Cloud Conversations & Image Stories-Leonardo's Theory

How does Leonardo's theory of chance images “accidental” inspiration relate to clouds? In Cloud Conversations & Image Stories Margaret A. Harrell weaves her own cloud photography into the art history of chance images bringing in related drawings scrying and our relationship to Mother Nature. Regarding Robert Desnos’ trance drawings Andre Bréton called the “tangled web of lines” a result of chance but the figures that “appear suddenly from this chaos” he said were “born somewhat like those one sees in clouds or in the cracks in walls.” Soak up the beauty as these clouds reveal images many of which look like paintings. In nooks in corners of the photo an unexpected face or whole scene appears. Harrell began photography walking in the steps of dreams that showed her looking up seeing scenes unfold shifting panoramas everyone else failed to notice. One day the dream stepped into reality. In this book Harrell gives Leonardo da Vinci a prominent role as he found clouds and other nondescript stimulants to the imagination useful. He had a theory about stains blots clouds as have other artists such as Victor Hugo. Harrell brings them in joining with her to take on a relatively untackled topic in art history and creativity: where creation comes from. She asks repeatedly whose images is she photographing? Why do they appear to her in clouds but not on a blank canvas? Printed in full Premium color each image composed only of sunlight dazzles down on the page.. BOOK LIFE REVIEW:“ 'I see in the clouds a cast of characters speaking to me' Harrell (The Hell’s Angels Letters) writes in this searching soaring collection of cloud photography an art she practices contemplates and celebrates while exploring its deep mysteries. 'Whose are the images I see as if miraculously in creating my own photography? How did they get into the sky? Is my mind—really capable of making up such elaborate images?' Harrell’s own images striking and surprising suggest multitudes yielding rich new visions of figures and scenes the longer one gazes into their tufting splendor. An early photograph captioned “Angel Squadron” for example might offer a browser at first glance a suggestion of a solitary winged figure. Let your eyes linger your imagination engage though and the seemingly abstract cloud gauze around that angel can bloom into a host every billow and hump alive with sudden definition.. Harrell's cloud photos are collaborative between artist and nature between beholder and photograph between our at-a-glance perceptions and the deeper expansive visions we tend to allow ourselves only in meditation or reverie. In inviting prefatory essays Harrell persuasively links the art of cloud photography to “chance” images from the history of art especially to da Vinci’s contention that 'by indistinct things'—by this he means 'the stains of walls or ashes of a fire or clouds or mud or like places' 'the mind is stimulated to new inventions.'Harrell’s writing and photography here combine the ecstatic with disciplined research and honed practices. The result is both inspired—the photographs reward patience with revelations—and inspiring.. . . A chapter on clouds 'as a meditative tool' explicitly encourages what the photos implicitly do urging the discovery of 'minute interconnections' in nature. Excerpts from others’ work on the history of chance images illuminate the material. - Book Life ReviewGreat for fans of: Robin Kelsey’s Photography and the Art of Chance Rachel Eisendrath’s Gallery of Clouds.REVIEW BY SANDRO SERRADIFALCO Italian art critic: The intensity of beauty is expressed through a rare use of perspective...An artist talented in technique...reproducing an intense inner moment of solitude alone with the sky and the clouds.