True Crimes

Very cool...
I have been asked to submit my photo as a cover for a poetry anthology: The Lineup Poems on Crime. Seems that people are finding my stuff on the net and that always surprises me because the amount of information, including photos, that get uploaded and end up floating cyberspace every second is mind boggling.

This image is one of my contenders for the magazine cover.
Self portrait, of course.
One of my many homages to one of the greatest and most influential self portrait photography artists of all time - Cindy Sherman.

As with most of my best self portraits - this one was an accident - shooting blind is sometimes the most creative ways to shoot.

 (photo to come...)

disappear

Separation penetrates the disappearing person like a pigment and steeps him in gentle radiance

I'm very sad to be forced out of my home...

10 years of memories: days and nights lived, awake, asleep.
Tears and laughter released from my eyes, my mouth

I find myself paralyzed with fear. This unwanted separation from my comfort zone during a time in my life when what I truly needed was peace;  a desperate need to feel grounded on the foundations that I stood upon.

Through wishful and forceful thinking, my ineffective rationalization through this chaos: 

perhaps this is a shedding of old skin. A decade of physical and psychological debris that has been gathering around and inside of me, needed so desperately to be purged.

Nature and the universe shook me by the shoulders and slapped me hard.

Sloughing off, re-emerging new.

repetition does not make it more believable

repetition does not take away the pain

repetition does not

repetition does

This self portrait was taken during a period in my life when I believed my future held endless possibilities. 

And that stepping out of the present, into the unknown was a necessary rite of passage towards growth.

Separation penetrates the dissapearing person like a pigment and steeps him in genltle radiance

let the separation from the past and the present pigment of experience fill me with light, wisdom and courage to move forward into the unknown once again...

image © Kathy Slamen Photography  2010

shine like you are

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. It's not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others .
(Timo Cruz)

the general function of dreams

The general function of dreams is to try to restore our psychological balance by producing dream material that re-establishes, in a subtle way, the total psychic equilibrium.

CARL JUNG, Man and His Symbols

Dreams
I have a lot of them and remember most of them.
The past few have disturbed and perturbed me.
Now comes the task of transcribing my morning ramblings from my voice recorder.
But they will be worth the wait.

This is how I feel when I wake up from a disturbing dream: still in its web...