The Pornographic Forest

A Zen koan has a monk asking his master the usual question, "What is Buddha?"
The one-word reply is "Shit-stick!" (or kanshiketsu, used in old times instead of
toilet paper). The Zen tradition abounds with such whiplashes of absurdity, the
main purpose of which is to allow us to grasp dualities without analyzing them
and solve existential problems through spiritual intuition rather than knowledge
or reason. Zen's love of paradox is crowned by it being a religion without a God in
the Western sense of the word.

My choice of cigarette butts as subject matter in 2002 was not consciously
informed by a search for a terminally low-status subject matter, which
doubtlessly would be a very good Zen starting point for glorifying a non-existent
God. I have never smoked and have little interest in the health hazards or social
issues presented by smoking. The cigarette remains attracted me with their
physicality and richness in textures and shapes ranging from body allusions to
micro-landscapes. Their uselessness meshed perfectly with my belief that true art
is ultimately purposeless and with my distrust of photographic subjects that have
inherent "value", such as a beautiful woman or a celebrity. Also, the element of
chance introduced by their fragility was a perfect foil to the highly controlled large
format camera and lighting approach I practice. Finally—and the list can go on—
their malleability and ability to assume anthropomorphic guises were perfectly
suited to my striving for images that sit on the edge of abstraction.

I see in these images totemic and sacred qualities that remold the original objects
completely. The enlarged scraps assume a soft monumentality which is imposing
and light at the same time, like a cloud or a Zen koan. I see the best images as
quixotic sentinels standing mute at the intersection of the sacred and the
profane. Like the shit-stick reply in the Zen koan they invite understanding by
casting reason aside. In that sense they are mystical images.

The Pornographic Forest is a title derived from a short statement I wrote in the
year 2000, but which informs my outlook to this day. It is quoted below:

"As an adolescent who had just picked up a camera I
had a very immodest ambition: to photograph a forest
and make the image look pornographic. Or the opposite:
take a picture of a sex act and communicate the serenity
of a landscape. Only half-knowing it at the time I was
longing to escape the tyranny of subject matter—an ambition
that taken to its end can lead a photographer to madness ...
or to pure abstraction.                                                                                                         

Not surprisingly, 20 years later most of my photographs stay
on the edge of abstraction. In the time passed I have learned
that one pursues mad, impossible dreams without thinking
about them. The sharpshooter taking aim at an invisible target
is well-advised to keep his eyes firmly closed."

Rafaelo Kazakov, October 2004, New York City