Wednesday, November 30, 2011

The Last Day of November





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Tuesday, November 29, 2011

A November Photograph




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Monday, November 28, 2011

William Blake

Today is William Blake's birthday.

I am thinking about Blake today and I have in front of me the catalog from my college senior thesis/art exhibition, "William Blake, The Apocalyptic Vision."

And I am reading:



From the introduction:

"For Blake, the apocalyptic moment was personal and could happen at any time evil is recognized. Revelation and Judgment are internal affairs of the spirit, arising from a clearing of the senses which the artist, by virtue of his imaginative genius, can promote. The true artist then has a social role bordering on the religious. Blake took this very seriously. He sought prophecies of a particular visionary nature, and found them in the Books of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Job, and Solomon......Apocalypse was not the only myth with which Blake was concerned. It was part of a general sequence, a cycle beginning with Creation and Fall and culminating with Apocalypse and Redemption. Apocalypse becomes the correction of the Fall, and Redemption, a reversal of the process by which the spirit was contracted into human form......This constrictd state Blake called Experience; its opposite was Innocence. Blake's cycle from Creation to Judgment or Redemption is paralleled on a personal level as a progress from Innocence to Experience. The tension between the two states is essential: "Without Contraries there is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence." This progress of opposites is man's learning to develop his spiritual aspects, to reject selfhood and learn true foregivness. Final Revelation will be "seen by the Imaginative Eye of Every one according to the Situation he holds" and the Last Judgment will happen "whenever any Individual Rejects Error & Embraces Truth."
 
Often considered one of Blake's most striking visual images, the frontispiece to "Europe, a Prophecy" (1794) and usually called "The Ancient of Day's."
 
 
 
Again, from the catalog:
 
(It) represents the Creator striking the limits of the fallen world with his brazen compass. From the midst of a brilliant heavenly sphere, the old man leans forward and down, his flowing hair and beard blown to the side, his left hand firmly holding the compass down over the black depths he studies from above. The pictorial tradition connecting the compass to the Creation goes back to the Middle Ages and derives from Proverbs 8:27: "When he prepared the heavens, I was there; when he set a compass upon the face of the depth." It first occurs in Blake's work in connection with Milton's "He took the golden Compasses...to circumscribe this universe, and all created things" (Paradise Lost VII: 225-227). Blake's source for the striking pose of Urizen was ultimately Christ in Michelangelo's Conversion of Saint Paul. The powerful deity, who orders the unformed world, is Urizen, who by this terrible act limits the universe and inflicts woe upon the world by reducing the infinite to the finite. As his name suggests, he is "your reason," the faculty which defines and delimits. In Urizen 12:4, he opens the awful Book of Brass, the code of rational laws copied by kings and priests for the purpose of organizing and suppressing society. Once revealed, the code spreads through the ages: it is this terrible propagation that Blake follows in the cycle from Adam to Resurrection.
 
And:
 
Blake's friends often made much of his seeing visions and receiving divine guidance. But Blake himself knew well the nature of his visions. In "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" Blake describes a dinnertable conversation with Isaiah and Ezekiel:
 
"I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert that God spoke to them; and whether they did not think at the time that they would be misunderstood, & so be the cause of imposition. Isaiah answer'd: "I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discovr'd the infinite in everything, and as I was then persuaded, & remain confirm'd, that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences, but wrote."

And, here, me and my mentor and teacher and friend Harvey Stahl :
Let me end with this quote

 reminded of Thel's Motto from William Blake's "The Book of Thel."

Does the Eagle know what is in the pit?
Or wilt thou go ask the Mole?
Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod?
Or Love in a golden bowl? 
 
And you dear reader and friend?

Sunday, November 27, 2011

First Sunday of Advent Meditation



And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.
  ~Jeremiah




If you want distinctive nature, documentary or portrait photography--photography with soul that inspires you to live a more artful and beautiful life, please contact me.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Thanksgiving



May your Thanksgiving be blessed with love and gratitude.

Photo by Bruce Barone.

~

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

The Mists of Avalon




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Monday, November 21, 2011

Sunday in the Park

Sunday
in the park
down the street
from where
we live

Mittineague Park. West Springfield, Massachusetts. Photo by Bruce Barone.



If you want distinctive nature, documentary or portrait photography--photography with soul that inspires you to live a more artful and beautiful life, please contact me.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Sunday Bible Study




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Saturday, November 19, 2011

God's Whisper



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Friday, November 18, 2011

A Cool Cat

Photo by Bruce Barone.


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Wednesday, November 16, 2011

The Color is Red and Autumn Ends Soon

Photo by Bruce Barone.




If you want distinctive nature, documentary or portrait photography--photography with soul that inspires you to live a more artful and beautiful life, please contact me

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Nadine. The Cat.


Not as innocent
as she looks
but loved
always.

Photo by Bruce Barone.


If you want distinctive nature, documentary or portrait photography--photography with soul that inspires you to live a more artful and beautiful life, please contact me

Monday, November 14, 2011

Cold November Rain

Photo by Bruce Barone.



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Sunday, November 13, 2011

The Glorious Gifts

 

"The glorious gifts of the gods are not to be cast aside."

~ Homer, The Iliad

Photo by Bruce Barone.


If you want distinctive nature, documentary or portrait photography--photography with soul that inspires you to live a more artful and beautiful life, please contact me

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Hold On To Your Dreams



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Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Katie Himes, Miss Teen America

Just found out I will be photographing
Katie Himes,
Miss Teen America,
again--this time 
in Boston,
portrait session.

Photo by Bruce Barone.
Photo by Bruce Barone.


If you want distinctive nature, documentary or portrait photography--photography with soul that inspires you to live a more artful and beautiful life, please contact me.

Monday, November 7, 2011

The Cat Nadine

Photo by Bruce Barone.


If you want distinctive nature, documentary or portrait photography--photography with soul that inspires you to live a more artful and beautiful life, please contact me.

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Prayer


If the only prayer you say in your life
is thank you, that would suffice.

Photo by Bruce Barone.




If you want distinctive nature, documentary or portrait photography--photography with soul that inspires you to live a more artful and beautiful life, please contact me.

Friday, November 4, 2011

Self Portrait After Cezanne

I saw a Cezanne painting in today's New York Times.

Self Portrait. Friday, November 4, 2011.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

The Good People at High Point

After fours days our heat is back on here at home. Others, however, still suffer in the cold; some take refuge in a local shelter.

Today, now that electricity is restored at our home, I will begin editing the photos I took for Pandora de Balthazar European Luxury Bedding in High Point: pillows, bedding, linens, textiles.

For example:

Photo by Bruce Barone.

The contest I created to encourage traffic to her Facebook page was a great success and it was fun to photograph people in bed:

Danielle Hatfield, Chief Dirt Digger at Experience Farm. Photo by Bruce Barone.
Olivia Millwood, GotoGirls. Photo by Bruce Barone.
Donna Hazzard, Greenpieced. Photo by Bruce Barone.
There are dozens more photographs of people in bed; men, too. But let's move on to "The Good People at High Point."

It was thrilling and rewarding to meet so many kind, friendly, generous, inspiring people.

Each name, each person, a poem, a song. Let's listen. Let's read aloud:

Mary Knackstedt
Martha Daley
Kate Van Byssum
Jennifer Eakins
Patsy P Anderson
Jennifer Duchene
Barry Darr Dixon
Mary McDonald
Brandon Pierce
Margaret Russell
Kathryn Greeley
Lauren Saul
Amanda Lane
Lisa Kahn
Maybelline Te
Julie Hoover
Tamara Leicester
Leslie Carothers
Charmaine Wynter

I hear a song. I sing a song. To these good people.

I may have forgotten to list a few people and to them I apologize. Here is one last photograph:

A beautiful antique textile from Pandora.
~

If you want distinctive nature, documentary or portrait photography--photography with soul that inspires you to live a more artful and beautiful life, please contact me.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Snow Storm

Power came back on last night.

We are blessed. We only suffered through  three nights of no electricity; no heat. It was so cold in our house even Sock Monkey got dressed for it:


And we had no damage to our home. A tree fell across our driveway and the yard is littered with dozens of fallen tree limbs. But we do feel blessed.

Just heard from my brother and sister-in-law in West Hartford, CT and they will not have power till Sunday. And their street, as many I have seen in our neighborhood, are difficult to pass through what with downed trees and downed power lines.

I have some more tree limb cutting to do today (I have a helper; see photo.)

 
And then I have to work on editing a weeks worth of photos from High Point.

And I can't wait to cook dinner tonight for Susan and her Mom (Our first home-cooked meal in awhile; I am making Turkey-Jasmine Rice Meatballs with Baby Bok Choy.)

Susan and I send blessings to all the folks who are working to restore power, cleaning up the mess, and caring for the seniors who needed extra help to cope with the crisis.

An Anniversary

  Valentine's Day is around the corner and I like to share with you a love story. Fourteen years ago on February 9, Susan and I met at t...