It’s about Light: the Art of Life

Black & Blue Trees of my Heart

While we are in the midst of a global pandemic, although I love to travel it is impossible at this time for me to plan and prepare for an exhibition, to run away to a distant destination.  Since I can no longer run away, it is an opportunity to travel inward to seek deeper, allowing for an existential inquiry into the meaning of life.   When going through a time of crisis and major transition, we all respond to life’s challenges in a different way, most importantly, how we react and what effect it has on our lives determines the person we are becoming.  

As we are witnessing a great many changes in our world today, we are also seeing the worst and the best of humanity when compassion and love overcome selfishness, and hate for the global pandemic brings out what we were too busy to notice before.  The haves and haves not, the widening gap between rich and poor, there is a crying need to redress social injustice and to bring more humanity into society, to bring more meaning into our lives. 

Le Louvre, Paris

Metaphorically in the art of black and white photography, as it is in our world, there is an important interplay of light and shadow while highlighting details, that gives meaning to an image, hence the need to strike a balance between these opposites.  We are at a major turning point in human history to choose what matters most so that humanity can survive.  Jean-Jacques Rousseau, an important figure in the history of philosophy, refers to that “which he terms pitié (compassion). Pitié directs us to attend to and relieve the suffering of others (including animals) where we can do so without danger to our own self-preservation.”

                                                    

                                                                    Nabeul, Tunisia