The show will open with a public reception on Friday, October 3, 2008, and will continue through October 31. For more information about the show, you may visit the show’s website by clicking -HERE-. That website will be updated with an exhibition catalog on September 23.

I hope to see you at the opening reception.

Schism II (shown below) incorporates the photograph, Schism, but includes a handcrafted weathered oak crucifix as a base for the photo, and a wreath of vines (crown of thorns?) as a frame for the image, adding layers of meaning not available from the photograph standing alone.

Welcome to Nirvana (shown below) uses the photo of the same name as its basis, but the photo floats within the open space of a Japanese Torii gate, which I constructed using weathered oak, as its context. It is as if the traveler (the small figure in the lower right corner) has just passed through the Torii gate to come face to face with the object of his longing. Also, I used a subtly colorized version of Welcome to Nirvana to create this piece.

To see a clearer image of the underlying photographs, visit the Focus on Religion gallery at www.wmgphoto.com and click on the thumbnail images.

I came across this statue of Jesus’s face, rent asunder, in a shop selling Christian religious iconography in Los Angeles. Schism, the photograph’s title was inspired by the crack in the statue’s face, but the more I looked at the image, the more it occured to me that the other elements of the image convey the sense of schism as well.

The right side of the image is dominated by Jesus on the cross. A brother holds a child in his arms, and the child looks lovingly up at the Christ on the Cross.

The left side of the rent image of Christ is a different story altogether. On the left, higher and larger than the crucifix is a statue of a person whose arms echo the arms of Jesus on the cross, but this person’s gaze is directed not on the Lord himself, but rather on the images above, highly iconographic images of the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus. Also on the left are various statues of Mary in the different forms in which she has been depicted, including a dark-skinned virgin in the background.

Kneeling on the floor in the left foreground are two children in prayerful pose looking up. Are they looking to the statue of Jesus before them, or are they instead praying to the various images of Mary, the face of one being surrounded by a halo’s glow, and both of which seem to have been placed just ahead of the Jesus statue, and thus, closer to the praying children.

So, while the crack in the face of Jesus brought to my mind the word “schism”, the rest of the composition speaks volumes about what that word might mean in the context suggested by the religious icons on display.

The reason I used Renaissance Acrobat in the article is that it served to illustrate my point about the limitations of digital cameras with respect to one’s ability to create an image with a short depth of field. I find Country Store, the other image in that article to be a much more compelling photograph.

I write this post because I am ambivalent about Renaissance Acrobat. I strive to show only my best work on this website and in my online Photo Gallery. I endeavor to create photographs that are emotionally compelling. I feel that Renaissance Acrobat falls short of this ideal. Nevertheless, I will retain the Renaissance Acrobat image on the overflow page of the post as an example of the point I was making.