"The past, the 20th Century

Throughout my education in the early second half of the 20th century I excelled in mathematics and the sciences. The humanities were always a drag on my grade point average but I still opted for more such courses than the minimal requirements. In mathematics Platonic idealism and Aristotelian logic reign supreme. But in college, majoring in mathematics and minoring in mechanical engineering, I was drawn in my leisure time to the literature of Dostoyevsky, Kafka, and Camus among others. From this inclination I discovered the related existential school of philosophy. In my final semester as an undergraduate I arranged with the Philosophy Department for a one semester “special study” course in existentialism. Existentialism was, and is, more of a literary trend and an outlook on life than a philosophical school. Its variations span the religious gamut from atheism to Christianity and Judaism. The ideas of existentialism had their birth in the 19th century in response to the industrial revolution and the advances in science fostering the alienation of the individual in an increasingly mechanized society. It gained further prominence in the first half of the 20th century resulting from the continuation of the mechanization, the rise of totalitarian governments and the other dramatic events that occurred in those decades and which brought to the fore the absurd quality of human existence. Existentialism responded to the conflicts between the rational and irrational components of our being. It reached its apotheosis in the 1940’s, in particular through the work of Jean Paul Sartre who coined the characterization of existentialism as “existence precedes essence”. Given the environment in which existentialism had its birth and the anxieties surrounding our individual existence that it seeks to address, most folks would say it offers a rather morose response to our predicament – and there’d be some accuracy in such an assessment.

By the early 1970’s when I came along existentialism was already in decline but for me personally the ideas, the outlook, resonated. As I look back on that time I realize that my inclinations in photography, which took serious hold in my early teens and predated my college exposure to the literature and the name, already had a strong ‘existentialist’ component. As a viewer I was drawn to the work of the depression era photographers such as Dorothea Lange, to the European street photographers, to the book “The Americans” by Robert Frank, the photo essays in Life magazine, and in particular those works that depicted seemingly alienated individuals living in a world not of their making, a world in which their essence as humans was subsumed beneath the anxieties of addressing their basic existence. Without doubt this photography played a part in shaping my philosophic outlook on life.

I would characterize the works of the mid-20th century painter Edward Hopper as having an existentialist leaning. It would not be surprising to me discover that there have been more than one master's degree thesis written characterizing the existentialism embodied in Hopper's work (although I have no explicit knowledge of such).

The present, the 21st Century

Today existentialism is little more than a historic artifact of the previous two centuries. Post-modernism is in vogue and most everyone suppresses their life anxieties via their cell phone and the internet. With the ascendancy of “Big Data” and “Artificial Intelligence” it seems the irrational side of our natures has been completely conquered. In the dawning 3rd decade of the 21st century, man’s essence is reduced to an algorithm. For me, I have completed a scientific career with the Department of Defense, I am a happily married father and grandfather, I too should have moved on and to a large extent I have. But in some ways I am an intellectual anachronism. I remain a child of the mid-20th century, one who is fascinated by the deep questions of how and why we are here and for whom the purely scientific response is inadequate. Like Dostoyevsky’s man writing his “Notes From Underground” I find this modern day Crystal Palace of AI and BigD more than a little troubling. In the middle of the night the plays of Samuel Beckett, the musings of Soren Kierkegaard, and the novels of Kafka and Camus still strike a chord with me.

My “humanities”, right brain side finds its outlet in photography. Whenever I’m asked what I like to photograph it is a struggle for me to articulate what it is that attracts me to a scene and compels me to frame a composition. Reflecting on this question, it has become clear that on a subliminal level it is my own sense of alienation and the absurd nature of human existence that draws me in to a scene and that I seek to portray in most everything at which I point my camera. Although I’ve never gone out on a photo excursion with this as a conscious intent, and until recently I was not consciously aware of its influence, that subtext was there and it has always been there, of that I am now certain.

Addendum

After having written the above on the status of existentialism in the 21st Century I am coming to the conclusion that perhaps I was wrong and that existentialism may not be simply a dead artifact from previous centuries. I am not alone (but of course a true existentialist revels in being 'alone'). I am noticing what appears to be a resurgence of interest in existentialism among the 'intelligentsia'. In particular there have been several recent books written on Kierkegaard and Camus. I read one on Camus, "A Life Worth Living" by Robert Zarestsky and I can recommend it. I even discovered that there is a philosophical video game, made around 2014, whose characters are loosely based on existentialist philosophers such as Sartre, Kierkegaard, and others. See this link Nier: Automota for details. Who'd a thought.