Gray Benko - South Carolina
a story about beauty that has nothing to do with the pandemic
Once upon a time, when I first started my photography business, I was married to a very kind man, named Marty. Our marriage lasted 8 years. We were best friends and extremely poor the entire time. At one point, we could only afford one pair of shoes each. I knew my shoes would need to work for every occasion.
Reader, being poor is hard for a lot of serious reasons, but for someone as silly as me, the hardest was never being able to buy beautiful things. I decided to get a little wild about my shoe purchase. I bought tomato-red leather cowboy boots. Rain or shine, winter and summer, I wore those damn boots everywhere; at home, to work, to church (when I still went to church) for YEARS.
Eventually, as all beautiful things, my boots began to fall apart. We couldn’t afford to replace them. The red leather on the toes was soft, and as wrinkled as a kind, old face. Their black sole was unstitching and beginning to flop off. Little bits of its leather were scraped off on the sole’s edges revealing the brown beneath.
Me, baby Shiloh, and the red boots.
Marty and I had three children who were all under age six at the time. Most days, I was as exhausted as my boots. All of my energy went into parenting and building my business. All of our money did too. We were barely getting by and though Christmas was coming, we agreed to not spend anything on presents for each other. We agreed on one small present for each kid, and a Charlie Brown tree.
But the father of my children surprised me. On Christmas morning, I opened a packaged that contained my old red boots. He had stitched the floppy sole back on. He had taken a black sharpie and colored in along all of the sole’s rubbed off edges. I KNOW. I cannot write this without a lump in my throat. I would like to tell you I was immediately overcome with gratitude when I pulled my beloved boots out of the box, but it’s not the truth. As I slipped them on and felt their softer than ever leather around my ankles, part of me was moved, of course I was.
But the biggest part of me was so utterly disappointed.
I am ashamed to report, as Marty gave me the MOST tender gift in the tender history of creative couples of ALL tender time, all I could manage to give him in return was a small, sad smile. My cold heart was frozen in the dreary thought of having to wear the same pair of old boots for who knew how much longer. It seemed too unfair that we should work so hard for so many years, only to have the reprieve of beauty constantly out of reach. I’ve never needed much, I swear, I haven’t — but the particular artist in me then and now, wants to live, wear, dream and be, ALL beauty, ALL the time.
You, smart reader, are probably beginning to sense what it would take me another EIGHT YEARS of hard work, heartbreak, courage and MANY mistakes to learn: I didn’t understand the true nature of beautiful things.
I didn’t understand that beauty is a thousand layers beyond appearance and form.
I didn’t understand that form without those layers is not beauty at all.
I didn’t know beauty could not be bought, or forced. That when you set out to “do beauty,” you will miss it for sure.
I didn’t know beauty could only be seen if you learned how to LOOK with beauty in your own eyes.
I didn’t understand beauty as wild and numinous — as the soul’s calling and homecoming.
Some part of my subconscious suspected of course, as every human spirit does, as yours does now, the infinite nature of beauty, unmatched in its ability to sustain, inspire and return us to ourselves.
The human heart is obsessed with beauty.
Otherwise I wouldn’t have spent my life chasing it, however misguided, and we wouldn’t have an entire culture still starving because in our haste and hunger to buy beauty, we mistakenly built around beauty’s imposters; glamour and status.
If I had understood any of that, I would have been able to cry then, as I am crying now thinking of those beautiful red boots. How they were made immeasurably more beautiful by the heartbreak of a struggling, young couple, and the gesture of a loving husband who knew his wife wanted more, but gave the absolute most that he was able to give—a stitched back on, sharpie filled-in sole.
To this day, accepting gifts is a challenge for me. I feel undeserving. I want to hide every time. Maybe it’s my once upon a time rejection of such a beautiful pure gift that makes me feel this way. I think receiving real beauty is hard for a lot of people to feel worthy of. Beauty is intense! I think that’s partly why we substitute with poor imitations of beauty like whatever new thing money can buy, a style we *think fits beauty’s "formula" (hint, beauty is the opposite of formulaic) or seeking approval by digital masses instead of real love by a treasured and trusted few. Our culture taught us to want these things, and although they are not inherently wrong, when they are our primary goal, they leave us far from ourselves, and hungrier than ever.
But I don’t think true beauty would have us hide from her gift. Beauty calls us to forgive ourselves every morning with the sun, wants to reconcile our shame and invite us back to our bodies, wants to mirror our yin and yang with the sky and the sea, wants to sing us to sleep each night with the moon (ideally the actual moon, not pictures of it on our phone).
This kind of beauty is available now, and was always available to me no matter my financial security or how much I lost. But until I replaced entitlement with gratitude and constant distraction with mindful presence, I was blind to beauty’s abundance.
I left my marriage to Marty for many reasons, and I do not regret it. But I left in search of beauty, holding only half its map of wonder. In the 8 years since my divorce, it’s taken losing another relationship, my identity (several times over), a whole lot of money and nearly my mind, to realize what I was looking for did not exist externally, but was waiting patiently in my own pockets. I needed to do the hard work of radical self compassion, and radical responsibility for my own life to be able to hear again the beauty and purpose, already whole in my heart. Now, the core skill set of beauty is the tool box I use for my art, my life, relationships, and teaching others to do the same:
Wonder
Creative Presence
Gratitude
Empathy
Complexity
Mystery
Profound attention
Flaws
Essence
Embodiment
Wildness
Integrity
The elemental
Light and dark
Spirit
Solitude
Stillness
Though the outdoors, may not be available to all, I think everything on that list is available to us within our inner landscapes. I offer beauty especially right now because of its power to meet and soften fear’s hard edges. The best part? You don’t have to earn any of it. We love beauty so much because it is OUR true nature. So you simply have to allow, immerse, invite, and notice consistently to bring your awareness of beauty rushing back into your life. Warning: it may take a leeetle (or 8 years going on a lifetime) of practice to REALLY get the hang of it. But I can help, if you want me to.
I still constantly crave beautiful things. I think that’s ok. I still wish to be able to buy great works of art and piles of books. I want to experience transcendent live music, eat delicious foods, and dwell in gorgeous wabi-sabi interiors full of light and well designed objects where form meets intention in the most elegantly flawed ways. But honestly, right now, I miss libraries and thrift stores the most. And I know I am never removed from the beauty of this complex, yet pure moment, as it is, and neither are you.
““Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.””
Things may be dark, but I’ll be here, doing my best to keep the light on for you.
Love,
Yan
Liked what you heard about beauty?
You’ll like it even more from this dear man.
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A TORNADO, A PANDEMIC, DIRTY AIRPLANES, OH MY!
"Laughter is the virus that infects us with humanity." - Luis Alberto Urrea
photo via @asliceofhistory
It’s your old pal yan, coming at you from the bottom of a "what is liiiiiiiife?" wail. And also? A wink and a smile. Let me tell you why.
I have spent the last two weeks photographing 10 families and teaching at two conferences in Nashville and Atlanta. I was in Nashville the night the tornado hit. The surreal warning sirens shook me out of sleep. We were safe, but whole neighborhoods were not.
When I was a child, I had migraines as early as age four. They usually came to wake me from my dreams. I would stay up all night howling, begging for the pain to leave me. No medicine helped. I never felt better until I vomited. As soon as I did, the pain that had felt like a million tiny knives in my left eye just minutes before, completely vanished. How could it disappear so fast like that? What's more, in its place, a highly pleasant, relaxation rushed in to take the pain's place, tingling all down my body. I always slept best and longest after a migraine.
I have long been interested in similar moments of transfiguration. Not the moment of forced optimism. Not the moment of emphasizing the light by pretending the dark does not exist. But the moment and place where the light and dark meet--where they nearly seem one and the same.
There is a holy, yet secular moment where what was pain, gives way to relief, where tears become laughter, where fear becomes courage.
With all the respect and radical compassion in my heart for whatever you may be feeling and experiencing, I want you to know I think the time we are living in has vast opportunity for transfigurative moments like these. Against our will, and much to our concern, we find the whole world swept in a pandemic forcing us to become slow, quiet and still. Are we brave enough to meet this moment with patience, creativity and profound attention? Are we bold enough to sense for how the light may greet the dark? Are we soft enough to be the light that may meet someone else's dark and provide relief?
In that spirit, as I sit contemplating what my own livelihood will now have in store--one based in travel and gatherings --as I both grieve and marvel at all of the new opportunities I can sense beginning to rise from the limits of our current atmosphere, I want to share with you 5 hard things I have witnessed in the last month traveling and working away from home and family, as well as 5 magnificently bright things. Lastly, I will leave you with 5 life affirming, "dark meeting light-esque," films you could watch as you self isolate in an effort to stop the continued spread.
I can totally envision you cuddling onto couches with your families, laughing, crying, and letting hope plant itself as a seed in your cracked open heart.
HARD
1. A devastating tornado in Nashville, Tennessee (yes I was there for it. I was safe, but the devastation was vast and 24 lives were lost)
2. A friend and client losing their father.
3. The rise and spread of Coronavirus creating nationwide cancellations of events, flights, schools (etc etc etc), including my own workshops and photo shoots, resulting in the loss of many, many dollars.
4. Photo sessions taking place in very dark conference rooms, and rainy locations. Me thinking, "oh crap, I shoot film, this is gonna be rough."
5. A final walk with a former lover, ending with two huge blisters on my feet, and a non linear grief I am just sick to death of feeling in my heart.
HARD MERGED WITH BRIGHT WHEN
1. The day following the tornado, I was able to attend a benefit honky tonk dance hall where various liberals and conservatives came together to 2 stepped it out on the dance floor in name of tornado relief.
2. Made grief into art as I got to photograph a friend's family, heard stories about their father, shared so many laughs, and yes, a few tears.
3. Stuck at a conference where it was too late to cancel, and getting one LAST (maybe for a long time) hit, of the electricity that comes with creative companionship. I leaned hard into the privilege it is to teach and cheer for and learn from a room full of diverse artists. I know that collective energy will nourish us all during self isolation. We cycled out, now we take a turn going in.
4. Without fail, staying in the low lit rooms I had to work with, and loving on the family in front of me, like the dark ain't no thang. Miraculously, EVERY.TIME. The clouds eventually parted, and astonishing golden light poured in for at least a handful of images.
5. Sobbing on my final airplane home, releasing grief after long weeks of travel. I was sitting there with a hat pulled down to cover my eyes, when the passenger next to me, reached over with sudden tenderness to pull out my tray table for me. I cursed and laughed at my blisters both real and metaphorical. Then I wrote a poem and thanked my former lover, now friend for being my muse. For giving me the opportunity to transfigure one of creativity's greatest functions.
I tell you these things not so you feel sorry for me, but to help illustrate that this reality: life is usually really terrible and really wonderful at the DAMN same time. Within the definition of light there should always be room left for dark. The fastest route to suffering is hunting for the path upon, which there is no pain. Pain can be a portal to light, but only if you honor it for what it is:
UNCOMFORTABLE.
That's ok. Your soul is getting so sexy as you say yes to growing bigger to hold it. You could try to exile your fear, but in doing so, you might lose your compassion as well. So why not instead, exile your interpretation of fear as being a bad thing. Don't get rid of it. Dance with it. Dance with me. We are sure to fall. But we will try to lift each other back up when we do.
5 LIFE AFFIRMING TRANSFIGURATIVE FILMS
1. HAROLD AND MAUDE - A boy obsessed with death learns from an 80 year old mentor and friend how to finally live.
2. LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL - Set during World War 2, a story about the necessity of unnecessary things to retain our humanity
3. KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS - "His compassion taught me mine," an animated epic story that emphasizes creativity, bravery, and the importance of the flaws in our human nature.
4. DICKINSON - A series on Apple TV that reimagines the life of poet Emily Dickinson, and reminds us how often great artists have to forge ahead despite being cast as well, weirdos.
5. INFINITELY POLAR BEAR/THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS - Two different movies of two single dads. Mark Ruffalo. Will Smith. It’s possible I'm including this as a final option as an attempt to manifest a partner for myself. I can neither confirm nor deny.
All the love in the dark light universe,
Yan
The need for light and dark.
“I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being. - Hafiz”
It's December 31, 2019. Appropriately, I'm in an airport, just as I've been in airports so, so very frequently this year. I've been sick and dark since Christmas Eve. Im trying not to cough and see a bright spot of light on the delta desk. I can't find where it's coming from. We feel miles away from windows. I look up and up and only see the fake lights in their round ceiling holes. But the light on the delta desk is not fake. The light grabbing that baby's cheek as his mother struggles to check his car seat, is as natural as all the light my cheeks have sought-- have fought for really, this year. The light, as it always does, surprises and delights me. How did it make it's way here, to hold this baby, when it's mother cannot, to make me wonder at its source, it's constant ability to curve and cut through spaces in one hot honey move toward a feeling resembling hope and the best parts of a laugh?
Finally I find it. Past lines of tsa pre check and "all gates this way," signs, there is one corner of a tall, mostly obscured window-- there is that rascal of a sun, wrapped around an edge I didn't think she could wrap. I tend to underestimate her. I turn my face toward her for the ____(number of times i wish i had some way of counting) this year, and close my eyes. "You've found me again, in an impossible moment." I say thank you. I cry.
"The light says I love you," I think. The phrase that was the song of my year. The reminder that was at the bottom of every bowl of broken heart. The sock I thought I lost in the grief pile of Laundary.
My wish for you today and always is so simple:
May the light keep finding you.
In all your dark places. In moments when you've forgotten the sun and warmth as concepts, let alone things that exist. May the light find you in your lonely, long hours. May it remind you of love. The love that you may mistakenly seek elsewhere but actually ARE---right now, even through the cold pauses and starts you gasp through.
May the light keep finding you. But even MORE IMPORTANT than that, may you notice when she does. May you turn to her, pause to touch your forehead to hers, absorb her ancient illumination, share with her your prayer that we treat the earth in a way she and we can sustain.
May the light keep finding you. And if you come too near it's burn, may you be prepared with shade. May you have protectors from the sometimes surreal seer of its bright proclivities. May it help you remember the universal need for dark, the heart's whole thirst for seasons.
Will you do me one favor? Will you keep reminding me of this fundamental truth in 2020? I'll do my best to remind you too. I think a lot of life is about passing the same truths back and forth. Friends helping one another remember, when our human hearts inevitably forget. That in order to illuminate, light, must find darkness to touch.
Yours,
Yan
a return to beauty
IN THE REAL IS THE BEAUTIFUL.
IN THE TRUTH IS MAGIC.
LET’S SPEND A DAY RETURNING TO WHAT IS REAL AND ESSENTIAL ABOUT OURSELVES, OUR WORK, AND OUR SUBJECTS.
IN CLASS LEARNING
* evening photo experience
* practicing presence
* connect with light and environment both inside and outside of the home
* make ultimate space of subject and photographer
* individual attention on your work and process (in the form of a 40 minute creative counsel with me via video chat prior to the workshop)
* practical tips and tools for how to clear space for authentic beauty to unfold no matter what or who you are photographing
* guidance on how to find ease with your subjects and yourself as you shoot
* instructions on the four components of finding your unique voice
* one hour Q&A I will answer on any subject
Every human being’s brain is exquisitely, uniquely assembled by their biology and life experiences. And so, every human engages with the world in their own specific way. What is beautiful to one person may not be experienced in the same way by someone else. Beauty manifests itself differently in each of our lives and enters our consciousness through varying sensory pathways. Only then do we begin to make meaning out of it, which is the real work of beauty.
By intentionally incorporating beautiful elements that encompass all five senses, A Return to Beauty Workshop will more deeply engage every attendee. My aim is to activate beauty in each one of your senses to involve more of your body in the beauty sensing & making experience. This practice will cultivate your attention to beauty and help you create the photographs you see in your mind.
We will soak in beauty, dip our hands in the mess of it, feel it any way we can. Beauty doesn't ask of us to show up perfectly or prettily. It can be gritty, sorrowful, and full of paradox, and it only asks that we show up honestly, including every part of us we assume beauty would dismiss. That is precisely when beauty can do its alchemy—when our limits begin to clear into windows for our essence to shine through.
A BEAUTY OF THE SENSES
sight
May we be attentive to each other and to the natural world.
May we examine the shapes and colors and lines that surround us.
May we acknowledge the light that moves between us and how by it we are all illuminated.
sound
May we learn when to speak and when to stay silent.
May we hear the resonant beauty of our own voices and the music composed in their joining.
May we lean our ears down to the earth and listen to its hum.
taste
May we join hands around the table and break bread together.
May we wet our mouths with water.
May we taste the salt of the earth on our tongues.
smell
May we draw close enough to inhale each other’s sweetness.
May we experience the freshness of morning and smell rain wet the dry earth.
touch
May we reach across the spaces between and again discover the truth of human skin.
May we touch the soft parts of each other and hold the faces of the ones we love in our palms.
May we feel the ground beneath our feet and the wind kiss our faces.
“Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
Our bodies and brains work to perceive beauty, but our hearts (and minds and spirits) translate it and find its meaning. The beauty of the senses, of embodied beauty, reveals a greater infinite truth when examined.
Real beauty can be difficult to witness. At the heart of it lies what is real and true. Beauty can act as a window into the life of another or a mirror reflecting a truth about yourself.
If we are attentive to it, the universe will open up and reveal its beauty to us.
beauty of the heart
“Where woundedness can be refined into beauty a wonderful transfiguration takes place.”
John O’Donohue
“To be alive: not just the carcass But the spark.
That’s crudely put, but...
If we’re not supposed to dance, Why all this music?”
Gregory Orr
beauty of the mind
“Beauty spins and the mind moves. To catch beauty would be to understand how the impertinent stability in vertigo is possible. But no, delight need not reach so far. To be running breathlessly, but not yet arrived, is itself delightful, a suspended moment of living hope.”
Anne Carson
beauty of the spirit
“Beauty is the harvest of presence.”
David Whyte
“The texture of the world, its filigree and scrollwork, means that there is the possibility for beauty here, a beauty inexhaustible in its complexity, which opens to my knock, which answers in me a call I do not remember calling, and which trains me to the wild and extravagant nature of the spirit I seek.”
Annie Dillard
Click below if you want to experience the magic of A Return to Beauty workshop