We Are More Than Big Heads

On Grafton Street (M.A. Reilly,  Dublin, 2008)

In Phenomenology of Perception, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1945) writes: "Our own body is in the world as the heart is in the organism: it keeps the visible spectacle constantly alive, it breathes life into it and sustains it inwardly, and with it forms a system" (p. 235)


Knowing is embodied.  

Say it.

I feel this each time I lift my Nikon and connect with a subject.  

I hear the shutter rotate, sound.

I feel my fingers sliding and turning knobs in order to to set the aperture, shutter speed and ISO--to set the conditions for what I think I want.

My camera has heft. 
It weighs. 

Surfacing (M.A. Reilly, Tuscany, 2009)

Late in the day after hours of shooting the muscles in my arms ache.  

It is a good ache. A necessary ache.

A knowing ache.

I feel the weight of body when I look down and wonder where that bruise now forming on my shin first happened.

Etta And Butch Go For A Ride (M.A. Reilly,  NYC, 2010)

200,000+ images later and I can feel the weight of my camera without lifting it.  

I can make the image without taking it.


Art guides and (in)forms my teaching. It helps me to remember that we are more than big heads on parade.

Far more.

Be for Me, Like Rain  (M.A. Reilly,  NYC, 2010)

The Ordinary (M.A. Reilly, Teaneck, NJ, 2013)

Moonrise Over Atlantic (M.A. Reilly, Rockport, Maine, 2012)

Watching  (M.A. Reilly,  Newburgh, NY, 2011)