Rumi wrote, “What you seek is seeking you,” and I have discovered this to be true. Energies connect across time and space and connections are made. It can feel strange, the extraordinary, I mean. Digital communications increase these chances that we interact beyond our reach. It is a time of chaos theory, where the seemingly unlikely… happens. Photography remains at the center of this.
Images tell us a story, offer us a destiny, artifacts that life is real, that indeed all of this is happening as we have seen it. We take pictures, we print them, post them, showcase them in any medium. We want memories, souvenirs, things we can remember long after we have seen them. They reference our lives back to us in ways we don’t always consider when we’re in front of them.
What makes photography powerful is its populist appeal. The cell phone camera, has become the most ubiquitous means to capture reality as it is happening. The fact that is both a camera and a telephone is like a peanut butter cup—two things that work magically together. We can transmit photos the way we have transmitted our voices. We talk in pictures today. And we can reach into time and space and connect with people in ways so far beyond the mundane it is… inspiring.
On the seventh day of every month, Beth Lilly’s cell phone rings. She stops everything she is doing and answers it. The person on the other end asks for a reading. Lilly takes three photos wherever she is, sends them to the callers, and they reply with their question. The result is The Oracle@WiFi (Kehrer Verlag), a collection of questions and answers the likes of which you have never seen before.
Question
What happens to us when we die?
Asked January 1, 2012 at 9:48am
Answer:
Photo 1: A bald white Styrofoam manequinn head floating outside a street fair tent filled with clothes.
Photo 2: A little blonde girl in a pink dress crouched in the center of an empty parquet tile floor set in a huge room.
Photo 3: A poster of Mother Teresa celebrating November as home care and hospice month reflects in a window on the street reflecting the palatial exterior of the building mentioned in photo 2.
Question
How will the world change in 2012?
Asked October 7, 2010 at 5:09pm
Answer
Photo 1: A man in a Dia De Los Muertos costume stands in front of a stone wall holding a skull mask.
Photo 2: Cropped crotch shot of a man sitting, pouring a beer into a glass.
Photo 3:A burlap cartoon lion head, wearing a crown, hovers precariously on the edge of something.
Question
Does true love exist?
Asked on November 7, 2007 at 1:18pm
Answer
Photo 1: A close up of a desk. “Please Ring for Service” is printed on a piece of paper next to a buzzer.
Photo 2: Portrait of a Xerox machine.
Photo 3: Close up of the back window of a car focusing on the decals of a man, woman, and dog.
The Oracle@WiFi renews my faith in the mysterious, the possibilities that occur al the time, the seeming unlikeliness of the common unconscious asserts itself over and over again, like that Xerox machine. This book is filled with enigmatic epigrams, ideas and energies floating through the cosmos, the power of suggestion and the revelation that we can find what we are looking for anywhere. Perception is everything and interpretation makes it happen. The good, the bad, and anything in between, what we want to believe we shall see. And photographs, and in particular photography books, create a permanence to the image, a feeling that now is forever and in that we find eternity.
Miss Rosen
