About
“Alone” by Edgar Allan Poe
From Childhood’s hour I have not been
as others were —
I have not seen as others saw —
I could not bring my passions from a common spring —
From the same source I have not taken my sorrow —
I could not awaken my heart to joy at the same tone —
And all I lov’d, I lov’d alone —
Then — in my Childhood — in the dawn of a most stormy life — was drawn
From ev’ry depth of good and ill
The Mystery which binds me still —
From the torrent, or the fountain —
From the red cliff of the mountain —
From the red sun that “round me roll’d”
In it’s autumn tint of gold —
From the lightning in the sky
as it pass’d me flying by —
From the thunder, and the storm —
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view —
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
It is the source of all true art and science.
He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, his eyes are closed
– Albert Einstein –
Martin van Schouten (‘s-Gravenhage) has been engaged in photography for quite some time and is very pleased with that.
“My photos are a look at how I see Reality ; a reflection of – for many often hidden – ancient times and hidden circumstances that seem to be over and dead. But the first perception deceives “.
Martin believes that “the order of things” does not give the opportunity to fool around with it, and does not allow itself to be put aside by artificial modernities.
The modern view of mankind being all-knowing, the human arrogance of the illusion of self-creation, extreme scientific idolatry without a comprehensive wise framework due to a wrong ranking of values and interests, and
commerciality are, in my opinion, modernities with which we are making crucial mistakes which – if we continue to do so – will unavoidably have major and serious consequences.
These harmful modernities for mankind, nature and well-being are often the result of adhesion problems.
The denial of higher values and ideals than yourself, the delusion of not having to be accountable to anyone in life or death, is in my opinion a denial of reality.
The reality that really matters and what we often ignore, is presented to us from the realms of past and future, and even in present times and are here to see for those who can, the invisible, the eternal.
The denial of this view and the following of today’s modern vision leads to a variety of consequences for that person and society which causes “personal and social uprooting, impoverishment, individualism, indifference, a constant state of not really being happy and a proposterous confidence by which Prometheus had fallen directly.
My photos show the actual magical and mysterious reality that is beautiful but sometimes also seems threatening.
Nature does not give you the chance to fool around with it ; to deny this means irrevocably the downfall.
A kind of false beauty has emerged that will not turn out to be a profit, but a loss because you will let the really important things pass you by.
I think that insight is very essential”.