Obsidian is a type of volcanic glass, incandescent earthsblood cooled and fashioned by the forebears in lands south into instruments for bridging and playing the polarities of blood and light, man and god, lost in the tides of turning and the bearded conquests. They aren’t my memories but they sing nonetheless, and though I’m still a stranger here my lens often suffices as my sole handshake.
Mithras was the god of light and transactions and handshakes and bull’s blood, the Roman Lord of the Right Hand, and every opening and closing of the shutter repeats the Mithraic act of shaking hands with the sun, and even 1/8000th of a second completes a 93 million mile itinerary, and maybe I’ll make a soft bed for a weary traveler through an obsidian sky.
I was born circa 35 years ago in Santiago, Chile, to American diplomats who met in Haiti under the light of the loa and the shadow of a tyrant with red eyes named Duvalier. My earliest visual impression of heaven involved copious amounts of blood and green cloth. I was about 6 or 7 in an upstairs hallway in our house in Lagos, Nigeria, and was looking through a family photo album going right back to when I was born. I don't know if it's something my parents told me or whether it was something I put together myself, but I had it in my head that since we go to heaven when we die, just as surely we must have come from there to begin with. So I saw these pictures that were of a very small me, covered in blood and gore and screaming and being held by these dark-green-clad angels whose faces were also covered by green masks and whose hands were covered in blood from the exit wound I left in my mother’s belly. A hematic heaven in a cheap snapshot: at this early date even, the camera’s captured instant resolved my sole foundational polarity of blood and light which was to find conscious articulation in my thinking later in my adult life.
Even my most rarified, most surreal images begin simply with actuality, a thing, something possessing a body extending in space and hanging in time that was lighted by the sun or by a cheap facsimile thereof, something seen by human eyes at a certain time and place, perceived through a certain state of mind and body, and thereafter rendered snap click into an object of relative tangibility and duration for others to see with their eyes and hold in their minds in turn. This is how I remind myself that:
“eternity is in love with the productions of time.â€
And time is in love with a good story.
Note that all images in my "Pics" are copyrighted by myself. Please do not use any of them in any way without my permission.
I can be found elsewhere online at:Flickr
DeviantArt
ModelLaunch #43865
Model Mayhem #177731
Credits:Winner of a Merit Award in B&W Magazine's 2006 Portfolio Contest (in the August 2006 "Special Summer Issue"). Pages 171-170 are my work.
Solo show "Photophilia" at the Back Alley Gallery, Oracle, Arizona, September 2007.
Rates:Freelance - Day: $495
Freelance - Half Day: $295
Portrait Sitting Fees:$66 for 1 or 2 subjects (first hour, $33 per hour thereafter).
$88 for groups of 3 to 4 (first hour, $44 per hour thereafter).
$111 for groups of 5 to 7 (first hour, $66 per hour thereafter).Portrait Prints:$22 per sheet (one sheet = one 8x10, or two 5x7’s, or four 4x6’s).
$33 per 11x14.
$44 per 16x20.
larger sizes and matting/framing options available upon request.Additional Services:$33 for every 10 images of web-ready images (whether emailed or on CD-ROM) – all-inclusive of normal post-production and re-touching (adjusting skin tone, removing blemishes).
Extensive, detailed and artistic digital photomanipulation is $111 per image.Available for weddings/engagements, modeling portfolios, band promotions and concert photography, and other special functions. Please inquire for a price quote.
The "Twelve Days of Christmas" part 1: A study in Christian numerical symbolism
http://www.examiner.com/x-33027-LA-Christian-Spiri...
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My newest article for Examiner.com, looking at Christian numerical symbolism based on the 12 Days of Christmas.