The work in this exhibition, the Mandala Series, moves me yet one step further from my 1980's work in documentary landscape photography. In the Mandala Series,   I deepen my investigation into that internal landscape of my own self. I do this understanding that there is never an image presented by a photographer for viewing that, itself, does not find some relationship within its viewers.
    I have long been interested in the use of mandalas as symbols used in spirituality, psychology, and art. It seems that the mandala as a symbol is both ancient and arcane, yet modern and commonplace. According to Austrian psychologist, Carl Jung, the term mandala itself comes from Sanskrit and means circle,   yet it means much more. In ancient mythologies, the uroboros, the primal dragon or circular snake, the cycle of whose own life is embodied in life and death, marriage and impregnation, male and female, and is all-begetting and all-devouring, is manifest in images of the round, or mandalas. Referring to both ritual and image, Erich Neumann, psychologist, mythologist, and student of Jung, writes: And so long as [humanity] shall exist, perfection will continue to appear as the circle, the sphere, an d the round; and the Primal Deity who is sufficient unto [it]self, and the self who has gone beyond the opposites, will reappear in the image of the round, the mandala.  
    In psychology, mandalas take on significance in terms of the internal conflict they represent. Jung tells us: As a rule a mandala occurs in conditions of psychic dissociation or disorientation...,  and is ...an attempt at self-healing on the part of Nature, which does not spring from conscious reflection but from an instinctive impulse.   Jung explains, As is to be expected , individual mandalas display an enormous variety. The overwhelming majority of mandalas are characterized by the circle and the quaternity. In some, however, the three or the five predominates...   Jung informs us that many times mandalas have a therapeutic effect on their authors...,   and he informs us that this has been empirically proven to his satisfaction. It seems that the development of a person and the development of a mandala are concomitant. There is what Jung explains as an archetype of wholeness that mandalas seem to point towards. A persons psychological development, from the chaos of the beginning stages of consciousness development to the wholeness-inferring of the squaring of the circle,   is apparent in the configuration of their mandala construct.
    My purpose in taking on the project to photographically investigate found or recognized mandalas within the context of my surroundings, is to discover meanings within myself as well as to allow the viewers of the finished images to discover their own meanings. Some of the images proved to awaken in me a sense of ease, while others had a disquieting effect. In some I sensed closure while in others I was made aware of possibility. As I said above, there is never an image presented by a photographer for viewing that, itself, does not find some relationship within its viewers, and because of this, the challenge to the viewers of this exhibition is to discover the interdependence between exterior image an d inner movement, and then to reflect on what latent meaning that may or may not have for them.

Mandala Series

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