SELF-PORTRAIT

Like most of this author's books, SELF-PORTRAIT presents a body of artwork—in this case, ninety photographs—that convey a message complemented and expanded by an introductory essay. This message, present in all his previous books, attempts to uncover the chronic division, conflict, and pain we collectively and personally suffer, along with the responsibility each one of us bears for their tragic continuity. The root problem of being human lies in the conditioning of the brain by the cumulative record of precultural and prepersonal experience, the historical experience of each culture, and the biographical experience of each individual. In other words, memory holds the most primitive instincts of the species, the tradition that characterizes each group, and the more distinctive and consciously reactive traits that make each person who she thinks she is. True, the ability to accumulate and project knowledge made possible the survival and development of humanity, but it also rendered all the cultural and personal entities that constitute it incapable of living in peace with each other and in harmony with the rest of the biosphere. The challenge posed by SELF-PORTRAIT is fundamental: can the human mind detect—and thus deactivate—the harm and danger created by the extension of thought into the realm of personal identity and relationship? We cannot ignore this challenge, for it poses an existential threat. Unless a critical number of us cease to identify with exclusive cultural traditions and equally divisive and antagonistic physical traits and mental habits, our splintered humanity will only continue harming itself and degrading its natural environment until our presence is made no longer viable by life itself. Mentally, we are the pitiful result of a permanent failure of love, and only a perception not mediated by thought of the entirety of this tragic reality can free the mind from the tribal and personal isolation that fragments and undermines it. The fantasy of a proprietary personal life cannot survive the incandescent attention of an all-inclusive love.