On the occasion of today's eclipse (4/8/2024) I want to highlight "eclipsed," a 3 part series (2020-2022). in this time period of uncertainty and vulnerability i couldn't find a better way to capture the mood. typically eclipses are fascinating mysterious and magical events. this year's total eclipse will give us an artificial night for approximately 2 hrs and 40 minutes. in the arts, eclipses have been used as metaphors to describe a fatal destiny. in cultures of origin eclipses were treated as omens.
my Eclipsed series explore archeoastronomy notions from the latitude of the city i live in, capturing images and distorting its values to generate a monochromatic artificial setting like in Eclipsed iii. the overly saturated colorful images of Eclipsed II, imagine the mayan culture's telling of "Sol de Agua." Water Sun is how mayans described the effect of ultra radiance after a tropical storm has passed and the sun rays oversaturate the environment with intense hues.
personally, i have always been attracted to pre-hispanic cultures and their observations of the firmament, their understanding of celestial events and how it shaped their calendars, cults and myths. mayans, for example, associated eclipses with bad omens, death and end of cycles. some of the symbolic representations from the mesoamerican languages of origin translates "mordida de luna" (moon tear) to lunar eclipse, and "mordida de sol" (sun tear), "sol comido" (sun eaten) or "sol roto" (broken sun) to solar eclipse. the heavens were not only the realm of their deities that signaled seasonal events or rituals, but it encouraged observance and study.
through out our human experience we have always been fascinated to cosmological events. from homer to carl sagan and ann druyan.
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"These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us: though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects: love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide: in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked 'twixt son and father." - William Shakespeare, King Lear Act 1, Scene 2. (1605)
“Science has carried us to the gateway to the universe. And yet our conception of our surroundings remains the disproportionate view of the still-small child. We are spiritually and culturally paralyzed, unable to face the vastness, to embrace our lack of centrality and find out actual place in the fabric of nature.”
― Ann Druyan, writer of Cosmos: Possible Worlds (2019)
― Ann Druyan, writer of Cosmos: Possible Worlds (2019)
mirar al cielo es una de las actividades que nos une a todos.
Eclipsed, i, ii, and iii (2020-2022) - aluminum printed Photographs