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 impetus 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 each one is vital 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 gift of mercy, The Lamp of God2, without fully embracing the dark. Darkness holds the stars in its bosom and is the very womb where life and creativity incubate. Night after night darkness enters the sunflower, and in turn the sunflower gifts more of its gold to the dawn. Night is as luminous as day, joining lovers so their wings can move like oars of light in the dark.
From inception, light was freely poured upon the void to become seed for clarity. Light has since followed mankind, like a river filled with fish, bearing the wisdom of generations who found their way by it. Light, a lifeline to higher ground, uplifts and invites all that is possible. Light returns daily to reassure us not to despair. We wait in the dark, we wait in faith, and night eventually turns into day. When light begins to stream through the windowpanes, something hopeful rises in us; what rises is goodness defining itself. Light keeps on breaking. 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 my life begins anew, in awe and with profound joy, to answer a second calling; after a lifetime of photography, I turn my primary focus to poetry. Today 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 luminous.
Abraham Menashe
New York City, 2009
1Mary Oliver, Winter Hours (Houghton Mifflin, 1999), 108. 2Freema Gottlieb, The Lamp of God (Jason Aronson, 1989).
