Master photographers Flint Sparks, John Barclay, Rikki Cooke, and Dewitt Jones share personal experiences and passion for their art.
About this Event
Awakened by Beauty: Intimate Conversations about Contemplative Photography
An Online Series Hosted by Threshold: A Place for Community, Creativity and Well-Being & Led by Flint Sparks, PhD
Series Dates:
July 30, August 6, 13 and 20
2:00-3:30 p.m. CST
Tickets for the entire series*:
$150/$125/$100 Seasoned & Pro Photographer tiered rates. Proceeds support the artists, Threshold, and cultivate Inspired Seers.
$50/$25/$10 Inspired Seer tiered rates. Pay what you can. Proceeds support the artists, Threshold, and an Inspired Seeing Community.
Click here for tickets.
Recordings of all the conversations will be made available to those who purchase the series.
The Series:
We have so many reasons why we photograph. Our desires often go far beyond simply making good images. Photography can ignite our deepest longing for a direct connection with the beauty and magic of life. In this series of presentations and intimate conversations among friends, we will speak to our personal experiences as photographers, including the passion which called us to this path as well as what opened to us as we followed it. In this four-part series, we will share some of our images and also discuss what this way of seeing and living has taught us.
This offering, however, is not about photographic technique and is not simply for photographers. We will be speaking about all of life, the light and the shadow, and what it means to dive below the surface of everyday experience using our cameras. We hope to inspire all of us to see image-making as a practice of connecting to life in a deeper and richer way.
While our beautiful building on Atwood Ave in Madison, WI is currently closed, our Threshold Wheelhouse captures and re-envisions an online hosting platform for events featuring exceptional performers and presenters, artists, and makers. Help us support these masterful artists as well as helping us sustain and grow our venue which offers them a home and a platform.
If you have any questions, please contact info@atthreshold.com.
*Tickets are priced in two categories that reflect what, we feel, offers more equitable access to this very special series. The higher price range is for photographers who are paying a professional fee. The reduced price is for the non-professional who is curious about ways of deepening their ability to see and to capture images as a contemplative practice. The three price tiers within each of the two categories offer a base price plus added opportunities for generosity towards the artists and organizers and future projects in contemplative photography. Please choose the category and tier that best reflects your ability and considerations. Much gratitude.
Seeing Simply - Simply Seeing with Rikki Cooke
Thursday, August 13, 2:00 p.m. CST
Zen practitioners speak of “beginner’s mind” as the grounded simplicity and full presence which allows us to see most clearly and receive the world most fully. In this presentation, we will return to this essential practice, the place of being a beginner, full of awe. Rikki states, “What I am curious about is: What turns my head? What grabs my attention? What takes me before I can identify it? I am interested in core vision: the level of seeing before words, categories, or response. Noticing what touches me, inspires me, allows me to see as a child, discovering the incredible wonder of the life around me for the first time.” These will be our questions as Rikki shares his imagery from his early days in India to his most recent moments on Molokai. These are elemental questions that each of us can ask as we look around us and find what calls, holds and awakens us.
Rikki Cooke has been a professional photographer for over 40 years, much of that time working as a freelance photographer for The National Geographic Society. He traveled the world on a variety of assignments, but his main interest has been focusing on the innate beauty of his subjects and honoring all that he encounters. Rikki and his wife, Bronwyn, are the authors of the award-winning book, Molokai, An Island in Time. Molokai was central to his childhood, and today he and Bronwyn live on lands that have been with his family for 100 years. They run the educational and arts center, Hui Ho’olana — a living sanctuary — which is dedicated to healing its lands as well as the students it helps to inspire www.rikkicooke.com.