For those who don’t know, Hermeticism is a philosophical system that has greatly influenced Western esoteric thought. For the last few weeks I have been totally absorbed, to the exclusion of all else, in Western Kabbalistic and esoteric thought as it relates to the arts as part of a Masters degree I am working on, so the topic is forefront in my mind at present.

One of the core concepts of the Western esoteric tradition, including Hermeticism, is that of the four classical elements: earth, air, fire and water. These four classical elements are tied to aspects of our being, so earth is the physical, air is the mental, fire is the inspirational and water is the emotional. In many systems of esoteric thought there is a fifth element, spirit. So at the personal level we consist of five ‘dimensions’ of ourselves: the physical, intellectual (conscious), inspirational (subconscious), emotional and spiritual aspects that as a whole make up who we are.

When I consider the artwork that has really touched me profoundly over the years I realise that such work has impacted me at all five levels or dimensions of my being. Take, for example, the large, dark paintings from Rothko’s mature work, the viewing of which I consider one of the most profound experiences of my life. These works impacted me on all five levels:

• physically, by their size and dominant ‘presence’ in the space;
• mentally, by stimulating thought of colour resonances, use of space and proportion, etc;
• inspirationally, in that they appear in my dreams and have inspired some of my own, meagre in comparison, art explorations;
• emotionally, as they evoked deep and profound emotional reactions;
• spiritually, in that even now, many years later, when I bring them to mind there is a shift in consciousness and a profound connection with the ‘other’ that is impossible to put in writing.

I have had similar reactions with other works of art: Pollack’s action paintings, especially Blue Poles, some of Bill Viola’s video works and such.

In thinking about all this I realised that, informally, I rate art and photography on this five point scale: the most profound work hits all five levels, other work may only hit one, two, three or four of them.

Contemporary art has stressed the intellectual, the conceptual and, indeed, there has been an active pull away from emotional and spiritual art. However, as the research I’ve been doing has shown, whilst the pull away from the emotional and spiritual in art has certainly been there at the institutional level and among most art critics, curators and art historians, it has certainly not been there for the actual creators themselves. A careful examination of the literature shows large numbers of artists who are connecting with their work at all levels and certainly aspire to state something profound in their work on all five levels. It is just that, for the sake of their careers, many artists are reticent to speak of such things until such time as they are well enough established that the institutions will want to show their work no matter what they say.

This idea of multi-dimensionality also explains why much of contemporary art is shallow. Certainly when I examine new work being shown I find it appealing at some levels, perhaps physically from its presence or use of materials, or intellectually from the conceptual aspects. But if that is as far as it goes it only rises to a one or two on my five-point scale. This is a particular problem for digital art and photography, which can often even miss out on the physicality aspect.

As an artist, I strive to bring all five aspects into play in my own work. I’ve not succeeded yet, to my satisfaction. In my writing I try for the same, as yet, unachieved target. And that is the thing that pushes me to keep trying, to keep going deeper into my own self and tap all levels when making my art.

It may benefit you in the production of your own work to just try looking at things from this way too and seeing how you feel about it.

Improving your ability to see images is key to developing as a photographer. In fact it is this photographic seeing that is a large contributor to a photographer’s style: what you see and how you choose to capture it. Photographic seeing can be practiced.

Now I normally do this exercise with my students in courses, so there is the added push of having to bring resulting images to class next week to motivate, so you, working at home, will need to provide this push for yourself. Perhaps decide that each week you will put the best image up on your Facebook page for feedback, or on Flickr or your blog, show it to your husband or wife, or take it to the camera club. Whatever you need to do to motivate yourself, do it.

The exercise is in fact very simple. Pick a location that you are very familiar with, one where you would normally not consider taking photos, go there and keep shooting all sorts of different images until you think you have something. Then evaluate the images, paying attention to sections that work and not just the whole image. Then return to the same location and repeat.

Vision and perception is a muscle, like any other (figuratively) and so must be exercised to get stronger. I often point students to their local shopping strip, school and even rooms in their own home. In fact one of the most interesting I have ever set, and the results being so amazing that I now do this every course, is to get students to shoot in the smallest room of their home, which is usually the toilet. It pushes so many buttons: “what could I possibly shoot there”, “that’s disgusting”, “boring”, and so much more. Yet the photos that people bring back the following week are really amazing. In fact I sometimes push this further and make the assignment to only shoot within the toilet bowl. It is amazing just how creative you can be.

This exercise is really about restriction. By restricting your shooting to a well-known location it pushes the brain into a problem-solving mode of operation: “what can I do to get a good shot HERE?”

The extension of this exercise is to do this whenever you have some time to kill, such as waiting for an appointment or whatever. Use whatever camera you have with you, which for many will be their phone, and explore the space photographically in the time available.

Give it a try.

Jux provides an interesting, new approach to blogging. I’ve started experimenting with it and you can see the results at digitalimagemaker.jux.com.

What makes Jux interesting for photographers is the approach with images. The idea is to make them full screen or full window, so putting your images front and centre.

My first post was to take some images of butterflies I had short in infrared and add captions to create a sort of motivational text with the images. This works in a slideshow display that puts the images front and centre.

I have to say I like Jux so far. It is free at present and even hooking up your own domain is free, again at present. I don’t think they have a revenue model really worked out yet and so this could change in future, but I doubt it. It is really hard to take away something people have been getting for free without having them abandon you in droves. So I expect their revenue model to apply with new features or some cap on storage and bandwidth, for example.

Jux offers a number of different types of posts and more seem to be added occasionally.

Jux also works fully on the iPad, so swipes and such behave as you would expect. It is a great way for photographers to get stuff on the iPad.

So I’m impressed with it so far and will continue to roll out personal projects on The Digital ImageMaker on Jux. Give it a go yourself.

One is a little 23-page PDF eBook on Marketing Yourself With Photo Books that is well worth giving them an email address to receive.

This is a fruitful area for photographers (and other creatives) and this book is well worth the read.

Photoshelter’s other free guides can be found here.

Currently Art Project has work from the following institutions on show:

• Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin – Germany
• Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian, Washington DC – USA
• The Frick Collection, NYC – USA
• Gemäldegalerie, Berlin – Germany
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC – USA
• MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, NYC – USA
• Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid – Spain
• Museo Thyssen – Bornemisza, Madrid – Spain
• Museum Kampa, Prague – Czech Republic
• National Gallery, London – UK
• Palace of Versailles – France
• Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam – The Netherlands
• The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg – Russia
• State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow – Russia
• Tate Britain, London – UK
• Uffizi Gallery, Florence – Italy
• Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam – The Netherlands

Each of those has chosen to show some galleries and some works. So this is a work in progress.

As a tool for art students, photographers (who can learn a lot from painting) and more this is a wonderful tool that will become more useful over time. While nothing is the same as standing in one of these great institutions and examining the work in person, this is a really amazing alternative.

The level of detail in some of these artworks is truly amazing.

http://www.googleartproject.com/