📷 HERMIN ABRAMOVITCH - part 6
HERMIN ABRAMOVITCH - PHOTOGRAPHER - PART 6
About one month ago I posted Part 5. This is a series about my friend Hermin Abramovitch. Now here is part 6, the final installment.
The initial post was Part 1.
I have known Hermin Abramovitch for something like 20 years or more.
We had both been on a photography site called Trek Lens. When Hermin got canned from there I asked him what happened. Apparently, he had a fight with the owner of the site. He recommended I follow him onto DeviantArt, a site much better suited for posting about my artwork.
He posts some poignant and sometimes humorous descriptions with his photos, and I am copying those under the respective photographs.
Note: check this post out on Busy - you can view the images much larger!
THE GATES OF HELL
In the hot, expansive Karakum desert in Turkmenistan, near the 350-person village of Darvaza, is a hole 230 feet wide that has been on fire for over 40 years.
Locals know the crater as “The Gates of Hell.” Its glow can be seen for miles around.
The Gates of Hell were created in 1971 when a Soviet drilling rig accidentally punched into a massive underground natural gas cavern, causing the ground to collapse and the entire drilling rig to fall in. Having punctured a pocket of gas, poisonous fumes began leaking at an alarming rate. To head off a potential environmental catastrophe, the Soviets set the hole alight. The crater hasn’t stopped burning since.
The Soviet drilling rig is believed to still be down there somewhere, on the other side of the “Gates of Hell.”
THE PLACE WE LIVED
Beyond the horizon of the place we lived when we were young
In a world of magnets and miracles
Our thoughts strayed constantly and without boundary
The ringing of the division bell had begun
THE WHEEL OF LIFE
Among Buddhists, all living beings are born into one of the six states of existence:
Beings in Hell The lowest and worst realm, wracked by torture and characterized by aggression.
Hungry Ghost The realm of hungry spirits; characterized by great craving and eternal starvation;
Animals The realm of animals and livestock, characterized by stupidity and servitude.
Asura The realm of anger, jealousy, and constant war; the Asura (Ashura) are demigods, semi-blessed beings; they are powerful, fierce and quarrelsome; like humans, they are partly good and partly evil. See Hachi Bushu (8 Legions) for details.
Humans The human realm; beings who are both good and evil; enlightenment is within their grasp, yet most are blinded and consumed by their desires.
Deva The realm of heavenly beings filled with pleasure; the deva hold godlike powers; some reign over celestial kingdoms; most live in delightful happiness and splendor; they live for countless ages, but even the Deva belong to the world of suffering (samsara) -- for their powers blind them to the world of suffering and fill them with pride -- and thus even the Deva grow old and die; some say that because their pleasure is greatest, so too is their misery.
All are trapped in this wheel of life, as the Tibetans call it. All beings within the six realms are doomed to death and rebirth in a recurring cycle over countless ages -- unless they can break free from desire and attain enlightenment. Further, upon death, all beings are reborn into a lower or a higher realm depending on their actions while still alive.
TIME TRAP
"Time is infinite, but the things in time, the concrete bodies, are finite. They may indeed disperse into the smallest particles; but these particles, the atoms, have their determinate numbers, and the numbers of the configurations which, all of themselves, are formed out of them is also determinate. Now, however long a time may pass, according to the eternal laws governing the combinations of this eternal play of repetition, all configurations which have previously existed on this earth must yet meet, attract, repulse, kiss, and corrupt each other again"
Heinrich Heine
"This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!"
Nietzsche
Each of us, as the mythical Sisyphus, will carry his rock up the hill again and again in a flat circle of time.
Albert Camus said in his book The Myth of Sisyphus: “This myth is tragic because its hero is conscious. Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him?” Sisyphus is an absurd hero. The greatest moment comes to him as he walks down the mountain after the rock has fallen. What are his thoughts in this moment of reflection, a moment of glimpse into his own and humanity’s soul? It is also a short respite before the next attempt is redeemed from its hopelessness by the power of that thought stronger than the rock. It is this human capacity for reflection that enables us to recognize our destiny as tragic; yet in the midst of the tragedy, there is also joy and exhilaration. Sisyphus marches down the mountain, seizes the rock, pushes it to the top, the rock falls down of its own weight and it does not crush him, but changes him as he transcends himself, his fate, his existence. And then he starts his effort all over again, in a tragic protest that makes his existence meaningful, as it carries with it the consciousness of futility.
TO MOON
It takes about 3 days for a spacecraft to reach the Moon. During that time a spacecraft travels at least 240,000 miles (386,400 kilometers).
And all you create
And all you destroy
And all that you do
And all that you say
And all that you eat
And everyone you meet
And all that you slight
And everyone you fight
And all that is now
And all that is gone
And all that's to come
And everything under the sun is in tune
But the sun is eclipsed by the moon
P. Floyd
WASTE
“Waste is the highest virtue one can achieve in advanced capitalist society. If you put an end to all the waste, mass panic would ensue and the global economy would go haywire. Waste is the fuel of contradiction, and contradiction activates the economy, and an active economy creates more waste.”
Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance
We stayed in contact from time to time, and several times recently, I went again to DeviantArt to see what he was up to.
Already back in April 2013, frustrated with peeps ripping off his photos, he posted this Journal Entry saying sarcastically "Everything in my account is for free" - and here is the kicker: there were actually peeps so dense they took it seriously and profusely thanked him (you can read some of the comments in the link I provided).
He is a very talented, prolific and inventive photographer - and I only scratch the surface with some of the work I present here. To see his work, go to DeviantArt - AHERMIN.
Currently working in Israel as a Quality Assurance Manager at Solcon Industries LTD. - previously as Regulatory Affairs Manager at Harmonic and at GE Healthcare (Six Sigma Black Belt). He studied at the University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest, Romania. He speaks English, Hebrew, French, Romanian and Russian.
You can also see some work and read about him on the TUTTART PITTURA blog site
All photos are © Hermin Abramovitch - and you may inquire about it via e-mail - in spite of what his DeviantArt Journal entry says, it would be the decent thing to do!
RESPECT THE ARTISTS COPYRIGHT!
Similar features will be posted in future, stay tuned!
Previously posted
PART 1, PART 2 , PART 3, PART 4 and PART 5
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About - Introduction on Steemit
Superb promotion of a deserving artist! The plethora of fellow geniuses he quotes makes him exceptionally cohesive. Rooting for him to stay this excellent all the way! (And give yourself a pat on the back while we are at it!)
Thank you for sharing his most amazing art. Do you still stay in contact? I have to admit I am wondering about the free use of his art. Not because I want to use it, but in wondering whether or not his blog was/is sarcastic or a statement of waste in consumerism of even our own owning? Don't know if I'm making sense and I just quickly read your post.
I do like that it's got me thinking :) Found you on @sukhasanasister repost.
it was meant sarcastically - the rip-off on DeviantArt is quite blatant and frequent, as is elsewhere also - if you don't want your images stolen, stay away from the internet, or else have a good way of tracing and prosecuting perps. I am on Flickr Pro, and with it comes a app: Pixsy that sends me a monthly report via email where my images show up on the internet - and I can then send take-down notices if I want to: they do it all for me, all I have to do is just mark it for take-down.
I only do this for blatant commercial use of my work - and they could even recover money for you.
My own work, I publish under Creative Commons, but with restrictions: non-commercial, no derivatives, and attribution. So basically, I don't care if you print yourself a poster of my work and put it on your bedroom wall. But I had someone taken down on Redbubble for selling T-Shirts with my design on it.
Yes, I get it. I guess everything sent out into Internet land is up for grabs, but I kind of like the idea of just not caring and continuing to throw it out there for anyone, like somehow it all comes around.
At the same time, I don't think I'd enjoy finding my image on a bunch of t-shirts someone else was selling, so I do understand and Pixsy sounds like a great way of tracking.
Thanks, Kimberly