The aesthetics of life
“If you’re moved by something, it doesn’t need explaining.
If you’re not, no explanation will move you.”
—Federico Fellini
JOHN DEVITT is an accomplished photographer, flautist and lifetime seeker of the timeless and the beautiful. Born and raised in Dublin, he studied flute at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, where he joined a musical group that took him permanently to the Netherlands in 1977. After the band dissolved, he worked for several years with physically handicapped students. Meanwhile, he continued playing music and also bought his first camera, taking a course in Photography at a local Arts Centre in the city of Nijmegen. Setting up his own dark room, he was then able to develop and print his first monochromes. Nowadays the Ooijpolder near Nijmegen and the woods in Berg en Dal are his main sources of inspiration.
In this month’s guest post for The Culturium, when asked about his photography and how he explores spirituality through his practice, John replied:
I must confess that at this stage I never think in terms of spirituality, as opposed to some other category. So I don’t experience taking photographs or making music, which is very much on a back burner at the moment, as a means of exploring spirituality. As I see it they’re both simply expressions of being human, and how that manifests in this particular little life. Essentially both taking photographs and making music are a form of play for me, though at present I’m mainly experiencing that in photography.
A piece I recorded some time ago came to mind, Non-Duality. I sought photos to go with it and created a slideshow combining the two. It begins with shots taken from a plane, above the clouds, and throughout the series one comes down to earth and the clouds are now seen from below. Coming from beyond the nebulous, passing through the nebulous, and exploring all the incredible stuff that can be seen and experienced in what we term the physical realm. But the whole thing is actually one continual undivided movement, from which we are not separate, and which confounds and silences us in its unfathomable complexity. Silenced because the futility and limitation of words and descriptions is seen. I’m reminded of Joni Mitchell’s timeless ‘Both Sides Now’:
Rows and flows of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
I’ve looked at clouds that way
But now they only block the sun
They rain and they snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way
I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all
—Joni Mitchell, ‘Both Sides Now’I don’t hear this as a song of despair, but as the adult acknowledgement of our incapacity to grasp what any of this is, this thing we call life.
© John Devitt, Kouwedijk, Ooijpolder.
© John Devitt, Ooijpolder with Nijmegen in the Background.
© John Devitt, Bisonbaai, Ooijpolder.
© John Devitt, Wild Geese in the Polder.
© John Devitt, De Engelenberg Berg en Dal.
© John Devitt, Prunus Spinoza Blossoming in the Polder.
© John Devitt, Dutch Polder Landscape (2).
© John Devitt, In Berg En Dal.
© John Devitt, Ooijpolder.
Post Notes
- Feature image: © John Devitt, Dutch Polder Landscape (5)
- John Devitt’s website
- John Devitt on 500px
- John Devitt on Flickr
- The Cloud of Unknowing
- Percy Bysshe Shelley: The Cloud
- Tobias Wilkinson: German Forest Primer
- Danila Tkachenko: Escape
- Ron Rosenstock: The Invisible Light
- Ansel Adams: The Search for Beauty
- Roy Whenary: Open Awareness
- Jerry Katz: Let the Scene See You
- Andy Richter: Serpent in the Wilderness
- Laura Emerson: Deep Sea Contemplation
- Gabriel Rosenstock & Ron Rosenstock: Haiku Enlightenment
- Stephen Nachmanovitch: Free Play
- Stephen Nachmanovitch: The Art of Is
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