"Of Gods and Goddesses"

"Artemis"
© Julie Pavlowski Green

Over the years, I have enjoyed reinterpreting characters from well known texts. They are imbued with such history and context that it is can be an interesting exercise to cast them in modern terms. They share the same trials and tribulations we face today.  Often, their collective emotional temperaments reflect our own society of the day. If we are familiar with the text, we can identify with the interpretation of the character being presented. 

Cosmogony (creation of the world), Theogony (the birth of the gods) and Mans interpretation of these ideas in art are of particular interest to me. As humans, we have always tried to understand our surroundings and give meaning to our exsistance. How an individual approaches their work and what they choose to explore fascinates me. What subject an artist chooses, the props and costumes used and the setting reveals the aesthetic of the individual creating the art. Even when visiting a well known subject matter, the individual can create a new vision of the universal subject base on their own interpretation. It is this interpretation that intrigues me.

"Ares"
© Julie Pavlowski Green

After reading Mark Morford's book on "Classical Mythology", I decided to photograph my own version of twelve of the main Olympian Gods and Goddesses. I found them to be a well rounded cast of characters in which a wealth of emotions and narratives could be drawn from. I was captivated by their human weaknesses which the Ancient Greeks endowed them with.

"Athena"
© Julie Pavlowski Green

Once again, I enlisted my friends and acquaintances for this project. Who could resist being photographed as an immortal God? I have had the great fortune over the years of being surrounded by like minded creatives who never cease to comply with my requests to play bit parts in my short series. As with the La Honda series, each individual was chosen based on their individual personality that, to me, resonated with the historic attributes of a particular God or Goddess. 

The evolution of my photography has always been based on my fascination with the human condition. I hope you enjoy this never before seen series of photographs titled "Of Gods and Goddesses"

Julie Pavlowski Green
February 23, 2013

"Demeter"
© Julie Pavlowski Green

Below is a general description of the Gods and Goddesses illustrated here in this blog:

APHRODITE: was the Goddess of Love, Beauty, Pleasure, Procreation and Eternal Youth. She was also the protectress of Sailors. According to the cosmogonic views of the nature of Aphrodite, she was the personification of the generative powers of nature, and the mother of all living beings. 

"Dionysus"
© Julie Pavlowski Green

ARTEMIS: was the Goddess of hunting, wilderness and wild animals. She was also a goddess of childbirth, and the protectress of the girl child up to the age of marriage. She is also one of the three Virgin Goddesses. Artemis had absolute sovereignty over nature and was said to bring fertility to all places that worshipped her. Usually accompanied by Nymphs and Oceanids, Artemis loved to hunt with arrows dipped in poison.

ARES: was the Olympian god of war and defense and the figure behind all kind of violence. He often had conflicts and fights with his half-sisters Artemis and Athena, especially during the Trojan War.

"Haides"
© Julie Pavlowski Green

ATHENA: was the Goddess of wisdom, military victory, a protectress of civilized life. She is also the Goddess of artesian activities such as weaving and  pottery. She is the daughter of Zeus and is considered the first of the three virgin Goddesses. Also known as the Maiden, Parthenos from which her most important Temple, the Parthenon, was named after.

"Hephaestus"
© Julie Pavlowski Green

DEMETER: was the Goddess of corn, grain and the harvest and is associated with the seasons and fertility. She was the goddess who provided all nutrition on the earth and taught mortals how to cultivate the earth. Demeter is also known for founding the Eleusinian Mysteries. These were huge festivels held every five years. They were importaint events for many centuries. Yet, little is known of them as those attending were sworn to secrecy. The central tenant seems to have been that just as grain returns every spring after its harvest and wintery death, so too the human soul could be reborn after the death of the body.

"Hera"
© Julie Pavlowski

DIONYSUS:  was the Greek God of Wine, Joy, Theatre and Festivity. He was one of the Olympian gods who actually did not live in Mount Olympus but was constantly travelling around the world together with Satyrs and Maenads in order to discover the secrets of winemaking. (!)

HAIDES: was the Greek god of the Dead and Ruler of the Underworld. He was the supreme ruler of the Underworld. He presided over funeral rites and defended the right of the dead to due burial. Haides was also the god of the hidden wealth of the earth, from the fertile soil which nourished the seed-grain, to the mined wealth of gold, silver and other metals.

"Hermes"
© Julie Pavlowski Green

HEPHAESTUS:  was the Greek god of Fire, Metallurgy and Stonemasonry and the art of sculpture. Hephaestus worked beneath the crater of the volcano of Aetna in Italy. There, he worked  closely with the one-eyed Cyclopes to create strong thunderbolts for his master Zeus. Hephaestus was also famous for having created the first woman of the ancient world, Pandora.

HERA: was the Goddess of the sky and starry heavens and of Marriage and Family. Being married to Zeus, she was the Queen of all Olympians. Her worship is actually far older than that of her husband. It goes back to a time when the creative force we call "God" was conceived of as a woman. Her subjugation to Zeus and depiction as a jealous shrew are mythological reflections of one of the most profound changes ever in human spirituality.

HERMES: was the Greek god of communication, trade, roads, travel, diplomacy, language, writing, persuasion, astronomy, and astronomy. Hermes wore wings on his sandals and therefore was the speediest of all Greek gods. Because of his speed, Hermes received the role of the messenger and conductor of souls to the Underworld. 

"Poseidon"
© Julie Pavlowski Green

POSEIDON: was the Greek god of the seas, rivers, flood and drought, horses and earthquakes. He was responsible for natural and supernatural events, mainly the ones associated to the sea world and was the savior of ships.

ZEUS: was the supreme God in Ancient Greece, the father of the Olympian Gods and the ruler of mankind. He was the "Lord of Justice", punishing anyone who lied or broke and oath, but was fair and always striving to keep a balance of all things. Zeus was also responsible for the weather and shaped it according to his temper. 

Modern Merry Pranksters

"Whacky Packet" 

© Julie Pavlowski Green

 I began to read Tom Wolfe's book "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" on one overcast Saturday morning on a small excursion my friends and I had planned to take the night before. It was about 1/2 hour into the ride down Highway 1 that I cracked the book open as we wound our way south. We decided after driving around for a few hours that we should stop for lunch. We took the next exit. It lead us to the sleepy little town of La Honda.  A town none of us had visited before.

We ended up eating our sandwiches at a local park which had an unusual fire pit with horseshoes embedded on the rim and a strange little log cabin on the property. Suddenly, I felt the googly-eyed paper glasses in my pocket which I had absentmindedly placed in my pocket on the way out the door. With camera in hand, I decided to persuade my friends to let me photograph them wearing the glasses.

              

    "La Honda Gardens"

 © Julie Pavlowski Green

As soon as the glasses were on, my friends lost all their inhabitions. They became completely wild and different characters! Their fear of being photographed slipped away and being set loose, they became more engaging and theatrical in front of my lens. I wanted to see if this would work on other people I knew. I wanted to see more...

I began to create this series, which I have over the years loosely referred to as the
La Honda series, with abandon. My subjects now contained the personalities I longed to photograph. My own personal band of Modern Merry Pranksters...

     "Smoking Soul"  

© Julie Pavlowski Green

It was about the same time I started this series that I began questioning and indeed exploring ways of taking my photographs from two dimensional flat images, to three dimensional objects. I decide to rephotograph the 11x14 black and white portraits with a 4x5 copy camera. The larger size of the print allowed objects I bordered the images with to be at a pleasing proportion.

You must understand, this was years before digital photography and all manipulations I made were the old fashioned way - by hand. By rephotographing them, I took the photographic "sculptures" back into the two dimensional plane but I do think they sufficiently explored the idea that the photograph lacked space a three dimensional object contained.

                                                                      "Circus Girl"
                                                        © Julie Pavlowski Green
                                       

I used clay, and marbled paper; chilies and saffron; Mad Magazine stickers and colored filters; cochina dolls and wallpaper; shells, seeds and anise; old glamour magazines and animal crackers. I colored some of the black and white photographs by hand with photo oils and some I masked out so I could them process the background in sepia tone.

"Hot Mama"

© Julie Pavlowski Green

The images and personalities of those who were photographed wearing the googly-eyed glasses dictated to me what they should be surrounded by. I was attempting to convey the inner qualities of these people I knew very well and create a three dimensional border out of it.

                                                                 "Glamorous Curves"
                                                             © Julie Pavlowski Green


As my friends and I returned home later that day from our excursion to La Honda, I   picked up the book and began reading it where I had left off. And then his words jumped out of the page like a pop-up book. Tom started describing the exact location we had just had our lunch. The log cabin, the cement fire pit with embedded horse shoes... all were apart of the compound The Merry Pranksters used to live at.

Had the acid seeped into our skin? Were we really affected by our seemingly harmless excursion? Or was it kismet?

I like to think so.

                                                            "Portrait of my Father"
                                                          © Julie Pavlowski Green



Julie Pavlowski Green
February 16, 2013




Books to read if you  haven't already:

"The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test"

by Tom Wolfe

and

"Sometimes A Great Notion"

by Ken Kesey

"I Used To Be a Fotomat"

 "The Photo Place - 29 Palms" 

© Julie Pavlowski Green

It all started inside of a hippopotamus's mouth. It was my brother's 2nd birthday and we were celebrating it at the Oakland Zoo. My Mother was busy setting up the party and I distinctly remember her handing me her instamatic camera, you know the horizontal flat one that you could attach a flash cube to, and asked me to take pictures of the birthday party for her.

Several weeks later, we drove up to the local Fotomat to pick up our processed prints (which was always an exciting moment) but was even more of an event, as it was the first time we were picking up photographs taken by me! After my Mother paid for the prints, she pulled over and parked so we could take a look at all the pictures I had taken at my brother's birthday party.

I was bursting with excitement as I knew the images were going to amaze my Mother and possibly impress her enough to let me use the camera again. The look on her face was not exactly what I was hoping for. It was more of a puzzled, worried look. Had she picked up the wrong pack of prints? Had someone accidentally slipped the wrong pictures into the folded yellow and red striped envelope?

"What are these?" I remember her saying in disbelief. She had discovered that throughout the party, I had, instead of photographing the cake, my brother, our family members or any hint of a birthday celebration, I had photographed the animals at the zoo.

There was the hoof of a giraffe, an abstract, off centered shot of a camel, and what appeared to be a wash of monkeys swinging wildly from their cages. But the one image I was most proud of was a shot of the inside of a hippopotamuses mouth. It completely filled the frame. I had managed to snap the shot just as he opened his mouth. "Where are all the photographs of your brothers birthday party?" she said. I didn't have an answer for her. I had gotten lost that day in a magical world. One that captured me capturing the world.

I was 8 3/4 years old and I was hooked...

To this day, I still have an affinity for Fotomats. I was absolutely fascinated that a person, an actual human being, sat all day in a box smaller than your average bathtub. How did they have room to process the pictures? It was all very mysterious to me and a world I wanted to know about.

I have been documenting these little huts over the years and have titled the series "I Used to Be a Fotomat", since 98% of all Fotomat's these days are something else, if not abandoned in the parking lot.

"Statuary Fotomat - Los Angeles" © Julie Pavlowski Green

"Cigarette Fotomat - Glendale" © Julie Pavlowski Green

I wanted to start here, with the mighty Fotomat and the day I fell in love with photography. It has taken me places I would have never gone to on purpose, provided me a ticket into the lives and rooms of people that would otherwise be inaccessible to me. Photography has allowed me to create a vocabulary to convey my ideas and passions. I have grown up with photography speaking for me and now, with this blog, I hope to speak for the photography I have and will be creating for these pages.

I hope you enjoy the view!

Julie Pavlowski Green
February 9, 2013