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Artist Exhibitions:
AWARDS
Grant in Photography,
Massachusetts Cultural Council
(2007).
Best Picture of the Month,
Photography Unlimited
(2002-2003).
PUBLICATIONS
Portfolio publication, "Flower
Mandalas," LensWork Extended
69 (2007).
SHOWS
Two-person show, "Mandalas &
Mudras," Pond Circle Gallery
(Jamaica Plain, MA: 2007).
Group show, "Digital ’07:
Pattern-Finding, New York Hall
of Science (...
Further Information
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Artist Galleries:
Coming Soon!
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Artist Reviews:
Coming Soon!
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Collections:
Coming Soon!
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Commissions:
Coming Soon!
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Artist Statement for David Bookbinder
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My current preoccupations are with photographing the sea and sky near on the North Shore coastline and transforming photographs of flowers, stone, metal, wood, and the sky into mandala-like images. This work is inspired by the paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe and Claude Monet, the nature photographs of Andreas Feininger, and the flower images of Harold Feinstein, with whom I briefly studied.
My personal motivation in creating these more recent images was to heal from a decade of physical and emotional trauma, the consequence of a near-fatal event in Albany, New York, in 1993. My choice of the hexagram (the Star of David, 'beloved' in Hebrew) as the organizing shape for most of the mandala images was subconscious, but I believe this choice was no accident. In many traditions, the Star of David, composed of two overlapping triangles, represents the reconciliation of opposites — male/female, fire/water, and so on. Their combination symbolizes unity and harmony. Listening to what the mandalas were telling me led me out of a dark place and, indirectly, to my decision to become a psychotherapist.
Making both the flower mandala and the sea/sky images feel, to me, like I am in wordless conversation with natural elements far more profound than anything I could create myself. Taking the photographs of the sea and sky is an almost daily activity, the first thing I do in the morning after I've left the house, and they evoke a sense of connection with vastness and an appropriate resizing of my worries and concerns, much like the perspective I get from Chinese landscape scrolls, where the people are tiny figures on an apparently infinite landscape. With both the flower and the seascape images, the experience of photographing and of editing is reminiscent of meditation.
Currently, I run a blog on the spirituality portal Beliefnet.com, where I hope to promote the use of art as a means for healing and personal transformation — the primary purposes it has served for me. In the tradition of Carl Jung, I intend, as well, to publish a book pairing 52 flower mandala images with inspirational quotations such that each image-and-quote pair resonates with a fundamental aspect of human experience.
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