The Mayfly I
Rockaway Alliance of Artists - Spring 2018
Artist's Statement:
"All things change, nothing remains still...you cannot step into the same river twice."
Heracleitus (Ancient Greek Pre-Socratic philosopher c. 500 BCE) maintained that all permanence is an illusion, that what man perceives arises from a balance of opposing forces. Reality is process.
Poets, artists, scientists and philosopher/fishermen have long noted, marveled and used as bait the adult Mayfly whose short lifespan, from five minutes to 24 hours, serves its singular role of reproduction. Without a functioning mouth or digestive system its short life focuses on coinciding with the opposite sex. Its abbreviated life and function seems to amplify our sense of the strange and ephemeral nature of life and perhaps indicates that existence and time are as functional and as practical an illusion as Heracleitus suggested over twenty-five hundred years ago, placing our own momentary experiences, reactions and feelings in sharp contrast with the breadth of eternity.
"All things change, nothing remains still...you cannot step into the same river twice."
Heracleitus (Ancient Greek Pre-Socratic philosopher c. 500 BCE) maintained that all permanence is an illusion, that what man perceives arises from a balance of opposing forces. Reality is process.
Poets, artists, scientists and philosopher/fishermen have long noted, marveled and used as bait the adult Mayfly whose short lifespan, from five minutes to 24 hours, serves its singular role of reproduction. Without a functioning mouth or digestive system its short life focuses on coinciding with the opposite sex. Its abbreviated life and function seems to amplify our sense of the strange and ephemeral nature of life and perhaps indicates that existence and time are as functional and as practical an illusion as Heracleitus suggested over twenty-five hundred years ago, placing our own momentary experiences, reactions and feelings in sharp contrast with the breadth of eternity.
Swallows, Hallock's Bay, Orient, NY - Though the focus was on swaying grasses and shimmering water the gnats feeding on the photographer were also fed upon by the unexpected swallows who came out of nowhere and left the frame just as quickly. A quarter second shutter speed captured their shadowy forms.
Antiproton at its Annihilation - This image is based on one made by super high speed flash photography of the bubble tracks of subatomic particles as they boil their way through liquid hydrogen. A proton and antiproton and their mutual annihilation's debris spreads in less time than the duration of the flash of several thousandths of a second. Other stray particles wend their ways hither and thither.
Kate, Applepicking - Thirty seconds under a tree, thirty minutes picking apples, now thirty years later...