Prayer And Redemption? Asceticism Or Madness?

What is the human condition if not uncertain?  I may believe that I'm normal and sane.  My view of the ascetic's behavior will serve to validate my belief.  

The deeper questions require me to qualify that reasoning.  In quiet moments alone, am I the one most in need of prayer and redemption? 

Click on photos to enlarge: 

Prayer serves to plead, beg redemption, or 

give thanks.  Sometimes it's a soliloquy over

real or imagined states of being. 

To witness is a public display of personal belief.

Motives often remain painfully personal. 

The face of resolve reflects determination, 

reluctance, gratitude, anger, relief or any 

number of emotions.  The face of madness,

however, reveals nothing. 

Photos/Text ©Rick Burnett Baker 

All Rights Reserved 

This photo essay is an excerpt from my developing series "Dream: Please Excuse Our Appearance"™.   This photo essay/exhibit is tentatively slated to show in late summer of 2018.   

Faith At Dawn

                                    Click image to enlarge:

©Rick Burnett Baker
All Rights Reserved

PRESS RELEASE: ADVANCE NOTICE

SERIES: The Architecture of Grief and Redemption™. A Preview.

I shot these photos at a Civil War reenactment at 

Letchworth State Park New York on May 20, 2017. 

Some of these will be support photos in my upcoming

photo-essay show for Rochester's First Friday Gallery Night 

at the Montanus Gallery in Rochester, NY in August.  

I've never attended a Civil War reenactment.  It seems an odd

event, but one that I found to be oddly thought provoking. 

Click on photos to enlarge

_______________________________________________

"A call to arms is a singularly 

devastating event that can only

be reconciled through survival or death. 

Neither are certain." 

-RB 

In Doubt/In Prayer

as we keep you in our steed we anguish over

destiny, and bitter that this is so.  

the anarchy of living is having no extant guide

to offer meaning for the presumed grand scheme, 

for the aftermath unseen. 

-RB 2012

"Glory in death exists only for the redemption 

of those left behind." 

-RB 

"Of all the human qualities that survive war, 

innocence is not among them."

-RB

"I laugh because I must not cry." 

-Abraham Lincoln

Photos/Original Text © Rick Burnett Baker 

All Rights Reserved 

Sheltered and Content

multitudes of me

multitudes of me follow and precede

cautious steps unknown;

every moment is eternal, each step

describes the season as ‘uphill’.  

solitude in me listens for silence 

within silence, content. 

Photo Original © by Pat Zarpentine (Original photo not shown on this post)
Photo digitally altered by Rick Burnett Baker
Poem © Rick Burnett Baker
Altered Photos © Rick Burnett Baker

SERIES: The Architecture of Grief and Redemption

of every passing 

we are 

fire and ash,

water and stone,

flowers and earth.

we are 

sons daughters

mothers fathers 

of every 

passing and ascent 

of night to 

day.

Photo/Poem © Rick Burnett Baker

This Cross We Bear

SERIES:  The Architecture of Grief And Redemption™

Photos © Rick Burnett Baker 

All Rights Reserved

"DREAM. PLEASE EXCUSE OUR APPEARANCE..." ™ A Photo Essay

A Morning Walk

Toronto, Ontario 

Fall of 2016

Presentable.  Looks can deceive,

and yet we hasten to judge, "Get a job." 

The distance between a sidewalk 

and a park bench can be measured

by inches, dollars, or days. As a 

bystander, I remind myself that 

lives are created or destroyed 

by those metrics.

"Homeless 97% Blind

Veteran. Give what u 

Can Afford Please. 

Not For: 

Booze - 16 years without

Smokes - 38 years without 

Drugs - Never taken or tried."

I have the luxury to 

analyze this situation.

Within the juxtaposition of words and reality 

adjacency is sometimes a coincidence.

"DREAM.  PLEASE EXCUSE OUR APPEARANCE..."

Someone less fortunate than me offers 

a helping hand.  Shamefully, I cannot

say that this is a coincidence. 

I ask myself, "Who hasn't dreamt of being 

young and rich." 

I harbor that thought not with sarcasm, not 

as dark humor, but with a keen awareness of 

the irony in this scene.  

The word 'humility' comes to mind. Beneath

the surface, there lurks a sense of guilt.

Photos/Text ©Rick Burnett Baker

All Rights Reserved

Before, During, After A Storm

                           Click on image to enlarge and read:

Photo/Text © Rick Burnett Baker
All Rights Reserved

(Un)Imagine

Click on image to enlarge:

Photo/Text ©Rick Burnett Baker 

All Rights Reserved

Honor/Dignity

                                        Click image to enlarge: 

Photo/Text © Rick Burnett Baker
All Rights Reserved

On Kindness And Refuge

Text and Photo ©Rick Burnett Baker 

All Rights Reserved 

Hope: Future And (Re)Birth

(re)birth 

again, after decades, my (un)reality

opens one door of many, my concubine 

of life’s necessities vanquished.

daylight peaks and wanes, darkness satiates, 

nourished and still;  it is the light of life, 

manifest within living silence. memory holds 

its germaneness in the ‘now’, becomes prophesy 

on linear moments beginning to end. those many ‘other’ 

doors remain closed. for now, how fortunate the future.

   

Poem/Photo ©Rick Burnett Baker 

All Rights Reserved 

(Photo taken in Livingston, Texas)