Multiple Exposures

This work is copyrighted and may not be exhibited, republished, copied or used in anyway; in either whole or in part, without the expressed, written, permission of the artist.

The Cat’s Pajamas

This Photograph was taken by Howard S. Barrows It is copyrighted and may not be exhibited, republished, copied or used in anyway; in either whole or in part, without the expressed, written, permission of the artist.

Can you guess what this is a photograph of?

HSB Writes : “I was sitting in my desk chair reviewing manuscripts with my legs crossed and wearing blue and white striped pajamas. My Olympus 550UV happened to be on my desk. The resulting photo was converted to B&W. All extraneous elements such as the chair edge and floor were converted to solid black or removed with some cropping. The image darkened and enhanced in Threshold removing the fabric pattern. The resulting black lines smoothed with a carefully adjusted Gaussian Blur, and then the image Spiraled until the effect was what I wanted.”

DAD

So in my humble opinion my Dad is the coolest thing since cracked ice. Here is a Photograph he took last year. Photography has always been an interest of his. You can see more of his excellent photographs by clicking here.

Besides being the father of me and my three sisters (which is quite an accomplishment in and of itself) he is also the father of the “Clinical Track” in Medical Education and the creator of aPBL which has totally made education in many fields, around the globe, more exciting and far more relevant to the learner. Basically he made it possible for students to study and practice clinical skills and be appropriately evaluated for their clinical performance prior to graduating from Medical School. 45 years ago they used to just teach the academic research part of medicine and then let the newly graduated physicians effectively “experiment” and develop their bedside skills, after recieving their dipolma, through trial and error . It was pretty scary.

He has written 19 books and published over 400 articles. He also co-founded “Teaching and Leaning in Medicine: An International Journal”. For his article, “Use of Standardized Patients in Clinical Assessment,” he received the Award for Outstanding Research Publication from the American Education Research Association. He has received several honorary degrees and has been the recipient of a number of honors and awards. He was granted the first annual John P. Hubbard Award by the National Board of Medical Examiners and The Abraham Flexner Award for Distinguished Service to Medical Education.

This is his site on aPBL

Okay I’m done bragging. No doubt, I love and admire my Dad.

Here he is with my Mom on their 52 Wedding Anniversary. She is amazing too. They are Soul Mates.

This Polaroid is a  portrait taken by my sister Rebecca Barrows. It is copyrighted and may not be exhibited, republished, copied or used in anyway; in either whole or in part, without the expressed, written, permission of the artist.

Six Feet Under

My husband Daniel and I just finished the entire Six-Feet-Under, HBO TV series last night. In the end the family plays out the overwhelming grief of mortal loss that an endless stream of clients, over the five-year series, had only hinted at in the comfort of the death clan’s solemn intake room.

When we are first introduced to this family of quirky misfits, all self imprisoned by societal strains, they are in this same grief stricken state over their father Nathaniel’s untimely death. At that moment in time, however, we have only just met them and our empathy is purely voyeuristic and abstract in nature. However, after all these many performances we have grown to know them intimately and have taken them into our hearts and minds as we so often do in our favorite TV affairs. This time, as the Fisher family stumbles their way through the consciousness altering experience of having a central family member die, we stagger too. Together we are tortured by anxiety, numbness and disbelief. The ceiling-eye vision of Claire curled up in an ocean of unmade sheets has been indelibly burned into my psyche.

In this way the familial cast spends most of the final episode groping through the clay of their existence. Remarkably in less than an hour they begin to emerge with Claire’s symbolic relocation to New York and independence. In the last remaining minutes of the show, the Fisher family is rolled out into the future in short order. Each member grows old and gray, under the expert hands of Hollywood’s most talented, fades and passes. All of the rest of their combined lives and deaths were dealt to us with the deftness of cards spinning in the hands of a seasoned gambler.

I can’t even begin to imagine what it must have taken to envision all of those scenarios and to bring together not only the creative vision but also the filmed reality. I am haunted by it in the same way that I have been haunted since childhood by the fluid passage of initial growth, to full bloom and inevitable decay of flowers captured on film. They showed this many times on their opening trailer, so much so that I had grown accustomed to something that in the past had always been so compelling to me. But to be confronted with the same time-lapse process of my own species; rising forward and crumbling into the sand was disturbing to say the least.

I find myself today running through the memories of this fictional tribe as if they were my own. I feel as though I have lived through at least seven reincarnated life times in a single breath.  By the second season I began to feel as though “I”, the viewer, was God screening her creation. As I sat behind the window to their lives I experienced with them joy, sorrow, judgment and humility. I disliked characters, then felt compassion for them and then disliked them again. Watching this show has been an amazing experience.

My Friend Jim

12, originally uploaded by jjagogo. This work is a self portrait taken by Jim Johnson. It is copyrighted and may not be exhibited, republished, copied or used in anyway; in either whole or in part, without the expressed, written, permission of the artist.

Jim has just returned from a business trip to Japan.  It is at least his umpteenth time over there and whatever intrigue it once had for him, to be in the land of the rising sun, is now way gone. They are thieving his creative mind and slowly pilfering his free spirit. They got him up early and kept him up all night, revisiting small details and columns of numbers under florescent lights, over flowing glasses of Sake and behind unending platters of Sushi. When he passed out in the wee hours of the morn, they did secret alien surgery on his brain and filled his veins with ground up business suits.

Dream Space

The photographs of this artist are so beautiful to me. I, like many photographers are drawn to dreaming, and specifically, the dream space as an idea for my photography.  I have been inspired for many years by the Nature Photography of Bien-U BAE from Yosu, South Korea, circa 1950. In particular I love his Pine Tree Series. His photographs speak of an in-between place; a venue that our Earth consciousness and our Spirit consciousness share in a tangible, almost atmospheric realm.  In the Pine Series, he reveals/captures the filtered light within an almost haunted, forested preserve in South Korea to show this. I think you will love his work. http://bbuart.com/nature.htm

Beach Meditation

skeye, originally uploaded by ABarrows-Young. This work is copyrighted and may not be exhibited, republished, copied or used in anyway; in either whole or in part, without the expressed, written, permission of the artist.

It’s a short walk along the beach. Along the way, the sound of the surf fills your head with pounding song and soft whispers; flowing back and forth, between the two. A sudden rush of water hits the sand and then blends into a warm hum, retreating along its wet path, leaving with an almost inaudible sigh. You can feel the warm sand beneath your bare feet. They move slower than your mind, shifting against the soft grains. You are escaping and the drag in the shifting surface is taking you there. Your world exists now between the quiet folds of time.

Suddenly you are upon the doorstep of an isolated wooden tower. The smell of dried kelp and wet sand mixed with weathered wood embraces your senses. The door is pealing paint, white prickling fur over gray smooth skin. There is a portal like window with a thick frame and a delicate knob of worm brass waiting to be turned. Turning the handle and pushing inward, the air suddenly becomes dusty and fragrant of cedar and lavender. You are home. As you move inside the small waiting space, you can sense the creativity that meets you there. Asleep on a whicker chair is a large cat with short thick fur that glistens in the filtered light. It looks up sleepily and greets you with a yawn. It stretches out its legs and gently paws the cushion before closing its eyes and returning to its slumber. A deep comforting hush rushes over you. You can still hear the surf outside, muffled by the thick wooden walls of this sacred interior.

To the right, a staircase beckons you. The first three steps are visible as they curve to the left. Placing your foot onto the well-worn stairs, you are compelled to move onward. Around and upward, each stair is graced with green paint, worn and faded in two spots that shift from slight right to slight left from the weight of many travelers before you. The happy creaking of the boards encourages you around and upward. Along the way there are a few narrow rectangles of glass that let the sun in, offering translucent yellow bands that paint graceful lines upon the wooden walls. At the summit, you come upon a perfect room filled with light streaming in from windows that sweep full circle around the space. Each window has a lace curtain pulled to its side and the glass in its weathered frames have slight imperfections that cast rainbows upon the braided rug, overstuffed sofa and antique writing table.

The chair in front of the desk is pulled away and turned toward you. You are expected. A journal, open to a clean page lies on its seasoned surface; a fountain pen rests beside it. From this writer’s perch you can look out upon the vast ocean and beach below. As you sit down a fragrant whiff of delicate flowers greets you from the china bud vase filled with wild roses, recently picked and place there for your senses. The sun is warm upon your face and hands. You gaze out and upward. The blue sky delights your vision with floating sea gulls gliding above the waves, their voices soft and occasional in this perfect paradise.

Clean Cut – David J O’Neal

Downloaded from  http://www.flickr.com/photos/david-oneal/ This work is copyrighted and may not be exhibited, republished, copied or used in anyway; in either whole or in part, without the expressed, written, permission of the artist.

Here is one of the latest self portraits created by my son D.Jay.  His work is very exciting to me. It has everything; all kinds of variety, dramatic line, shape, value, texture, visual balance,color harmonies. I love the way he is staring out the window into the light and leaning back a little like the light is pushing on him. The bulk of the photograph’s imagery lies behind him and since he is graduating this Spring from High School this seems highly symbolic to me; the future is bright and right ahead of him. This is the house he shares with his father and his father’s companion, Steve.  They are great guys and plan to get married this Spring.  Together they have 6 children.  Three of them are mine.  It is a fun ultra techno, intellectual, artsy environ for the kids.  Very fun.

the rendezvous

In the Baker’s Kitchen

The woman who bakes the cookies is my enemy.  Her sweet smile as she pours the ingredients together and her little hum, are completely annoying. I despise her warm kitchen and the smell that comes from every cupboard.  And more than that, I dislike her cat that stares at me as I sit in this little cage in the corner of her happiness.  She has locked me here and only lets me out to get the broken branches that lay about in the snow to feed her fire.  My feet are bare and bleeding from the sharp ice and relentless cold.  She shoves me back into my prison when I have finished feeding her flames.  The cat circles around and moves back into its place in front of the hearth.  It blinks its yellow eyes at me and then pretends to sleep. The woman is placing lumps of brown dough spiked with chocolate on a large cookie sheet.  She speaks with a tiny creaky song filled voice to the cat. 

“Good little pussy, Momma is going to get you a nice bowl of milk when she’s done with these treats.”

She pulls open the gate into her cooking hell and blows on the flames that dance gratefully from her attention and then she slides here feast above them and cracks the door back into place.  The shadows dance only in my corner and I watch them intently.  I try to listen to their whispers, hoping the will tell me their secret plans.  They are certain I will escape soon.  I must wait until the last moment.  I play with the tiny stick in my pocket; a bony finger that I present when she wants to measure how fat I’ve become on her cookies.  I never eat them; instead, I shove them into the cracks in the wall and under the mismatched floorboards.  If I steel myself against her maternal charms, certainly I will survive this hell.  I curl up onto a ball against the bars and begin to dream of another place where cookies and the baking woman do not exist.  I am not sure if such a place exists, somewhere with peaceful open rooms. Where the smell of clean air and the welcome feel of a summer’s breeze is not just a fantasy.  A place that never was and might never be for me, the trapped and pitiful urchin in the cooks baking kitchen.

Trusting Spirit

Trusting Spirit, originally uploaded by ABarrows-Young. This work is copyrighted and may not be exhibited, republished, copied or used in anyway; in either whole or in part, without the expressed, written, permission of the artist.

I am simply in love with the concept of double exposures in Photography. Through overlaying the imagery from two or more photographs, artists may provoke a deep psychological response to their subject matter. This is a long held traditon and one that I personally can not get enough of.

This is a single “blended” photograph of two photographs. One photograph was taken of the beautiful mudras on the Buddha figure at the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya at Red Feather Lakes in CO. The other is a portrait of my student T.P.

Please check out my other blended Photographs

http://www.flickr.com/photos/a_byoung/sets/72157600010708559/

Alison