Hero's Journey

I hunger for knowledge and through experience seek to gain spiritual insight. I use Belief as it manifests itself within Reality through perception and myth to understand my world and my spirit. These absolutes can be perceived through our ideals and actions. The symbols and stories change depending on culture or individual experience but the universal is glimpsed through these. It is through the experience that we can know, not through dogma but through dialogue.
I work with myths and symbols. Using comparative mythology, I analyze stories of different cultures and find the paradigm within, its essential elements and recurring themes and motifs. I then create my own story based on archetypes and the amalgamation of the original story. The archetype in this instance is the source of all variations. It is the essential quality of the myth, meaning without it the myth could not or would not exist (Bragdon 139). Similarly, I employ this method with the symbols of these cultures, because, I believe, as does Bertrand Russell, that symbols illuminate the unknown (Dilley 46). I must research each culture to understand the context of the symbols before I imbue them with my own meaning. A symbol is not a copy of reality but an impression of a greater reality, greater because it is more than the obvious, not better. It must lay claim to a kind of truth. The image is a symbol when implied meaning is greater than the obvious and immediate meaning (Jung 20).
The arts are not merely symbolic language but point to a spiritual reality that is complementary to a physical one (Howard 26). My art is a meditation on self and the connection to the mystical, in essence a microcosm of the macrocosm. This latest work is an interpretive analysis of the hero’s journey, how it has changed and stayed the same throughout history, but more importantly, how the stories can be applied to every life story. In fact, I have utilized my experience of graduate studies and applied the formula of these religious epics. There is an implied narrative within this work because I have used personal experiences and applied these to literary formulas. There is a truth to myths… and in belief, realities can be found.
Thomas Carlyle said, “Heroes see through the appearance of things into the reality of things” (Carlyle 55). I do this with my art. I think that all persons live through the journey of the hero. It is a myth that is still applicable even if the embodiment of the myth is not. The inflection is cultural, the themes are timeless.
In my philosophic studies I have been drawn to questions of metaphysics and epistemology. I want to know if there is a higher reality, and if so, how can we know it. I have always doubted the existence of this greater plane and that is why I first sought to learn about it. Rudolf Steiner proposed that the spiritual world is accessible by means of enhanced powers of thinking and result in a consciousness of self (James, 233). Wanting to know the unknowable, yearning to break loose from corporeality, I used other people’s explanations and understandings. I then noticed similarities and connections within different cultures and religions. The more I studied, the more I was fascinated by their stories and consequently begin to understand more about myself. I recognized my own dreams and aspiration, fears and failures.
This connection is what makes the myth continue in life and history I have found that these myths are a microcosmic paradigm. They explain ourselves to us. Through meditation and analysis we can understand that. Similar to Carl Jung’s collective unconscious, we share the ideas, not that the ideas are inherited but that the possibility of these ideas are (Jung 67, 69). I hope to communicate these ideas in the final piece.
After comprehending this, I began to utilize the cross-cultural connections. The artist is a mythmaker; I make my own cosmology then choose the apex of the story and draw it. I draw it out in order to both realize what had been gestating as an idea and to utilize as a sketch. After working and reworking the design to highlight the points of the story and aesthetics I take that sketch into the studio.
I use the camera as a tool to document my stories. The camera is a machine. It sees what I point it at and only I can tell it what to see. The camera presents a personal point of view with an impersonal objectivity. I make very simple tableaux and stage like settings with the intention of focusing on the energy of light, the body, and the narrative. This is how I represent reality through the photograph.
The photograph is both a window and a mirror. We can see it as an object unto itself, we can see the thing it portrays, or we can see ourselves looking at it. Plotonius stated that the perceptible world signifies an imperceptible one (Dilley 65). Lazlo Maholy-Nagy said that photography has the ability to illuminate realities that cannot be perceived by the senses alone (Dilley 15). The black and white print is both removed from reality and connected to the memory of a nostalgic past. By selective toning and degrading the image by faux wear and tear I further compliment this nostalgia for the past. I recall walking through museums seeing ancient artifacts and wanting to posses them and understand them. I want my photographs to evoke the same response in other people. The problem in art’s significance in the modern world is that it has been transformed from a sacred activity to an activity of artifact production (Highwater 19). My working method, however, still holds the residue of awe and experimentation while I struggle with the rigidity of ritual storytelling.
After exposure I use the photograph as a text. Through subtractive and additive methods I manipulate the image. This signifies further subjectivity; it invites projections and fetish and lends an amount of relationship and meaning. These manipulations are sometimes part intuitive and other times are part of the initial sketch. They parallel how I understand the change of symbols. It is messy and allows slippage through translation and interpretation. According to Carl Jung there are two categories of fetish; both are projections of self onto an unknown. One is passive and automatic the other is active and relies on empathy. I provoke both fetish responses by using the human figure and abstract symbols then minimal yet powerful stage lighting and overlaying evocative textures. By adding texture and breaking the surface of the print I am subverting the viewers recognition of reality. This is done because realistic photography loses its intellectual impact when the viewer is overly familiar with the subject and reacts more to its subject than the art object (Dilley 20).
I now know that the symbols of yesterdays can no longer help us to articulate the reality we find ourselves in. It is this failure of communicative symbols in a society with corroded myths and fallen heroes I find myself confronted by on a day-to-day basis (Bragdon 153). But I have to dig up the past and learn from them before I can begin to make my own future. After intensive study of myths throughout different cultures I decided on narrowing down my field of interest for the purpose of representation in photography. The hero seemed to be the most tangible of myths and the most predominate. For this reason he was chosen rather than gods or monsters or other possibilities.
Joseph Campbell has written extensively on the subject of comparative mythology and I frequently employ his thoughts. Of his stages of the hero’s journey I have included all but one, because I found myself confronted by all but this one. This is after all my own personal cosmology reflecting the universality of myth. In a way Campbell states that the hero’s journey is a paradigm of human activity.
In his stages we find that there is a call to action, a refusal or acceptance, the departure, initiation, and return or failure (Campbell ix). The hero must venture beyond the commonplace, experience a revelation, then transform it into expressive myths. These metaphors of truth allow us to know things we other wise could never know. If experience were the base metal and the myth gold the hero mythmakers would be the alchemists. At times the artist is this hero-mythmaker-alchemist, taking experiences and ideas and trapping them in precious material form
In my work, I begin with the journey of the fool, called to action by a winged female. The fool in Tarot represents the man who journeys forever, searches forever, and never finds what he is looking for. All the while the answers he seeks are contained within the bag that he carries, yet he never stops to look. “The kingdom of heaven is within you and all around you,” says Jesus in the apocryphal Gospel of St. Thomas. I must agree with this but it is only after the journey that you return to the place where you began and know it for the first time (Elliot 138-145). The fool, however, journeys into the unknown, never to return or even rest. I saw myself in him upon reflection of how I began my journey. I have the fool posed here in direct relation to Michelangelo’s David. In this instance David has seen Goliath and is preparing to decisively take action. He has already determined his course of action and is in the process of following through. He is filled with determination and fortitude. Here we see the fool in the same act of recognizing his direction, slinging his bag over his shoulder, and beginning his journey, thereafter perpetually stuck in this beginning. I have portrayed the fool in the style of Richard Avedon to facilitate a dialogue on the possibility of expression in straight photography. This base of the photograph, being simple and direct, is then manipulated to further a conceptual understanding of the piece.
The winged messenger has been a pivotal catalyst since the first civilizations. Egyptian, Sumerian, and Persian religions all knew them as the influencers of great deeds. Norse and Celtic peoples knew them as agents of a greater being. I have stained each of the female images to show a corrupted power. A misguided ideal, nonetheless powerful in its own right, but the triangular form of each points down not up. In classical society women were seen as being connected to the earth and bound to emotion and worldly knowledge. The man is guided through the world by these winged avatars that can teach him only from their perspective. I have stated before that I see the photograph as a window. I use it here as a stage as well. “All the world’s a stage… and one man in his time plays many parts…” (Shakespeare, 2.7. 149-152). The fool is Everyman, like the medieval miracle play, he is also Sisyphus. We all journey through life influenced for better or worse by our surroundings and intuitions.
The next major phase in the journey is that of revelation. I use Miguel Cervantes’ character Don Quixote to portray this stage. This literary hero is embodied here as a self-portrait. Most of my works are self-portraits but in this case it is more direct, because of my empathy for this character.
I originally chose photography because of is connections to reality and my respect for the craft of Durer. I saw in photography the potential to make real what was in sketch form. Throughout my photographic career I had been taught to respect the integrity of the print surface, to print in a way to epitomize beauty and reflect reality. My revelation is that none of this is law. I am foremost an artist. As an artist I must choose how best to represent my reality. The Don knew this. He would not accept chivalry’s defeat, as I will not accept the prevailing post-stucturalist theories and nihilism. The Don believed in his inner truth so much that it became outer reality. He is the perfect example of how Truth can come from Belief, and how Reality can be neither or both. Physicist Werner Heisenberg supports this by stating in his uncertainty principle that reality is malleable and transient therefore there are as many realities as there are views of reality (Highwater 23).
I believe Cervantes meant The Adventures of Don Quixote as a critique of the Spanish Inquisition. I use him as a foil for my revelation about the downfall of symbols and my struggle against their total corruption by post-industrial society. I utilize the symbol of the snake to represent my former assumptions and working methods. Lately I have been questioning the ideas of immanent versus transcendent truth in art. The snake is bound to the ground and has been a symbol for corporeal knowledge throughout history. This symbol in a convoluted way is connected to the myths of women throughout history, because of their ties to the earth and worldly knowledge. This image recalls the former images of St. George who was originally a pre-Christian dragon slayer. Pseudo sexual in its connotations, I have pierced the beast that is mirror and object. The photograph itself is stained using hydro chromium toner, then wiped off. Part of the mirror like quality remains but mostly it is a shadow of its former luminous reflectance. I associate the piece to the old cast off book in likeness and color, they are both antiquated symbols no longer used, read, or understood by the masses. My work is largely based on things I have studied or observed. Because of the conscious intellectual involvement inherent within my work my peers are unable to connect to my reality. The Don had a problem very similar to this.
In my last piece I do not represent the return but the failure of the return. Because of the corruption of our understanding of myths and its subsequent influence on our reading of symbols, I am unable to communicate effectively using an outdated mode of representation. I use the hero John Henry to represent this failure. Although connected closely to Sampson he is not religious in any way. He is a semi-modern American hero who struggled for human authority and fought against change and industrialization and, subsequently, died for it. The modern hero is an outcast, living on the fringes of society, amoral and selfish (Segal 8). This was always the basis of the hero myths, Greek and Roman especially. Sometime between then and now a new hero emerged and was the martyr for the people. I have cut up the negative to promote an idea of inner conflict and have cut the surface itself to manifest outward anxieties and show further violence in the name of progress and experimentation. This violence is common to symbols of martyrs. Like in the work of Joel-Peter Witkin, I use the scratches to signify this violence, but also my own frustration, and to provide an analogy for my investigation and “digging” for the Truth.
Behind John Henry a large swastika hangs, his body completing the lower arms of the symbol. It is not that of the Nazi party but of Iranian Zoroastrianism. It is a symbol of progress and good fortune. This symbol also replicates wings to show that the martyr was often a prophet and messenger. In the middle a Fibonacci spiral is portrayed, the mathematical ratio found in nature 1:1:2:3:5:8:13… In the Renaissance, an inordinate amount of time was spent on the question of how to “square the circle”. In short, the square represents the world or body and the circle a man’s soul. These men were questioning how the mind and body could work in harmony and if the spirit can indeed connect to the world. Similarly the yin/yang Buddhist symbol came about. But I am more interested in the acceptance of western thought. The Fibonacci spiral was proposed as proof that mathematics was found in nature and showed a plan in what was formerly thought to be chaos; therefore, combining nature and man, word and world and spirit. In the same way myth and art are a contact between concept and existence. I employ the spiral in this purpose as well but also to visually mimic the swastika and to breakdown and deconstruct deconstruction. Each torn up silver gelatin piece of paper makes a work of art unto itself, but the sum of the parts does not equal the whole. The places in between also have meaning. Without the space between we would not see the repetition of the Golden Mean or the final layout in triptych format. At this time Man was understood as the measure of all things, this was seen and proven in divine proportion (James, 60).
Each person is a hero, together they make a society, but in turn this society makes them. Herbert Spencer agrees and says, “Before the great man can remake society, society must make him.”(Study of Sociology 35). Nietzsche called for a Superman to change society, but I say it is Everyman that changes society. In this way every person can relate to the hero, because every person is a hero.
All of my characters are tired yet stoic in their regard for the will to press on. The fool journeys into the unknown, John Henry struggles against it, and Don Quixote embodies it. These pieces are printed large in order to seem imposing and larger than life. This causes a quasi-sublime experience to capture the viewer. While traveling through Europe I found myself enraptured by the size and beauty of the murals of the Renaissance. I continue to look to these and to Baroque pieces for inspiration.
The large pieces are less personal than the smaller ones. Each smaller piece has very personal implications hidden within the broad overall meanings. Loss, reactions to misandry, fear, and finally recognition and revelation; these themes underline the journey I have gone through in the past two years.
My work is a myth about me. Conversely, it is about Everyman as well. Because I render archetypes apparent, the viewers should recognize a piece of themselves in this story. Hopefully, that piece is both them and me.