{"id":182,"date":"2009-11-12T20:39:33","date_gmt":"2009-11-13T01:39:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olsonfarlow.com\/?p=181"},"modified":"2009-11-12T20:39:33","modified_gmt":"2009-11-13T01:39:33","slug":"the-duality-of-our-personal-and-professional-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olsonfarlow.com\/blog\/books\/the-duality-of-our-personal-and-professional-lives","title":{"rendered":"The Duality of Our Personal and Professional Lives"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/p>\n When a gallery exhibited some of Melissa\u2019s and my photographs, we were asked to supply accompanying material\u2014so we put together this simple little book. We are working photographers, and we seldom get a chance to stop and ponder our work. But for this little book, we did. I printed 2 x 3 foot sheets of thumbnails, which we cut out and left on a counter for weeks. Melissa periodically rearranged them into diptychs and so did I… our only motive was to have pleasant pairings. Sometimes the pairing hinged simply on a gesture, a similar embrace, an emotion, color, or whatever just felt right visually. Other times the pairing worked as opposites\u2014as in the yin and yang of life. When we reflect on this visual language, it isn\u2019t so surprising that connections are made across cultures. But what was startling was seeing that these connections exist across species as well.<\/p>\n Duality, Dualism, Pairing off, Mind and Matter, Body and Soul, Two-part harmony\u2026 none of these are new concepts. If you just look at how species pair off\u2026 duality surrounds us. Not to mention that Melissa and I have lived in dual cultures for the last decade or so, and there are two of us contributing to this project. And more fundamentally, as we bounce from our comfortable little culture to radically different ones, we wonder about the basic nature of ourselves\u2014and the patina of culture layered over those basic needs.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n The hierarchy of needs for any animal is: food, safety, and sex\u2014in that order, according to a researcher I was with when they reintroduced wolves into Yellowstone. These basic requisites are at the core of every one of us, but in humans they lie beneath layers of culturally specific patina that simulate diversity. These needs are more complex because they are inter-related. Simply put, there are two things driving us at any given time. And confusion between our inner beast and our culture\u2019s groupthink, between what is \u201canimal\u201d and what is \u201chuman,\u201d shows up over and over again as we go about lives and our work as photographers.<\/p>\n The food part of this dynamic is simple: If you do not eat, you die. Bouncing between St. Moritz and Sudan made me think differently about the world in general, but especially about food. In one place there are many layers of cuisine to choose from, and in the other, the only choice left was for leaves in the tops of the trees because the ones on the lower branches had already been consumed by the many people driven out of their villages.<\/p>\n