Objects reflected in water are one of the most (over)photographed subjects I can think of. What makes some of those images interesting is the slight distortion of the reflected scene – like a visual echo, fainter, disrupted just like the auditory ones.

The water must be reasonably still for reflection to work, and so it is no surprise that its reflective surface reminds me of glass.

Glass Blowing is an ancient art, believed to be first found in 1600 BC among the Phoenicians (who were in due course not allowed to travel if they knew the secrets of the art, for fear they would reveal them to potential competitors. Which they, if they escaped, unhesitatingly did….)  Here’s a short  historical overview.

https://www.americanvisionwindows.com/history-of-glass-blowing/

I selected three women glass artists because I have mostly come across men in the profession; glass blowing is arduous and not particularly good for your health; given the clannish approach (not just for the Middle Eastern realms) it is no wonder that women emerged relatively late on the scene.

But they sure bring their own aesthetic, as you can see in the work below. The first two take their inspiration visibly from nature; the last one, from Japan, has a more indirect approach.

Wind & Water

http://www.habatat.com/artist/169-kait-rhoads/

https://www.artsy.net/artist/niyoko-ikuta

I thought I would use both landscape and cityscape reflections to show the range; the latter are more glass inspired simply because of the vibrant colors; but I think the former are the ones that echo in the soul. Well, mine.

I, for the life of me, cannot figure out how a sculptor can see a piece of wood and carve out her/his exact vision of what is hidden in it or what s/he wants it to represent. Another instance of an extreme craft underlying a seemingly effortless artistic product.

I was introduced to wooden sculpture as a child, visiting various churches during travels, and what I most remember is my fascination with the millions of holes made by the woodworms. These days, now more enthusiastically exploring churches, I always wonder about how the facial expressions of the various saints and madonnas could give such testimony to grief or suffering in such static material.

However, the place I REALLY want to visit if I could get my act and my finances together, is Inhotim.  It is a contemporary art garden and museum in Brazil, with a wacky history and a mind blowing collection, from all I have read. The founder was recently sentenced to prison for money laundering (rumors had swirled for ages.) In any case, they have a collection of sculptures – benches made from found wood – by artist Hugo Franca that I long to photograph. The link below has a banner that shows some of the amazing works in succession.

Imperial Sculptures, The Benches of Inhotim

Wood sculpture has come a long way from a Madonna statue carved from Lindenwood. Artists from all over the world combine vision and skill to create something modern and yet somehow archaic.  Just look at the kinetic work of Dedy Shofianto. Links below show the diversity, from choice of material to degree of inventiveness.

Hybrid Kinetic Insects Carved from Wood by Dedy Shofianto

Pixelated Wood Sculptures Carved by Hsu Tung Han

And here is an artist from Holland working with found wood:

Bare Bones

In the meantime the Northwest woods have to suffice on this end, offering their own bounty of wood to be marveled at and photographed.

And it should be one. Landscapes can acquire a strange, beautiful quality inspiring anything from subtle goosebumps to an outright sense of the ominous. At least when photographed in the right light from the correct angle.

A lot of professional photographers have that down pat – partly because they are able to travel to landscapes that are inherently dramatic, partly because they know the craft to make the image focus on something particularly sublime and/or lurking.  I tend to be dismissive of that, be it from jealousy or an allergy to “slick.”

However, I do make exceptions, when the people in question also display intellectual substance; case in point is the essay linked to below,  – long, I warn you, but worth it – from Mark Meyer, a photographer of international renown, the kind you’d want to do your advertising.

Photograph by Mark Meyer

He describes enigmatic beauty but also talks about philosophers’ approach to nature and I found myself concurring with some of the observations made by them and him – on the scale of my own life as a lesser mortal wandering in more quotidian landscapes. This quote rang particularly true: 

https://www.photo-mark.com/notes/apocrypha-wild/

Here are more of my own photographs, taken in Eastern OR and the Silverstar trail in WA. Some I have probably shown before, they are just images I really like.

And then there are those photographers how have creative ideas that add to the enigma – like Henk van Rensbergen who created scenario that had animals as the sole post-apocalyptic survivors.

Back to naturally enigmatic landscapes, though. I certainly believe that documenting them involves representations of something invoking disquiet. Of the early Italian painters, no-one was better at that than Leonardo da Vinci. Look at any of his paintings that include landscapes, and you find something mysterious, unsettling. In our own times, Salvador Dali picked up on that and stretched it to truly otherworldly surroundings. Here is a link to an exhibit three years ago at the Dali Museum in St. Petersburgh, FL, that I only read about, but that made the point.

http://thedali.org/exhibit/dali-da-vinci-minds-machines-masterpieces/

I tend to gravitate towards trees as subjects of enigmatic landscapes, but really consider myself an omnivore. If the quote below exchanged the word color with  light (or added that to it), it probably still holds, now for photography.

The poet Friedrich Schiller on the Italian paintings in the Dresden Gallery: “All very well; if only the cartoons were not filled with color. I cannot get rid of the idea that those colors do not tell me the truth.”