Ambler | Meditations

2014

The journey to the inner self is not always a pleasant one, and more often resembles the dark scary path through a tangled wood than an easy sunny happy stroll down a grassy lane. I think of making photographs in the same way. The pretty, color pictures saturating popular photography do little to examine any deeper truth about ourselves or our world.

Seeming to amble through the woods, and occasionally stopping to make a picture, I approach the act of photographing as a meditation. But, instead of the meditation being a singular focus on one thing or idea, I prefer to attune to an awareness of everything around me - the smells, the sounds, the visual rhythm of tree trunks and branches, the glints of light off rocks and leaves.

These are not pictures of the specific places where they were made, nor the specific things before the lens. The photographs are a result of awareness and contact with the inner self and natural surroundings. They are pictures of the living, breathing, pulsing world in and around us.

All photographs in the series are 8x16-inch Platinum/Palladium prints on 15x22-inch handmade Japanese Kozo, and float-mounted on 20x26 heavy-weight cotton-rag paper. Limited to an edition of 6.