Fred Ressler

I have always felt that we are here to throw each other over our heads and be thrown up in turn to balance out the pecking-order approach. Eileen suggested I get a better camera, and I bought a manual Nikon PT-3. The trees are what's in my yard - laurel oak - though I have experimented with bamboo and cabbage palm. I have a local lab develop and print. I also have photos scanned and digitally printed. I started out in color and ended up using black and white Fuji film. I see these images as projections from my unconscious corroborated by having them projected to me. I started seeing these photos as something beyond what any artist could do. The way the background complimented the foreground to form a unity with a group mind. Later couples showed up and they had a similar pattern to each other as well as the background. They seemed spiritually as well as artistically coupled. There was no rubber stamping effect from photo to photo as occurrs with even the greatest artists. These beings are not under control as in art. They are not bound to function as in nature. There is no loss of dimension as with regular photography. I feel the shadows are telling us how much we have overlooked that is right before us. That a child "banging" on the piano is playing free music.

Reactions at local shows have been very positive with many people not believing at first that these are just shadows with no people involved. One girl asked if I could take a photo of her shadow. That 99% of the figures are human with 1%animals is probably from our brainstem being hardwired to see human faces from our earliest perception. I have counted 39 features that correspond in shape, size and placement to human features in the photo I call Einstein.

What are the shadows saying? They say different things to different people. To me they say "We are living speaking gods, as is everything". Art is a political term (as are almost all). We are free to be beyond artists with no sophisticated learned technique, thought or physical restriction to get in the way.

Reading about mental imagery, similacra, and editectic images has also been encouraging like Alan Watt's Tao:the Watercourse Way and this quote from Leonardo da Vinci's "Method of Quickening the Spirit of Invention":
You should look at certain walls stained with damp, or at stones of uneven color. If you have to invent some backgrounds you will be able to see in these the likeness of divine landscapes, adorned with mountains, ruins, rocks, woods, great plains, hills, valleys in great variety; and then again you will see battles and strange figures in violent action, expressions of faces and clothes and an infinity of things which you will be able to reduce to their complete and proper forms. In such walls the same thing happens as in the sound of bells,in which stroke you may find every named word which you can imagine.

Every positive reaction to my photos has spurred me on. I sent some untitled photos to John Michell in the UK author of Natural Likeness He said the one I called "Lila" reminded him of an Indian beauty, and the one I called "Dan Doloff" was like a Russian anarchist. Since Dan is of Russian extraction and has anarchistic elements, this remark sort of amazed me. Being appreciated by Ali of the Firehouse Gallery in Dunedin, Florida has been added incentive for me to take over two hundred images during a four year period, averaging 7 hours per image. Currently I am working on a project along similar lines which is an outgrowth of this series; these new photographs will be available later in the year as limited edition signed prints through the Henry Boxer Gallery, London''.