Tea House of the Mount Kisco Moon
Black & White Infrared Film - Hand Colored - Silver Gelatin Print - Fiber Based Paper
Copyright © 2003 Rose Rita Petersons - All Rights Reserved
When the world knows what beauty is, then there is ugliness;
When the world knows what good is, then there is evil;
Being and Non-Being produce each other;
Difficult and Easy complement each other;
Long and Short calibrate each other;
High and Low contrast each other;
Music and Noise harmonize each other;
Front and Back accompany each other……
~Lao Tsu
The beauty of this structure has attracted me since I first saw it in 1988. I used to go there and think of traveling through Asia.
It looks to be such a peacful, bucolic setting. But looks can be deceiving. In reality, it's set near a main road with a constant flow of loud, fast, impatient traffic all day long. The only time one could really enjoy any quiet and tranqility there would be late
at night when the traffic finally stops. But by that time, the park where it's located is closed to visitors and the lights are out.
So, no one could ever really enjoy the place in the peace and tranquility it seems to deserve. That's not to say that I haven't snuck in and enjoyed it's peace and tranquility while basking in the moonlight.
I've always wanted to lift the structure out of it's busy location... and transplant it to a very large piece of acreage on a quiet mountaintop. In retrospect, I supose capturing it on Infrared Film was my feeble attempt to try and take it somewhere else... by transplanting the structure in another dimension. A peaceful, other-worldly, Infrared Film photographic dimension.
In "Tao Te Ching," Lao Tzu wrote about dialectic pairs, yin and yang - the opposite and contradictory aspects present in all things. Whenever I see this structure, I'm reminded of his writings. I think I probably appreciate this structure so much precisely because of all the contrast and contradiction in its reality.
Lao Tzu's line - "Being and Non-Being produce each other" - reminds me of what Infrared Film does to a subject. "Being" is what's actually there, what's "real." And "non-being" is what's not there, not real. Infrared film looks at what's actually there and shows you an image that looks like what's there. But it also transforms what's there into an image that doesn't really look like what's there. Something that's not "real." Something you don't see with the naked eye. The film melds those two things togther as one image that is... and isn't... there. Being and the Non-Being produce each other.
Copyright © 2003, 2013 Rose Rita Petersons - All Rights Reserved - Exclusive Creative Property of the Artist
This photo and all other contents may not be downloaded, printed, copied, or forwarded by electronic media from this website or otherwise used without the express permission of the Artist
Contact: [email protected]
Photo Location: Pagoda at Leonard Park - Mount Kisco, NY
http://www.hudsonvalleyattractions.com/htm/Westchester/CL/5/9/6/CL5963.html - http://www.mountkisco.org/Pages/index