I believe that the depth and power of the creative process--whether it is writing, painting, music orphotography--has never been better expressed than in the opening verse from William Blake’s“Auguries of Innocence.” As photographers we strive to capture a vision of the world that is bothfamiliar and new and to imbue each with the other, to make the familiar new and the new familiar.The power of art is it’s ability to transcend the mundane and give us a glimpse into the newlyemerging world into which we are all moving. Art is a beacon lighting the way, helping us to find apath where none seems to be. In its purest form, art is not political or moral but visionary. It providesus with the concepts and emotions to make sense of the political and moral but it should never bedirected by them. That would be propaganda.In very simple terms, art helps us to live and the artist bringshis entire life to his art. Ansel Adams put it very succinctlywhen he said:“You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved."A photographer doesn’t just take a photograph, he makes a photograph. The negative is only thecomposer’s score and the print is the performance. My intention as a photographer is to make thatperformance as compelling as possible by revealing the world underneath the everyday, thepedestrian, the familiar. In the photograph of Monument Valley above I wanted to infuse a sense ofotherworldliness and alienation into the familiar landscape by emphasizing the colors and depth. Thiswas done through the use of the Sabatier effect which turns part of the image into its negative. Theotherwise serene desert now acquires an underlying tension and conflict that adds movement to theimage.The image to the right is of peeling paint on an old abandonedroad grater. The rust patterns have a van Gogh like dynamic andthe remnants of the original yellow paint provide a sharpcounterpoint to the rust. It’s a glimpse into the frenetic energyunderlying all order like the seething quantum flux beneath allthat we think is permanent. As Marx so aptly observed of themodern world, all that is solid melts intoair.The photo on the left is a black andwhite image of a twisted tree caught in arocky vice. Ironically, the tree, when still alive, had split that same rock in abold demonstration of the power of life over the death. But now the tables areturned and the fissure has become a vice closing in on its creator. The treeseems to be writhing in pain under the pressure, reluctant to give up it’s holdon life. Like Dylan Thomas’ aging man, it is raging against the dying of thelight, refusing to go out easily and clinging to life until the very last. For me,photography is reminder of our fragility and impermanence but at the sametime an affirmation of life.To see a world in a grain of sand,And a heaven in a wild flower,Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,And eternity in an hour.-William Blake