“SEEKING THE HIDDEN WHOLENESS”

This represents the aim of what I do with Still Point Photography. My approach is to create images which come out of a still, reflective attitude ( see the Still Point page ), & my desire is that they will reveal something of the “hidden wholeness” inherent in all things. Going back to Blake & his “world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wildflower”, I seek that universal hidden wholeness, whilst (paradoxically) also hoping to present the thing in the truth & fullness of its own “self’.

I came across the term “the hidden wholeness” in the work of a 20th century American Trappist monk by the name of THOMAS MERTON. Merton was most influential in my efforts to understand the confluence of Eastern & Western philosophy & spirituality. Merton’s writings, & his life, inspired me greatly; & what’s more, thanks to the generosity of one of his friends who lent him a camera, we have some remarkable images made by Merton, in the course of his simple, monastic, daily life. There are also images from his travels in the East. (Look him up; he’s a really interesting photographer & person).

In a collection of his photographs, published after his death (“A Hidden Wholeness/The Visual World of Thomas Merton”), Merton is quoted as saying:

“There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness."

"There is in all things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence that is a fountain of action and joy. It rises up in wordless gentleness and flows out to me from the unseen roots of all created being...”

The editor of the book, John Howard Griffin, says:

“Merton worked for photographic images which, when viewed without haste or pressure, might accomplish the slow work of communicating “a hidden wholeness” and perhaps reveal some hint of that “wordless gentleness”. His concept: going out to the thing and giving ourself to it, allowing it to communicate its essence, allowing it to say what it will, reveal what it will, rather than trying to bring it into the confines of self, altering and changing it by the possession of it. This was one of Thomas Merton’s most profound orientations."

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