Wednesday, October 25, 2017

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.   

Thursday, July 20, 2017

Faith At Dawn



                                    Click image to enlarge:


















©Rick Burnett Baker
All Rights Reserved

Saturday, May 20, 2017

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 


Wednesday, March 29, 2017

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

Monday, March 27, 2017

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

Thursday, March 23, 2017

This Cross We Bear





SERIES:  The Architecture of Grief And Redemption™















Photos © Rick Burnett Baker 
All Rights Reserved


Wednesday, March 15, 2017

"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

Saturday, February 25, 2017

Before, During, After A Storm



                           Click on image to enlarge and read:



















Photo/Text © Rick Burnett Baker
All Rights Reserved

Friday, February 17, 2017

(Un)Imagine



Click on image to enlarge:



Photo/Text ©Rick Burnett Baker 
All Rights Reserved

Friday, February 10, 2017

Honor/Dignity




                                        Click image to enlarge: 


















Photo/Text © Rick Burnett Baker
All Rights Reserved

Sunday, January 29, 2017

On Kindness And Refuge








Text and Photo ©Rick Burnett Baker 
All Rights Reserved 

Friday, January 13, 2017

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)