Sacred Photography

What is sacred photography? To answer that question we need to go back a little way, to what happens in a magical photography session between the photographer and their subject.

I can only explain it from my point of view, so here we go.

When I enter into a photography session, I am seeking the extraordinary. I am seeking the photographic version of The Click, that moment when everything aligns and you can feel the magic, see the beauty and know you are taking extraordinary photographs, or perhaps just a single one, as the case may be.

In order to get to that, I put all my attention on the subject, be it a crystal or a naked man, it matters not, and allow myself to become fascinated by it.

It is this focus of attention that creates the connection between me and the subject. It is a falling in love where the energy exchanges ramp up and up until there is a threshold shift, and I am in an altered state of hyper-awareness of everything at the same time.

In that state, there is no doubt; it is clear where the beauty is, where the energy is and how I am going to describe this with the camera.

So that's "photography."

Sacred photography is when you do that WITHOUT  a camera.

After some years of doing photography that way, I became aware when this state shift into fascination was happening outside of photography sessions.

On many occasions, in fact on most occasions, I didn't have a camera handy.

So I used my eyes and my mind instead to take a "sacred photograph" - a snapshot that is a different form of memory, is stored in a different way, perhaps it creates a habitat of a different nature in its creation.

Of course, we all do this as we go through life. If we didn't do this, we'd have nothing to look at as "our life flashes before our eyes" as the plane goes down.

We do it automatically or rather, it happens randomly anyway, whether we want this or not.

The difference in the sacred photography process is twofold.

No. 1 you are on the active lookout for the opportunity to be taking a sacred photograph. You are "the photographer" and "the session" may present itself at any time. Being aware of this and on the quest for this makes an enormous difference.

No. 2 is that there is an active, conscious decision as to when I press the shutter button. A tiny shift in perspective, a tiny shift in the light, move your head just a tiny bit to the left, just as you would do when taking that extraordinary photograph and have it be just right, and then, CLICK.

As always with The Click, when it all clicks into place and the whole system lights up, well, that's an enlightenment experience by any other name.

It's transformative, evolutionary and why I do any form of art in the first place.

So that's sacred photography in a nutshell. Enjoy and explore! :-)

Silvia Hartmann

August 2016