Alan Leaping

To my devoted readers, I’m so sorry we did not get the blog up yesterday. We had extreme technical difficulties. For some reason, when we came to the studio first thing Monday morning, we found the building upside down. It took us the whole day just to right it, and thereafter, to reorient ourselves to what is up and what is down. Don’t dispair. Everything is now in order.

I thought this week it is about time to talk about this picture, as it is tipped on to the slipcase of the book. For those interested, the tip-on is an original silver gelatin print, made in our darkroom, and required many hours of printing to make each one.

For many people, this photograph has become the iconic image for The End. The printing, as I described earlier, is a problem in and of itself. The message is as painstaking to fathom as the print is to create.

First for the mundane. This picture was made some years ago on a rooftop in Manhattan. If you look closely, you can see the photograph was made at 4:57 pm on a summer’s day. It was 83 degrees at the time. Marking the moment was somewhat deliberate. I shot this picture very quickly, and it was never used, as it was not the one I was originally commissioned to make.

Although it was not quite as terrifying as it looks, it was still very frightening. In all, the picture could not have taken more than five minutes to make.

Now for the extra-ordinary. As much as any other picture in the book, this photograph seems to feel like a self-portrait. It is me metaphorically, but it is not me physically. Ironically, I was just feet away, yet the picture is not of me, yet it is me. You are seeing me, and yet you are not looking at me. I’ve shown you a great deal about myself, yet you do not see the physical me. All my pictures are like this, but this one is special.

People, for many years, going all the way back to my deceased parents, have often asked and questioned me why I spent so much time studying theology, if I always had the intention of being a photographer. What is the connection, what is the purpose?

Ironically, from my own self-interested perspective, my answer could almost mimic a favorite anecdote: Thoreau, a 19th Century Transcendentalist writer, had been arrested for civil disobedience, and was sequestered in a small one-room jail in Concord, Massachusetts. Emerson, another 19th Century writer, his friend, comes up to the window on the outside of the jail, and calls out to Thoreau, more in the vernacular of their day, “Why are you in there?” Thoreau yells out,”That is not the right question. The right question is ‘why are you still out there?'”

The study of theology was not purely an academic experience. It was fundamental to my life. It was my beginnings with the Socratic oath of “Know Thyself.” It was the very beginnings of giving form to my chaotic and confused feelings. The theological discourse never provided the answers for me, but it framed and asked the right questions. It’s interchange with life was about fundamental, existential questions (the nature of man, the nature of evil, the study of knowledge, wisdom, etc.) How do we frame and understand our very existence?

My photographs may be my answers, responses, or questions to these questions. Going just to study photography would not provide the right questions. I needed much more.

Alan leaping can be viewed in two ways: Is he jumping to his demise, or is he making a leap of faith to the building across the street? I am still on that precipice, waiting for the answer. Is it the end, or is it just the beginning?