Seeing the Land With New Eyes
Paul Wanta
Seeing the Land With New Eyes
Contemplative Photography at The Rowe Center
In the face of climate threat, many of us long to make a difference, especially if we are empathetic and caring people. And yet, sometimes, it feels like our gifts of sensitivity and compassion are not enough. But shifting perspectives can change everything.
What if our climate crisis is actually a crisis of intimacy? Our sensitivity would be our greatest gift and our capacity for connection would help us transform our relationships with the natural world and each other. Richard Powers, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Overstory, believes “the ecological crisis we are now facing is a direct and inevitable consequence of human separatism that has created a culture in which great, teeming, reciprocal communities of living things have become nothing but commodities that we use with impunity—as if somehow the very cycles of interdependence were no longer something that we had to answer to.” But answer we must.
Transforming our relationships with the more-than-human world requires new ways of seeing and responding. And in this precarious moment, photography has something powerful to offer. The camera you carry in your pocket or bag is an extraordinary tool for cultivating connection, kinship, and belonging. Photography is, after all, a medium of relationship, where images are made in direct and open contact with the world. When photography practices include contemplative values such as humility, curiosity, and wonder, the natural world comes alive with luminous generosity and co-creative power. Even the most familiar and wounded places radiate with beauty and grace.
I recently experienced a remarkable example of how powerful photography can be while working with students at The Rowe Center who attended a Contemplative Photography: Seeing the Land with New Eyes online workshop. Using whatever cameras they had available, photographers of all levels were invited to enter an intimate world where the landscape was alive and waiting to be met, understood, and listened to. Each photographer chose a familiar place close to home. Then, using contemplative practices designed to deepen their connection to place, they carved out a unique and personal space for love to blossom. Each responded in their own way to what arose. The resulting photographs were full of subtle grace, beauty, tenderness, and co-creative vulnerability.
Their photographs remind me that photography matters now more than ever. Whether you call it the Anthropocene or the sixth great extinction, restoring a thriving planet requires cultural and collective reimagining, and photography, when practiced well, can positively shape and change how we see and relate to the world around us and, more importantly, who we become in that world. Here, photography is more than an act of discovery; it is a vital reminder of a tender beauty that connects us one to the other when the world is seen through the eyes of the heart.
Recently the Dali Lama was asked what it would take to turn the tide of climate change. He believed that “increasing our awareness of the undeniable interconnections between us and the natural world, paired with our own lived experiences of Earth’s capacity—and our own capacity—for transformation, change, and healing, could be the most powerful force.”
The photographs featured in this online gallery are evidence of this powerful and yet tender force. They remind us that falling in love with the world (just as it is) changes everything. In love, our actions spring from reverence and are informed by our deep kinship with the living earth and each other. In love, our photographs testify to our own transformative journey and act as beautiful and reciprocal gifts that we pay forward into the world as gestures of gratitude.
— Susan Patrice, April 2023
LaDana Hintz
Elaine Brooks
Catherine Barritt
Elaine Brooks
Catherine Barritt
Elaine Brooks (left) & Janet Grimes (right)
Catherine Barritt
Catherine Barritt
Janet Grimes
Janet Grimes
Janet Grimes
LaDana Hintz
LaDana Hintz
LaDana Hintz
Elaine Brooks
Susan Beaumont
Susan Beaumont
LaDana Hintz
Catherine Barritt
Paul Wanta
Susan Beaumont
Paul Wanta
Susan Beaumont
Janet Grimes
Susan Beaumont
Paul Wanta
Paul Wanta
Featured Photographers:
Catherine Barritt
Elaine Brooks
Janet Grimes
LaDana Hintz
Susan Beaumont
Upcoming Rowe Center Workshops & Retreats
September 22nd - 24th 2023
The Spirit of Place: A Contemplative Photographic Journey.
Photographers of all levels (camera phones are welcome) are invited to join Susan Patrice for a contemplative photographic journey. Together we will explore the spirit of the magical place that is Rowe. Nestled in the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains and surrounded by wooded hiking trails, lakes, and trickling streams, we will celebrate the visual wonders of nature while finding creative and spiritual nourishment within this protected and loved landscape. As we practice together, our photographs will come alive with new meaning and beauty. We hope you can join us for this dynamic and inspiring workshops.
