The Mystery of "Things"

I believe that "things" or "objects" are always more than they appear. We know how to put names on things, to analyze and categorize them, to put them to their proper uses, but we do not know how to see them with an innocent, unconditioned eye - that is, to perceive them not in terms of their functionality or value to us, but in their unfiltered immediateness, their "suchness," to borrow a delightful Buddhist term. The familiar thus defamiliarized, we see the world afresh, re-animated, re-enchanted, and often strangely surreal.

"The physical object, to me, is merely a stepping stone to an inner world where the object, with the help of the subconscious, drives and focuses perceptions, becomes transmuted into a symbol whose life is beyond the life of the objects we know..."
Clarence John Laughlin, photographer