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Under Gestalt Blue Skies (Comprehensible, but partial views in the context of the incomprehensible) Recent Photographs by Christopher Newberry I've always wondered why most people from practically every culture in the world believe in some sort of god. Scientists can explain the universe from a microsecond after the Big Bang, but they don't know what happened just prior to that tiny fraction of time nor how the Big Bang came about. Because they can't explain that part of creation, some of those scientists have drawn the conclusion that God did it. And it isn't any old god. It is a god that takes a special interest in them personally, whom they worship and pray to. Otherwise rational human beings are confronted with a phenomenon about which they only have partial information and what they do to get the whole picture is, make it up! As an agnostic, creation is something I simply do not understand and never will. But for thousands of years, when unable to "complete the picture" of creation or other unexplained phenomena people have filled in the gaps with stories or myths. Perhaps we are genetically programmed to do so. |
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Gestalt theory tells
us that the brain naturally tends to close the gaps - it perceives whole
pictures from incomplete elements. In this example most people would perceive
a white triangle over 3 black circles. A triangle by definition has three
sides, this graphic doesn't. We close the gaps in our mind to form the
missing sides. |
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Blue skies are a window through which
we see time, space and creation. In blue skies we find chaos and infinity.
Millions upon millions of galaxies, each with millions upon millions
of stars. Black holes. Dark matter. The inexplicable. What I've done
is place finite, explicable, man-made objects with the infinite, inexplicable,
perhaps God-made astral bodies as a backdrop. But only partially. It's
up to the viewer to close the image - or not. I present minimum information
for the viewer to make sense of the image. I'm looking for the point
at which it is possible to make sense of an image with the absolute
minimum information. If you show a baby two dots, side by side on a
piece of paper, the baby will stare at them - apparently two dots are
enough for human beings to surmise a face. For some people the partial
photos will be easily recognisable, but much depends on culture. What
may be blatantly obvious to the British may be a complete mystery to
Mexicans, Chinese or Italians. Truth and reality, God or no God, is
with the beholder, notwithstanding the possibility of completely misunderstanding
the incomplete picture. No one can prove otherwise. But, though I know
that the beholder will try to complete the picture, my hope is that
the photos will be seen as what they are.
Christopher Newberry |
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| Platonic Views |
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