Visual Reflections: Nature Photography as Palette in the Age of Uncertainty – No. 7 (Trees of Life Photomontage)

14 August 2017

Lens:

Taken in Camera+ and edited in Snapseed, FX PhotoStudio and Pixlr.

Tree of Life Photomontage; 2017 Sally W. Donatello All Rights Reserved

Click onto image to enlarge. Let me know your response to this photomontage. Prints are available upon request.

Pens: How easy it would be to open this post as a whiner. Without debate, there is much to fuss and fume and seethe. But fate is a fancy word for turning away from possibilities and reality. And history tells us that the human psyche prevails in the most arduous of situations and times.

Instead of complaining I prefer to register degrees of gratitude for believing that the human spirit sees justice in the greater good, and will prevail.

A few months ago with a touch of good fortune I discovered the “ecology of ideas” of Rebecca Solnit. Years ago I first read her thoughts on the human condition, which spurred me to read more and more of her works. Her oeuvre explores subjects on the cultural, environmental, political and social implications of this existence on Mother Earth. She inspires me to be better.

Recently, she was interviewed for an article in The New York Times (“How Rebecca Solnit Became the Voice of the Resistance” by Alice Gregory, 08 August 2017). Here are some choice quotes:

‘‘I am interested in almost everything, and it can sometimes seem like a burden.’’ She cited Virginia Woolf and Henry David Thoreau as the writers most important to her: ‘‘Each of them wrote exquisitely about experiential, immediate encounters with the tangible world but could also be very powerful political polemicists. And the arc of their work describes a space in which you can be both.’’

‘‘…there are more than enough people telling us how horrific and terrible and bad everything is, and I don’t really need to join that project,’’ she said. ‘‘There’s a whole other project of trying to counterbalance that — sometimes we do win and this is how it worked in the past.’’ She continued, ‘‘Change is often unpredictable and indirect. We don’t know the future. We’ve changed the world many times, and remembering that, that history, is really a source of power to continue and it doesn’t get talked about nearly enough.’’

So I’ve chosen to follow Solnit on this quest to resist the negative, and focus on how to live in the smaller universe of my world within the larger universe. One surety running through my thoughts is that life on earth continues to redefine itself.

In the Lens section is my latest photomontage that honors this thinking, this personal philosophy. While there are moments of relapse into the dark, I will use this image to project that spirit. It’s really up to each of US to find our way in and through this new world order.

Truly, inner expansion breathes honor to protect the web of life. And life on earth does continue to redefine itself through the interaction between nature and human nature.

Note:

From TED Talks website: “Frans Lanting is one of the greatest nature photographers of our time. His work has been featured in National Geographic, Audubon and Time, as well as numerous award-winning books. Lanting’s recent exhibition, “The LIFE Project,” offers a lyrical interpretation of the history of life on Earth.”

Click here to watch the video (filmed in February 2005, runs 16.17 minutes) that shows Lanting’s project, “a poetic collection of photographs that tell the story of our planet, from its eruptive beginnings to its present diversity. Soundtrack by Philip Glass.”