As a child I spent countless hours in rapture observing light filter through color filaments contained within glass marbles. The love and obsession with light has persisted throughout my life and became a primary force in my work as a photographer. Dipping Into Light gathers under one cover selected photographs from twelve book-projects made between 1975 and 2005. The title is inspired by the poet Mary Oliver, who describes prayer as, a dipping of oneself toward the light.1
Biblical text informs us that darkness preceded light and was the catalyst to its birth. When God began to create heaven and earth, darkness was already upon the face of the deep. ... And God said, Let there be light: and there was light (KJV, Genesis 1:2-3). These dual forces, the darkness and the light, have complementary tasks and both are responsible for the propagation of life. Each possesses unique gifts as well risks—the dark can terrify and torment and too much light can make us blind. Yet, from a mystical perspective, God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness (Gen. 1:4).
We cannot articulate gratitude for this act of mercy, this Lamp of God2, without fully embracing the fruits in the belly of the dark. Darkness holds stars in her bosom and is the womb where life and creativity incubate. Night after night darkness enters the heart of the sunflower, and in turn, blooms offer more gold to the dawn. Darkness discharges its own incandescence, joining lovers so their wings can beat like oars of light in the night.
From inception, light was freely poured upon the void to be the seed for clarity. Light has since followed mankind, like a river full of fish, bearing the wisdom of generations who found their way by it. A lifeline to higher ground, light uplifts and invites all that is possible. It returns daily to reassure us not to despair: we wait in the dark, we wait in faith, and night eventually turns into day. Light, sanctified as good, keeps on breaking. When light begins to stream through the windowpanes of our lives, something hopeful rises in us; what rises is goodness defining itself. Light comes because it has to.
I made it my life’s work to bear witness to light’s promise, and hope that the photographs from this modest retrospective will provide the reader with pleasure and solace, like those derived from the glass marbles of my childhood. With this publication, I begin in awe and with profound joy to fulfill another calling; after three decades of photography, I shift my primary focus to poetry. Now, as I tap on the keyboard, as was with each release of the camera's shutter, I continue to mine for hidden light.
As we find our way (in whatever capacity), into light's domain, a domain whose inherent nature is one of optimism, generosity and revelation, we release the nectar contained in Psalm 34, a psalm that says: Taste and See that God is Good.
We live by the light we make. Perhaps all God wants from us is to continue the work S/He started, which is to dip into light and make the next moment of our lives more luminous.
Abraham Menashe
New York City, 2010
1Mary Oliver, Winter Hours (Houghton Mifflin, 1999), 108. 2Freema Gottlieb, The Lamp of God (Jason Aronson, 1989).
