Thinking Through Photography: Reflections and Photography from Workshop's Participants

Michael Corthell

My photographic practice explores the intersection of non-ordinary consciousness and the natural world. As a psychologist with a profound interest in traditional Indigenous ceremonies and Buddhist meditation, I often find parallels between the transformative states accessed through these practices and the profound flow states experienced in nature. Through my lens, I aim to capture the ethereal and meditative qualities of these moments.

"Within the Ice"

Karen King

The photos were taken at Walden Pond on January 22, 2025. I began reading several early Christian texts with them, pairing images and allusions drawn to and from them. Here are the remaining raw, uncooked ingredients for further refining and condensation: water, light, stone, words, and voice. Illusions and allusions. From the first, speech-thought and light-images are linked.  

In the beginning was the word: “Let there be light.” Spirit moving over the waters. (1)

The light spoke through the mouth and the voice gave birth to life.  They received thought and understanding and mercy and salvation and the powerful spirit from the infiniteness and the sweetness …  (2)

Truth did not enter the world naked but it came in types and images.  It will not receive it in any other way. (3)

You get sick and die because you love what deceives you. The realm of God is spread out upon the earth but people do not see it. (4)

For whoever has already received the truth in images, the world has become the eternal realm, … not hidden in the darkness and the night, but hidden in a perfect day and a holy. (5)

There are some things hidden through the visible. There is water in water, there is fire in chrism. (6)

The light came into the world, and darkness was not able to overcome it. (7)

Cassandra Morales

I wanted to capture the idea of spirituality as a tool of resistance, as divinity interacts with the material world to promote growth and change. The water and ice represent conduits for spirit, and the stones and plants represent the earth.

Luke Tan

This workshop brought me to Walden Pond for the first time in my life, and Sarah’s unique prompts for thinking through photography made the experience even more special!

(1) Gospel of John 1:1; Genesis 1:2-3; Proverbs 8:22-31 (NRSV).

(2) Gospel of Truth 31.14-21 (King paraphrasing adaption from ed. and trans. Harold Attridge and George Macrae in Nag Hammadi Codex I (ed. Harold Attridge; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1985, pp. 100-101).

(3) Gospel of Philip 67a (King trans. from text in Hans-Martin Schenke, Das Phillipus-Evangelium. Berlin: Akademia Verlag, 1997, p. 45).

(4) Gospel of Mary 3:3 (trans. King; restored text by Walter Till and Hans-Martin Schenke, Die gnostischen Schriften des Koptischen Papyrus Berolinensis 8502. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1972, pp. 62,64); Gospel of Thomas 113 (adapted from text and trans. of Bentley Layton and Thomas Lambdin, Nag Hammadi Codex II,2-7. Ed. Bentley Layton.  Leiden, Brill, 19889, pp. 92-93).

(5) Gospel of Philip 127b (King trans. from text in Hans-Martin Schenke, Das Phillipus-Evangelium. Berlin: Akademia Verlag, 1997, p. 78). 

(6) Gospel of Philip 25 (King trans. from text in Hans-Martin Schenke, Das Phillipus-Evangelium. Berlin: Akademia Verlag, 1997, p. 24).

(7) Allusions to Genesis 1:3 and Gospel of John 1:5.