The photographer Walter Chappell referred to the term “camera vision as a responsive property of the human mind prehistoric to the invention of the photographic process.” Camera vision is a bridge to the realization of our inner realities.

The sufi master Jalaluddin Rumi spoke of the inner reality of everyday life; the sound of thunder, the flowers, snow, all of nature, as having a hidden meaning that lies beneath its surface. For the artist this is a process of seeing through one’s inner being into a world of continuous impressions, and being present in a moment of active awareness recorded by the camera, or several individual moments of awareness experienced in painting.

Life is present in the moment. Illusion is a thought of life in the past or the future, both of which do not exist in reality. The past is gone and will never return and the future is not a reality…when it becomes a reality it is the present.

We are given the allusion and turn it into illusion. Art is a universal language that can be a bridge to understanding the divers cultures of the world. A language that can merge the traditional and contemporary in such a way as to make it a meaningful experience in the world today.

The changing of graphite or paint to a represented form is an alchemical process directed by the artist as he or she experiences the metamorphosis of color or line into a means to set the mind free. Unlike film, which attacks all one’s senses 24 frames a second, the photograph, painting, or drawing in its still, frozen form, allows one the possibility to experience and reflect on its presence in the stillness of one’s own being.

Shems Friedlander