This IS NOT A Stone (#71)

"More important than the objects themselves is what they tell you: for those who want to listen, the stone speaks. Through scars and cracks, through the traces of wind and weather, the stone speaks of the impermanence of everything earthly.

Even the stone, this hard, seemingly durable material, finally decays, decays like those who formed him, like those who ordered for him to be formed, like those to whose remembrance he was formed.

But long before he perishes, he absorbs 'images' of people, of their feelings and their ideas, thoughts that will live on as long as people exist on earth.

In images of proud and humble things the mind revives even the dead stone. To tell the history of the desire and the dream of people, of its victories and defeats, of that which perishes and that which remains – as it was once, fantastically and beautifully, brought about in stone.

Andreas Feiniger, photographer, son of Lyonel Feiniger

Number 71 in the continuous series "This IS NOT A Stone"

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To watch the previous post in this series follow this link to: 'This IS NOT A Stone #70'

Or start at the beginning: 'Everything In One Stone'

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Choosing this simple, mediocre sand stone in 1986 to be his focal point for meditation and thoughts, artist Jan van Krieken doesn't need much more; a symbol for the slipping of time, a bit of eternity amidst an ever faster moving and changing world.

While investigating and researching the artist automatically arrived at "The Philosopher's Stone", the mysterious substance that alchemists had sought for centuries. Van Krieken found out that they were essentially looking for the same thing as he was looking for by means of the stone in his pond; the pure and the everlasting.

Almost 32 years of observing and photographing that one sand stone. Sometimes covered with snow, sometimes occupied by a bird, or hidden by fallen leaves, protected by ice or serving as a warm bed for a salamander this cycle of change became a metaphore for life itself.