Ukiyo-e

        
Photography, digital media, giclee on watercolor paper.

Lotus

Details

We live only for the moment, turning our thoughts to the moon, the snow, the cherry blossoms and the maple leaves; singing, drinking, and diverting ourselves just in floating, floating, unmoved by the prospect of imminent poverty, resisting sinking spirits, we are buoyant, like a gourd floating along with the river: this is the floating world.
-Asai Ryōi,  Tales of the Floating World ca. 1661.

This body of work is inspired by a popular genre of Japanese wood-block prints called ukiyo-e that flourished during Edo period Japan (ca. 17th to 20th centuries). All is fast and in flux in our virtual, e-cultural world of e-mails, e-commerce and e-communities. If I pause to reflect I am met with a sense of temporality and a longing for simplicity and meaning. Taking pictures slows me down and focuses my attention. This mechanical, and now digital, medium is the means I employ to meditate and heighten my awareness of a moment that can not be preserved as I’ve experienced it. I manipulate images to heighten the disconnect between perception, image and reality. For me, the outcome represents a sense of being, not simply a record of that which was. 

Images clockwise from top left:

1. snow maple
2.  fish pond
3.  ume tree
4.  Eire
5.  allium
6.  lakefront
7 fish rings