“Design is not always immediately perceived, nor is it meant to be fully understood. Design is not entirely definable even though the mind insists that it should be. Rather, design prefers the euphoria of epiphany and the steadfastness of growth. Revealed to consciousness through attachments and correspondences, design prefers to perpetuate an understanding between the seen and the unseen, between spirit and matter.”
 

- Carl Garant, ‘The Tao of design’, 1998

“Fine art photography is a style or genre of photography that offers a harmonious composition of elements within a frame of reference whose content provides aesthetic, sensory, and sometimes surreal qualities that fulfill the authentic, creative, and personal vision of the photographer as artist while heightening the emotional and psychological response of the observer. It is an established but evolving discipline in photography whose essential condition is the ‘felt aesthetic’ (the feeling of being immersed in and inspired by something intellectually and imaginatively beautiful). This type of photography is often exemplified by but not limited to black and white compositions, various exposure lengths, and eclectic subjects (e.g., abstract, architecture, landscapes, nude portraits, etc.). It may also be interpreted by refined theories and concepts across disciplines (e.g., philosophy, psychology, literature, music, film, culture, semiotics, mathematics, science) and past and current trends in art, photography and technology in part or in whole. It is often defined in contrast to journalistic, documentary, and commercial photography. It adheres to quality standards in post-processing and printing as part of the creation of art.”  © John Kosmopoulos

 

Definition taken from John Kosmopoulos interview ‘Odyssey of Vision’ to Nathan Wirth:

“Think of the most beautiful person you have ever seen. Think of the exact moment you looked into his or her eyes, and for a fleeting second you were paralyzed: you couldn’t take your eyes off that vision. You stared, frozen in time, caught in that beauty. Now imagine that identical beauty radiating from every single thing in the entire universe: every rock, every plant, every animal, every cloud, every person, every object, every mountain, every stream – even the garbage dumps and broken dreams – every single one of them, radiating that beauty. You are quietly frozen by the gentle beauty of everything that arises around you. You are released from grasping, released from time, released from avoidance, released altogether into the eye of Spirit, where you contemplate the unending beauty of the Art that is the entire World.

That all-pervading Beautyis not an exercise in creative imagination. It is the actual structure of the universe. That all-pervading Beauty is in truth the very nature of the Kosmos right now. It is not something you have to imagine, because it is the actual structure of perception in all domains. If you remain in the eye of Spirit, every object is an object of radiant Beauty. If the doors of perception are cleansed, the entire Kosmos is your lost and found Beloved, the Original Face of primordial Beauty, forever, and forever, and endlessly forever. And in the face of that stunning Beauty, you will completely swoon into your own death, never to be seen or heard from again, except on those tender nights when the wind genlty blows through the hills and the mountains, quietly calling your name.”  

 

- Ken Wilber, ‘The Eye of Spirit’, 1997

Excerpt from ‘Integral Art and Literary Theory’

For more information and updates:

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