The shadow knows

Bus stop shelter, Minneapolis

If God created the world ex nihilo, meaning out of nothingness, then who created the nothingness?

If God is all powerful, all knowing, and everywhere, and if there is evil in the world, then our God-given logic leads us to conclude that God also must have created evil.

I have grappled with these concepts for as long as I can remember. I have studied the great thinkers on these subjects. Now I am thinking that the way to understand the apparent duality is to step back and realize that light and dark, good and evil, are just aspects of the same thing. I believe it was Thomas Aquinas who concluded that because everything that God created was good, then evil was the absence of good; a failure to live up to the full expression of being human.

Om mani padme hum. Yin and yang. In and yo. Inside and outside. Negative and positive. Male and female. Mind and matter. What we see when we divide the whole this way is the relative strength of one polarity in contrast to another. Yet it’s a false dichotomy. We look at each aspect separately in an effort to understand it, then we seem to forget that it only exists as part of a whole.

Photography is writing with light. But what gives an image character is “the shadow aspect.” I recently enter a juried photo competition by that title. My self-portrait, with the faint shadow of a skull, projected through a Day of the Dead paper banner, was among those selected for an exhibit at the Praxis Photo Arts Center in Minneapolis. The opening reception is Aug. 17, from 6-8 p.m. The show runs through Sept. 14.

It’s my second showing of an image there. I confess I don’t understand what gains recognition at these photo competitions. The self-portrait wasn’t my favorite image among those that I had entered, which you can see here:

I also entered a competition titled “Motion Blur.” None of my work, seen below, was selected for that show. I was somewhat surprised because I am happier with this work than I am with my earlier winning entries. Perhaps this is just the negative contrasting with the positive. I’ve entered four competitions so far and have come out with two positive results and two negative results.

In other words, perfect balance. We shall see what lies ahead.