Reception : Saturday, June 1st, 5:00-7:00pm
Book Presentation: Journeying with Your Archetypes: The Search for Deeper Meaning in Daily Life Tuesday, June 4th, 7:00-8:30pm
About the Photography . . The photos you’ll see in this space emanate from a few key themes. These themes have been critical to my heart and my mind as well as my photographic eye in the determination of what and how to “take my shots”. Taken individually and collectively, they offer you some insight into the way I see, view, and experience the world. This exhibit has been created and curated on two levels: photographically, by utilizing and drawing on these themes; psychologically, by seeking to understand their meaning through an intercultural and global lens.
Paradox
Conventional wisdom and cultural ethos seem to preclude a deep understanding of being able to hold opposites or contrast with equal weight and depth. It may be said that, as our culture and nation become increasingly more bifurcated, stratified, and differentiated, it becomes more challengng to be able to hold and sustain “one AND the other”. My mentor-from-afar, C. G. Jung, was very fond of saying “It’s not a question of one OR the other; rather, the question becomes one of our ability to discern and integrate the one WITH the other and hold them together at a given moment in time.” I especially appreciate paradox in the visual field, as I find it arresting, and at times confusing – always with a fascinating narrative that lies beneath the surface of our ability to see.
Going Beyond the Obvious and Beneath the Surface
This leads me to use my training, my eyes, my life observations and experience to dig deeper, to highlight and exemplify the contrasts and paradoxes throughout our lives and world in subtle and meaningful ways. If a photograph is worth a thousand words, and tells a story, it ought as well to ask questions: WHY the “this” with the “that”? How do they add up? How do they make sense? What’s the “under”-story here – or the back-story - that I cannot see or read? What hints and nuances can help me to grasp a deeper understanding of the photo, its content, story, and context? I add to this my favourite question: “Is there more?”
Symbols and Archetypes
As a cross-cultural and developmental psychologist, I was trained to look deeply into meaning and motive when it comes to human behavior, thought, performance, arti-fact, and story. This symbolic – or archetypal – perspective enables me to view and question what’s under the surface, and what’s beyond the superficial limits of our understanding and ability to make meaning. My photography is an effort and a pro-cess for both myself and viewers to question and embrace the deeper, symbolic meaning of a visual scene and its narrative. This archetypal approach enables us to view and interpret visual information in more than one way, and on more than one level. What we come forward with is not so much an open and shut “answer” to our questions, but, rather, a “response” that brings greater openness to understanding and learning to the innumerable situations and possibilities in our lives.
About the Photographer. . .
Daniel Cantor Yalowitz, Ed.D., is a Brooklyn, NY born and NYC-bred Jewish American Guy. He has traveled to 88 countries, and hopes someday to make it to the century mark. His travels and travails have generated wonderful stories for decades of entertainment. To this point, he wants you to note that as a child growing up in the Chelsea neighborhood in downtown Manhattan, he wanted to be a National Geo-graphic photographer. This exhibit is about as close as he will ever get to that childhood aspiration.
Daniel’s first international journey was at age ten with his family to Montreal’s “Expo ‘67”. He sees himself as both a global citizen, traveler, and a change-agent within his home communities and professional experiences. Beyond the tales and (sometimes unbelievable) stories he brings home with him, Daniel is always sure to bring home photos which tell these stories.
A cross-cultural/developmental psychologist by training, and an educator through experience, Daniel finds, frames, and creates his photographs to serve as both narratives and questions. He is simultaneously looking at, into, and beyond the visual field to evoke a sense of yearning and learning, longing, and belonging. He lives within his photos, feeling and sensing them with a wide range of emotions, engaging opposites, paradox, challenge, change, and, at moments, whimsy and serendipity. Daniel is particularly challenged and excited by photographic themes of bounda-ries, liminality, pathways and portals, lacunas, and the bridging of opposing forces.
Daniel’s lifelong training and abundant curiosity about “all things Jungian” brings about another dimension to his writing, poetry, and photographs. In his recent book, Journeying with Your Archetypes: The Search for Deeper Meaning in Daily Life (Booksmyth Press: Shelburne Falls, MA: 2018), he brings symbols and archetypes to life through his clear-minded observations and experiences in life and the world. Daniel’s approach makes Jung’s terms and concepts accessible and comprehensible to everyone, using both context and culture as his dual lens for making meaning from the at-times disparate and sometimes harmonious content that comes before his lens. He hopes that you ques-tion and learn from what YOU observe and experience in these photos.
