Photography as Zen

Over many years I have resisted suggestions by several friends to build a website and publish a book of my photos. Recently, however, I reluctantly began work on this website.

(I haven’t yet given time to a book.)

I was reluctant because I did not want to get back into the business end of photography, nor face the unrelenting pressures of producing online content as I did under deadlines in the workplace.

Underneath these reasons, however, is a much deeper concern. After a lifetime of photographing people, animals and objects for specific purposes—photo illustration, portraits, product sales—my photography today has become a spiritual exercise that has nothing to do with many of the reasons that undergird these other photographic endeavors.

I was also reluctant to claim that what I do is remotely related to creating art. That feels to me like a self-important, ego claim that elevates what I do, which is simply to walk around with a camera, see things, and click the shutter.

I found new words and much different thoughts about this process when I read Eyes of the Heart: Photography as a Christian Contemplative Practice, which has become for me an essential theological guidebook by Christine Valters Painter.

She writes, “We live in a product-oriented culture, where much of what we do is focused on an end goal or product to share. When we approach art in this way, we become distracted by trying to produce a beautiful image. When we focus on the process of art-making, rather than the product, we can immerse ourselves in the creative journey and discover the ways God is moving though our lives and how we are being invited to respond.”

I have intuitively been doing much of what Valters Painter describes in her writing, but I have not put it into the helpful framework she has provided me.

And that makes all the difference.

Valters Peters takes the title of her book from a line in Paul's letter to the church at Ephesus. He urges them to see with "the eyes of the heart" the light of hope that is in God's call. (Ephesians 1:18)

I do, in fact, find myself totally immersed in seeing, as she writes, lose track of time and enter into a timeless state of awe and wonder that, upon reflection, gives life meaning because it is a holy moment.

I knew that this kind of photography can be a form of prayer, but she writes it is also an expression of praise, worship and sacred seeing.

And I am embarrassed to confess that until she mentions it, I was unaware of how the prominent Roman Catholic author, mystic and activist, Thomas Merton, saw photography as a means for his practice of Zen, to the point that he described a camera given to him by a friend as a “Zen camera.”

Photography is about light--light and shadow. In his letter Paul says, "light produces fruit that consists of every sort of goodness, justice and truth." (Ephesians 5:9)

I don't know how this effort will develop, or where it will lead, but I do know that in this time of evil, injustice and falsehood, the eyes of my heart are looking for the light that produces goodness, justice and truth.

As Valters Painter contends, the sacred is right here, right now. The camera is a portal through which that sacred light is reflected, and the heart is the meaning-making place where we discover how we are called to be in the world.

So this website and the images it contains are one step in a journey I have embarked upon in this second half of life to see more deeply and gain a more firm and coherent perspective on how I live in this dark and troubling time.

I will write more as I go along, and I thank you for stopping by here to read this opening reflection. More to come….