religious practices and to ceremonies of birth, death, transition, and transcendence. Drawing on her years in Sri Lanka, Nigeria, and Papua New Guinea, she gives examples of painting, song, dance, and drama as behaviors that enable participants to grasp and reinforce what is important to their cognitive world.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Homo Aestheticus offers a wealth of original and critical thinking. It will inform and irritate specialist, student, and lay reader alike.”—American AnthropologistA thoughtful, elegant, and provocative analysis of aesthetic behavior in the development of our species—one that acknowledges its roots in the work of prior thinkers while opening new vistas for those yet to come. If you’re reading just one book on art anthropology this year, make it hers.”
—Anthropology and Humanism

The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body
“Mithen has many fascinating suggestions about how the circumstances of early hominid life on the African savanna may have provoked changes in anatomy and improved the range and precision of communication… By bringing music to the fore, Mithen remedies earlier neglect and offers his readers the most perspicacious portrait of the role of communication among our remote predecessors that I have ever encountered. That is a great accomplishment… Mithen’s book, in short, seems destined to become a landmark in the way experts and amateurs alike seek to understand the character and evolutionary importance of hominid and early human communication… [The Singing Neanderthals] offers a learned, imaginative overview of the most important and most elusive dimension of the real but unrecorded past: i.e., how communication among our predecessors changed their lives, sustained their communities, and promoted their survival. No one has previously undertaken that task so well.”
—William H. McNeill, The New York Review of Books

The Rock Theory Versus The Hard Place Theory: Different Worldviews

My photographic work is predominantly based on questions surrounding human behavior. In particular, I focus on topics such as the denial of death, death anxiety, and the theory of terror management (TMT).

It’s not a new interest to me. In fact, I’ve been preoccupied with it for over three decades. Until recently, I didn’t know how to talk about it. A few years ago, I was introduced to Ernest Becker’s theories about death denial and death anxiety. After reading “The Denial of Death,” I started digging deeper and found Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski; they put Becker’s theories to the test and wrote the book “The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life.” This is a potent read—it provides empirical support for Becker’s ideas.

Putting the information all together, I was finally able to understand what I was doing conceptually with my photographic work. In essence, I was asking questions about marginalized communities, both past and present. Why do we treat people who are different from us so poorly?

My primary question was, why does there have to be a “designated group of inferiors” (in Sheldon’s words) for human beings to blame and scapegoat? We (humans) are always threatened by “the other.” Atheists, Jewish people, Indigenous people, etcetera, etcetera. Any individual who differs from us poses a threat to us. Fill in the blank.

After many years of reading and deeply thinking about these theories, I learned how all of these ideas sit together and give answers to really big questions. I’m not overstating that either. If you learn about these theories, you’ll begin to understand why the world is the way it is. How can human beings commit atrocities and justify them? Why do we seem so lost so much of the time? And why does our condition seem so hopeless?

The “rock” and the “hard place” theory is one of my favorites. It explains the two different worldviews and what they mean for humanity. It also helps explain the terror management theory (TMT). How we behave depends on our worldview. Look around the world today. It’s a violent mess. Racism, bigotry, xenophobia, and jingoism: why is this happening? Let’s talk about the WHY rather than the WHAT. Let’s address the VIRUS, not the COUGH. I think Jeff does a great job explaining this through TMT.

I heard Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski talk about this theory of worldviews in one of the videos in the series called “Conversations with Solomon.”

This is an excerpt from Jeff Greenberg, PhD:

Most people only consciously contemplate their own mortality on rare occasions. Maybe if an odd mole appears, or after a close call in the car. It could be triggered by reading about the death of a celebrity their age. Maybe it’s in the middle of the night when they can’t get back to sleep and the reality of their inevitable ending sinks in. I, on the other hand, have been thinking about my mortality, and indeed everyone’s, for most of my professional career. You might assume that I’m a mortician, or a coroner, or maybe an oncologist. But actually, I’m a social psychologist, and my focus has been on trying to understand human social behavior. What does mortality have to do with understanding human behavior? This is more significant than most of us realize.

I spent my early childhood in a working-class Italian neighborhood in the South Bronx in New York City. Many African-American families were then moving into the area. At the time, I remember having two observations about people that bugged me: their pride and their prejudice. Everyone around me seemed to think they were right about everything—smarter and more moral than anyone else. And the people in my neighborhood seemed to have something against those who had darker skin than they did. I thought about these tendencies occasionally, though they didn’t seem to concern people around me. Then, in 12th grade, I was assigned Jonathan Swift’s literary satire, Gulliver’s Travels (1726), and I was shocked to find that here, finally, was someone who saw humans the way I did. And someone who died in 1745 at that.

This renewed my interest in these human proclivities, and so I decided to major in psychology as an undergrad at the University of Pennsylvania to learn more. Then I went to grad school in social psychology at the University of Kansas, and with my fellow students Sheldon Solomon and Tom Pyszczynski, I began studying people’s prejudices, their ways of protecting their pride, and their self-esteem. We learned that people engage in all sorts of mental gymnastics to feel good about themselves and their group. People who don’t succeed in doing so function poorly and experience anxiety and depression. But our studies left us with no answers as to why people are so invested in self-esteem and the superiority of their group. It seemed to just be taken as a given.

So we looked outside our field and discovered the works of the American cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker (1924-74). He gave us some answers in his book The Denial of Death (1973), which won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction in 1974 and counts Bill Clinton and Woody Allen among its many fans. Becker takes the reader to a familiar, yet rarely visited place—where one is faced with what being mortal really means: ‘Man … is a symbolic self, a creature with a name, a life history,’ Becker wrote, ‘and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever.’

His book forces us to really consider our own inevitable death, consciously, in a way we might not have since that fact first dawned on us. It’s not a fun read. But from this consideration of mortality, Becker builds a case for the fear of death as a pervasive influence on human behavior. He argues that we all fear death and we would be perpetually terrified if we didn’t have a way to deny, escape, or transcend it. The ancient philosophers Epicurus and Lucretius recognized the role of the fear of death in human endeavors. But they argued that we would lead better lives if we realized that it’s not logical to fear death because, if it is the end, then it will be nothing. We don’t fear not existing before we were born, so why should we fear not existing after we are dead?

The problem is that we are not logical beings. We are animals. And, like other animal species, we are biologically predisposed in many ways to continue living. If someone tries to suffocate you with a pillow, you struggle to breathe. If a car comes toward you, you dive out of the way. Becker used the example of people on a commercial airliner. If there is a sudden loud noise or the plane begins a sudden descent, everyone onboard feels terror and panic. So we have in our limbic system a fear of death and a desire to avert it at all costs. This fear of death is likely shared by many animal species.

Literal and symbolic immortality are fundamental bases of our psychological security. But what’s different about us humans is that we also have a cerebral cortex with frontal lobes that allows us to realize that death could come at any time for a wide range of reasons that we can neither predict nor control. And furthermore, it’s going to happen, sooner or later. So how are we able to function with equanimity knowing this, instead of cowering in a corner paralyzed by terror? Becker proposed that, as our ancestors became aware of the predicament of being mortal, they developed cultural worldviews that could allow them to believe that death is not the end of our existence, that in some way they will continue beyond their physical deaths, and the worldviews that have evolved since then have continued to promote this view.

The most obvious way that worldviews provide this hope is through belief in an immortal soul that lives on after our body dies. The oldest burial sites and ancient artifacts suggest such a belief in an afterlife goes back more than 50,000 years. We call that ‘literal immortality.’ The other major way is through a sense that the symbols of us—the things that represent us—will continue on after our physical deaths: our nation, our offspring, and our contributions to the world through teaching, art, science, and the causes we identify with. We call this ‘symbolic immortality.’ The first known written story, The Epic of Gilgamesh, attests to how central these concerns have been to our species. Gilgamesh becomes obsessed with death and how to avert it. He first tries to appease the gods for immortality, then he tries to find a plant that will let him never die, and finally settles for symbolic immortality by being remembered for doing great deeds and building great monuments—and he actually achieved that through the tablets that conveyed his story.

Literal and symbolic immortality are fundamental bases of our psychological security, but they depend on two things. First, we must maintain faith in a culturally based view of the world that provides a basis for believing in the possibilities of literal and symbolic immortality. Second, we must believe that we are valued contributors to this world so that we qualify for these forms of transcending our physical deaths. I call these two components of effective terror management. People live out their lives largely imbedded in a symbolic world of meaning and value in which they can believe they are of enduring significance, and as long as they maintain belief in that world and their significance, they can function with psychological equanimity. However, if either of these beliefs is threatened, defenses must be marshalled or death anxiety will percolate to the surface.

How, then, do these ideas inform pride and prejudice? From the perspective of this terror management theory, the problems of prejudice and intergroup conflict arise because groups that have a worldview different from one’s own are explicitly or implicitly suggesting that our own basis for feeling psychologically secure is wrong. To alleviate that threat, we must either derogate those others as stupid or evil, try to convince them that ours is the right worldview, or get rid of them. How many times over the course of history have we seen those impulses played out to great suffering and tragedy?

What about our pride? Striving for and defending one’s self-esteem are efforts to maintain the belief that one is a valued contributor to the world that our culture teaches us to believe in. As long as we believe we are significant contributors to this world, we have that sense of immortality and can function securely in the world. How do we come to be imbedded in these cultural belief systems and driven to be valued parts of them? This is a central function of the socialisation process, which Becker described beautifully in his book The Birth and Death of Meaning (1962).

The human newborn is one of the most helpless and dependent of all living creatures. Its survival and relief of distress depend on the love and protection of the parents. But as the child moves into toddlerhood, that love and protection become increasingly dependent on being a good little girl or boy. Be gentle with the cat, pee in the toilet. Over time, the child has to internalise a remarkable number of rules and values to stay in the good graces of the seemingly omnipotent parents, the only security base the small child has. So being good is the basis for feeling secure. And being bad is a precarious, scary thing, as it’s associated with possible loss of love and threat of punishment.

Being good is based on what is learned from the parents, which reflects the cultural worldview the parents themselves were taught. And so we strive for self-esteem because it tells us that we are good worthy people and therefore loved and protected. Of course, as we develop cognitively, we learn that there are threats too big for our parents, and that they are not omnipotent. But they have taught us bigger things in which we can believe, and therefore we shift our primary bases of security to our god, our nation, our family line, science, humanity. As adults, we still need that self-esteem, that sense of significance, to feel secure, but we get it by feeling like worthy contributors to those larger entities we have learned to believe in. Doing so allows us to feel that we will continue on as valued Christians, artists, scientists, Australians, and so forth.

It’s a big theory, with psychoanalytic roots, that seems to account for a lot of human behavior.

Having been convinced by Becker that awareness of mortality plays a significant role in human behavior, we formalized these ideas into terror management theory to introduce them into psychological science. We submitted a paper to the American Psychologist journal, explaining the theory and how it can account for so much we know from anthropology, archaeology, and history, as well as psychology. Neither the editors nor the reviewers were pleased. One review was just a sentence long: ‘I have no doubt that this would be of no interest to any psychologist, living or dead.’ (You’d think at least dead ones would be interested!)

Such comments gave no clues on what the reviewers disliked, but we guessed that their reactions were due to two aspects of the theory: first, that it concerns a scary topic, the inevitability of death; and second, that it’s a big theory, with psychoanalytic roots, that seems to help account for many aspects of human behavior. Ever since the reaction against Sigmund Freud in the 1950s, academic psychologists have been suspicious of big theories, accusing them of being unfalsifiable, or unscientific. After parrying with the journal about the lack of legitimate critiques of the paper, one beleaguered editor was kind enough to actually engage by telling us that, although these ideas might have merit, we would have to gather new evidence for them to attain “valid currency” in the field.

We never bought into the falsifiability argument regarding any theory. It’s always a matter of being able to derive hypotheses and developing methods to test them. However, gaining an empirical understanding of this extensive theory proved to be a challenging task. We came up with three basic hypotheses that have now been supported by more than 1,000 published studies across a wide range of domains, including prejudice, nationalism, political preferences, economics, art, marketing, consumerism, environmentalism, legal decision-making, aggression, athletic achievement, romantic relationships, mental health, and physical health. Let's concentrate on the hypothesis of mortality salience.

If concerns about mortality are managed by faith in one’s worldview and one’s value in that world, then maybe reminding people of their mortality—making mortality salient—would intensify their defense of their worldview and their efforts to live up to its values. We first tested this mortality salience hypothesis by asking municipal court judges to set bond for an alleged prostitute in a hypothetical case that included the same kind of information usually available to make such judgments. If the bond is small, the woman could be released from jail until her trial, but if it’s high, she might have to remain in jail until her court date. We reasoned that judges should be especially punitive if reminded of their mortality, as it's their job to punish violators of worldview values. So, for half the cases that we gave the judges, we included a short questionnaire with two items asking them about their mortality, placed prior to their consideration of the case. Supporting our hypothesis, those judges reminded of their mortality assigned an average bond of $455, whereas those not thus reminded set a $50 average bond.

After that first study, we conducted a series of follow-ups to test additional hypotheses. We found that the effect of mortality reminders always depends on the individual’s worldview. So, for people who don’t believe that prostitution should be illegal, mortality reminders don’t increase the size of the bond they choose for an alleged prostitute. We also discovered that contemplating other negative potential events, like physical pain, failure, or social rejection, did not elicit similar effects. And, importantly, thinking about death doesn’t simply make people negative: it also leads them to want a bigger reward for someone who helps the police capture a criminal.

We then wanted to see if making mortality salient would also lead to an increased defense of one’s country and if it leads to bias against those who subscribe to a different worldview. Many studies have found both effects to be true. A number have shown that reminders of mortality increase liking for someone who praises their country and increase negative reactions and even aggression against someone who criticizes it. Studies have also found this kind of nationalism outside the lab in contexts that bring death to mind. In one study, Germans interviewed near a cemetery preferred the German mark to the euro, whereas Germans interviewed near retail shops showed no such preference. In addition, various studies have shown increased liking for those in one’s own group and dislike for those in a different group. The first such study showed that Christian students who read about a fellow Christian student and a Jewish student showed no bias in a control condition but a strong preference for the Christian over the Jew if they had first been reminded of their mortality.

When thinking consciously about death, people will use a higher-protection sunscreen. Studies have also shown that mortality salience increases striving for self-worth. For example, individuals reminded of their mortality who derive some of their self-worth from driving skill tend to drive more boldly; those who base it on physical strength exhibit a stronger handgrip, and those who value basketball ability score more points. Mortality salience also increases giving to valued charities, seeking material wealth, the desire for love and for children, and greater appreciation of romantic partners who bolster your self-worth.

As these studies kept supporting the idea that reminding people of death made them strive harder for self-worth, cling more tightly to their worldview, and be more rejecting of people or things that didn’t fit their worldview, we also learned that thoughts of death spark two different kinds of reactions. When people think consciously about death, they tend not to worry about their worldview or self-esteem. Instead, they focus on their being safe, being young, being healthy—basically, it’s ‘not me, not now.’ They simply want to reassure themselves so they can stop thinking about their mortality. For example, when thinking consciously about death, people will use a higher-protection sunscreen.

But after they have stopped consciously focusing on death, death thoughts tend to linger on the fringes of consciousness. In psychological lingo, they are high in accessibility, which means they are more likely to pop into consciousness than normal. There are two ways in which we measure death thought accessibility. One is by having people complete a series of word stems, some of which could be completed in a death- or non-death-related way. For example, coff_ _, which could be coffee or coffin. The more death-word completions, the more accessible death thoughts are. Another method involves flashing words and nonwords on a screen to assess how quickly people can recognize death-related words. The faster they do so, the more accessible death thoughts are.

Death thoughts typically become high in accessibility a few minutes after a reminder of death, after people have shifted their conscious attention to other matters. It is then that they intensify their efforts to bolster faith in and defense of their worldview and self-esteem. So, for example, after being reminded of death but then distracted from thinking about it, people who value a tan will prefer an especially ineffective level of sunscreen protection—they’ll want to look good rather than be safe. Once people feel better about their worldview or themselves, the death thoughts dissipate, and their accessibility becomes low. However, when threats to one's worldview or self-esteem arise, the accessibility of death thoughts increases.

Typically, people are either unaware of these processes or the ways death affects them. We discover this when we debrief our participants. And most people report that they rarely think about death, even though reminders of death are all around—in news reports, movies, TV shows, health scares in our social circle, and so forth. We know these things happen from the many studies that have been published from around the world, but because these efforts at terror management occur when people are not consciously focusing on death, there is little awareness of the influence that death concerns are having on them.

Terror management theory and the research it has generated have implications across a wide range of topics. Many mental health problems, including addictions, stem from death anxiety that arises when individuals feel they are not making a positive contribution to a meaningful world. Both lack of meaning and low or threatened self-esteem make people vulnerable to death anxiety. Thus, we need greater focus in psychotherapy, education, and social structures to enhance these critical psychological resources to reduce the prevalence of mental health issues in our world. Perceived threats of death and the validity of the group’s worldview fuel a lot of intergroup tension and conflict. Minimizing these threats during peace negotiations and in interactions between members of different groups could greatly facilitate more productive intergroup relations. Although terror management theory can help to explain why people seek to extend their lives and resist euthanasia, it can also explain why dying people often value preserving their dignity and doing what’s best for their loved ones over extending a no-longer-satisfying existence.

There is also a political relevance to terror management theory. Following the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, the findings we had made in our labs resonated widely throughout the country. The attacks made mortality salient for almost all Americans and were also a direct threat to primary symbols of the US worldview. In response, Americans became more pro-US, donated blood, sought close others, lashed out at any perceived threat to the culture, and memorialized the victims and first responders to secure their symbolic immortality. Another thing happened that Becker had anticipated in 1973, but we hadn’t yet researched it. Americans rallied around their leaders, who reasserted the greatness and strength of the US. Polls on 10 September put President George W. Bush’s approval rating at around 50 percent. By 21 September, it was at 90 percent.

The hard place is a more uncertain worldview, where one person’s good could be another’s evil

A variety of studies have since helped explain why this happened and how death fears draw people toward leaders who convey a certain kind of worldview. Metaphorically, the world is stuck between two types of worldviews, the rock and the hard place. Charismatic leaders sell the rock-type worldview. Our group is great; there is certain good and evil, right and wrong, and our group is destined to triumph over that evil. This kind of worldview works well for quelling anxiety, as it helps people feel that they are significant contributors to something great and lasting, whether a great cause, a great nation, or a great deity. It is most commonly a fundamentalist or conservative worldview, but it also characterizes some left-wing ideologies such as hardline communism and environmental extremism. The problem with this type of worldview is that it often leads to destructive actions against those designated as evil.

The hard place is a more uncertain worldview that acknowledges that one person’s good could be another person’s evil. It stresses tolerance and the validity of different views of the world. Truth and how to do good in the world are less certain. In this kind of worldview, there is less hostility toward other groups, but self-worth and how to leave a lasting positive mark on the world are less clear. Anxiety, therefore, tends to be more prevalent, and there is more need to self-medicate it away in various ways.

The existing evidence supports the position that reminders of death move people toward more rock-type worldviews. Mortality salience leads Iranian college students to be more supportive of martyrdom attacks on the US and leads conservative Americans to be more supportive of extreme and even preemptive nuclear attacks on perceived threats to the US. My colleagues and I have found that stressing values of tolerance and compassion can temporarily reduce defensive reactions in response to the threat of death. But what we really need for a more peaceful world is to resist clinging to rigid worldviews despite our fear and cope with it more constructively instead.

There are now many people doing research to address how we can move in that direction. When I began writing and talking about terror management theory, I just saw it as correct—not as something that I was going to build my career around. But it’s been gratifying to learn of people around the world taking these ideas seriously and using the methods my colleagues and I have developed to study the many ways in which the fear of death drives people to do good and bad in the world, and how this force can be harnessed to do more good and less harm.

The Same Thing, Over And Over Again...

"Illuminated Sunflower" from my project, "In the Shadow of Sun Mountain". A whole plate, toned cyanotype print from a wet collodion negative.

I’m writing this in response to my image, “Illuminated Sunflower,” that I posted yesterday. Here are some of the comments/responses:
“It’s strange looking but familiar.”
“Is it real?”
“I’ve never seen a sunflower that looks like that.”
“How did you do that?”
”Is it manipulated?”

MY RANT
Have you noticed that, as photographers or artists, we tend to follow what’s “accepted” and recognizable in photography? In other words, we make the same images that we’ve seen a million times over and over again. It’s almost like we’re in a trance or robotic. We have a very difficult time doing anything else.

These images are everywhere out there. Go to any “fine art photography” group online and you’ll see that 90%+ of the pictures are easily recognizable—same content, just a different photographer.

You’ll see old barns in empty fields and abandoned places (usually a farm or an old warehouse). Autumn leaves in a bowl or just on the ground. Foggy, misty landscape scenes. And any kind of flower in a vase. How about an old piece of farm equipment (tractors, old trucks, etc.)? National parks are always in the mix—a large format photograph of any recognizable landscape, especially anything from Yosemite National Park. I call these images “sunset and driftwood pictures”. Most of the pictures are (manipulated) digital images, or in some groups, there will be a few large format black and white film pictures that are scanned and made into digital prints. And some even make silver gelatin prints. But the numbers are going down fast. Regardless of the process, the content will be the same.

Before you send me a nasty email, let me say that there’s nothing wrong with doing any of that type of work! Obviously, the masses love it. It sells pictures, no doubt, and if that’s your hustle, more power to you. But creatively, I feel like these types of photographs fall short—way short. I feel like I’m listening to a broken record, playing the same part over and over again. Nothing new. It feels like visual torture to me sometimes. And it’s derivative.

We are conditioned to respond to familiar things. I get it. It’s kind of like, “Oh! I recognize that and I know people think it’s important, so I like it too!”. Those kinds of feelings and responses are embedded in photographers’ minds—so they keep making pictures that people will recognize and like. Commercial photographers are bound by this obligation. They need to sell pictures. As fine artists, we’re not bound to this way of working or thinking. In fact, we should reject it completely.

How do we do that? In my mind, there are three ways to accomplish this. The first is unique content—what’s in the picture. This can also include the context of the image. Your narrative can support something that’s been seen before if it’s a meaningful part of the story. Second, is the way the image is made (what process). And third, how you produce the image/print (post-production printing).

I know that influence is incessant; we really can’t get away from it. We bring everything we know and have seen to the image we’re making. And it’s very difficult to “pass” on the obvious, recognizable image. I think this is where experimentation and exploration can pay big creative dividends. Get out of the habit of only making pictures in “good” light or only composing in the way that you’ve seen. Try new things and break the rules. Play with optics, processes, and even post-production stuff (again, I’m talking about printing here). Do your best to make images of scenes or objects that you would never normally photograph. Then, play with the way you make them. If you’re lucky, you’ll discover a new way to work that supports your story, and the pictures will be interesting to look at! You’ll discover ways to see things that you’ve never really seen before.

Otto Rank said, “What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.” I believe that. Art can be a powerful way for you to experience and understand life. It can give you a way to tackle the big questions in life and find meaning and purpose. E.O. Wilson came up with a word in the 1980s. “Biophilia” (it’s a book actually), which means “the love of life”. I do my best every day to be grateful, humble, and love life as much as I can.

“A River of Wood”—a cyanotype print on Canson Vellum (Tracing) paper.

“A River of Wood”—a Palladiotype print for reference—from the wet collodion negative posted here.

Three sheets of paper in an iodizing bath. These will become calotypes (paper negatives). This is the first step.

Three sheets of freshly iodized paper. These will become calotypes (paper negatives). I usually iodize six sheets at a time.

What Makes a Photograph Meaningful?

HOW DO YOU SELECT PHOTOGRAPHS?
What standards do you employ to select photographs for a body of work? And what distinguishes the images you select as significant or meaningful? Believe it or not, some photographers have never given these questions much consideration. “I pick what looks good!” or “I pick what sells!” That’s about as far as they go. Some never even think about making a body of work. They simply make “one-off” images and call them good.

For the storytellers: the narrative is only as strong as the visuals you choose to portray. Therefore, these are important questions to ponder. If you don't carefully choose images using criteria that complement the narrative, you’ll disrupt the flow—like hitting a sour note in music. So, how do you go about doing that?

TIME
The first thing you need is time, and a lot of it. Time to read, research, think and create. You need time to connect the dots in regard to your pictures and educate yourself about the deeper and more profound ideas around the work. This doesn’t happen in a week or two. This process can take years.

I know this turns a lot of people off. It’s anathema to the world we live in today. Few people are going to put the time in to make it work. However, for those few, the reward will be life-changing.

WORK & PRODUCTION
You will fail more than you’ll succeed. That’s a good thing. It will make you appreciate the successful pictures even more. They are a rare and wonderful thing. If you do it right, the process will keep you humble and grateful. I believe you need those attributes to make good work.

You need to make a lot of photographs, which also requires a lot of time. I’m not talking in digital photography terms or numbers. However, you need to make the work in order to see it. If you can’t see it, you can’t select it or reject it. Have you heard that saying, “You can’t learn to drive in a parked car”? Make the photographs!

Another type of time is a timeline, or how long it takes you to complete a body of work. If it takes months or even years, that's fine. Don't put a timeline on your project. Let it reveal itself organically. Give every photograph you make your undivided attention. As I said above, spend time researching, reading, watching, observing, thinking, and considering a lot of different ideas. Make a lot of photographs of any ideas that you think might work. And make some photographs of ideas that you don't think will work, too. You might be surprised. It’s important to leave some serendipity in this process, at least a little bit.

Push yourself. Forget about “rules” or what you think people will like or not like. That’s all a waste of time. Don’t let any of that rent space in your head. Don’t get caught in the trap of trying to please people. This is your work, your ideas. Stay focused (no pun) and stay the course!

Don't fret over the pictures as you make them; there’s plenty of time for that later. To date, I've created about 120 negatives for my project ("In the Shadow of Sun Mountain.") I've only been working on it for about a year. It sounds like a lot, but in reality, it's only about 2.5 negatives per week.

I'll probably end up with about 200 negatives when the project is completed. That number is based on the general categories I’ve selected for the work. Flora, landscapes, and objects. To get a sufficient number of photographs to make a body of work, I would need roughly 65 negatives from each area. If I select 30–40 images for the final body of work (prints), that would mean I'm only using 15%–20% of the (roughly) 200 negatives. Keep in mind that this is only a guideline and is subject to change.

You’ll know when you’ve completed the work. It will be apparent. I can’t give you any specifics, but I can tell you that you’ll know. If you’ve completed visually, what you’ve used words to describe, and they complement and complete one another, you’re finished.

EXPERIMENTATION
I try to experiment as much as possible while I’m making the work. Yes, I have my “roadmap” and that gives me my general direction, but I’m still working out the aesthetic. To me, that means trying new compositions, lighting, lenses, and printing methods. I'll try new papers, new toners, and even new processes. The only caveat here is that you don't want to get caught up in the technical minutia. You'll end up being a process photographer, not an artist. Chiang Kai-shek said, "We become what we do." It’s important to remember that.

Try to find what processes or techniques best suit your story. You want the viewer to "experience" the work and have context for what you're trying to do. That makes a big difference in the success of the photographs. Don’t cling to one process during the experimental phase. Try things. Figure things out. You’ll end up settling on a way to work that makes sense for your project, and you’ll have good reasons for using it.

EVALUATION
Critique your work. Be critical, realistic, and reasonable. You’ll see, as you go through this process, there are so many variables to making good pictures that fit into the story. What your objective should be is to group the images that immediately stand out. Eliminate the images that you feel don’t work straight away. Do the big, broad sweep as quickly as you can. You can always reconsider the images you put aside later. I’ve found that when I revisit images that I thought didn’t work a few weeks or months later, they take on a new power or influence. Images that I thought were “duds” now have new life in relation to the other work. Remember, this should be a comprehensive body of work; images working together to tell the story. Think of each image as a word or sentence—one flowing into the next. It should look right, feel right and support your narrative. And it should convey power and emotion when viewed as a whole.

Test strip from a Calotype (paper negative).