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<p>After my last e-mail “blast,” Anita Buzzy-Prentiss, a photographer friend that I haven’t seen in years, responded in an e-mail. We corresponded, and the conversation went far and wide: big families; the inner need to keep moving; Pilates and yoga; heat, and cold, and in-between (Anita, it turns out, doesn’t like the extremes); the fleeting character of photography and the desire for permanence.</p>
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<p>Writing Anita got me thinking about art, and what we seek to accomplish with it. It strikes me that the artist (and the photographer) seek to <em>capture</em> beauty, to make it one’s own, to make it somehow timeless. As I wrote her, “I don’t like the thought that hundreds of thousands of images will disappear when I die, so I’m posting many on my website for peoples’ quick glances.”</p>
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<p>“But even if no one sees them,<strong> I still like the <em>capture</em>.</strong> [Photographers speak of the “digital capture."] It’s a kind of <em>eros,</em> which Socrates defined as the desire to hold the other in one’s arms. I sometimes wish my eyes were cameras, because I see things when I don’t have a camera, or don’t have it up to my eye, things that just cry out to be caught. ‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever,’ said Keats [in his poem “Endymion,” published in 1818]. A photograph freezes that moment of delight.” A piece of art, or a photograph, can point to what does not pass away.</p>
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<p>I went on to observe that video, in contrast, does not capture a moment. Instead, it reminds you that everything changes; one moment, one frame, is not as beautiful as the last, or perhaps as the next. The beautiful appears, yes, but then is gone. Beauty is fleeting. This is why I much prefer photography.</p>
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<p>There is more to this idea of <em>permanence</em>. I wondered if my quotation of Socrates had over-simplified him from something I had read, so I read some more: an <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-friendship/#LovAscBea">article about Socrates and love</a>. It’s quite involved (and my summary of Socrates above is hopelessly reductive) but I liked this observation in the article’s conclusion: “The best kind of life, a life that comes as close as possible to the divine – [is] one in which we achieve happiness by having good things be ours forever.”</p>
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<p>At one point I was a pastor of a very dysfunctional, evangelical Protestant church. Sometime after leaving the pastorate, I rode my bike through the Rocky Mountains in Canada for about 24 days. It was a great long-distance cycling trip.</p>
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<p>Many times, I was in awe of the mountains. It struck me that, while people change, are unreliable, and sometimes fail you, <strong>the mountains are just <em>there.</em></strong><em> </em>You can hate them, you can love them – but they are indifferent; they don’t change. While they are not in fact eternal, they transcend us; they are a symbol of permanence, or unchangeableness. People sometimes say about someone in a crisis, <strong>“He (or she) was <em>a rock.</em>”</strong> It is no surprise that, for the people of Israel, God is even greater than a rock: “There is none holy like the Lord, there is none besides thee; there is no <em>rock</em> like our God” (1 Samuel 2:2). The Psalmist uses the same term: “The Lord is my <em>rock,</em> and my fortress, and my deliverer, my God” (Psalm 18:2). The analogy is frequent in the Bible, as you can find from any Bible search engine.</p>
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<p>I love photographing two things in particular: pretty women (it’s hard to find anything prettier :-), and <em>mountains</em>. My wife and I are planning a trip to Switzerland and Paris. I am taking my camera to <strong>shoot every mountain I can find in the Jungfrau area of Switzerland</strong>, from every angle possible. I have already planned <strong>to hike to <a href="https://www.travelcaffeine.com/hike-swiss-alps-bachalpsee-lake/">Bachalpsee</a></strong>, which is not far from Wengen, where we will be staying, God willing.</p>
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<p>Something came to me about Bachalpsee in the middle of last night. After the cycling trip I mentioned above, I created several stained glass panels of mountain scenes, using other peoples' photographs, and sold them. <strong>One of these was entitled “Bachalpsee,” </strong>which I had thought then was a mountain in Germany.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped"><!-- wp:image {"id":13030,"width":"474px","height":"auto","sizeSlug":"large","linkDestination":"none"} -->
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img src="https://christopherhumphreyphotography.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_6305-661x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-13030" style="width:474px;height:auto"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">"Bachalpsee," stained glass in oak frame, copyright Chris Humphrey</figcaption></figure>
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<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-full"><img src="https://christopherhumphreyphotography.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_6298-Ken-with-Bachalpsee-piece-installed.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-13031"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Ken, with the piece backlit and installed over his fireplace</figcaption></figure>
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<p>I had forgotten entirely about this panel when we planned our trip. So now I will see the mountain that I have rendered in stained glass. One of the reasons I am back to creating stained glass panels is that they likely will last. Most of my photos will not be seen by anyone besides me. Many will be seen once by a few, and then be gone. The glass panels, however, are likely to be passed on, and delight some people for some time, I hope, long after I am gone from this world.</p>
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<p>As I said, beautiful things can point to what is enduring. Their beauty is only a pointer, but that doesn't diminish them. "For now we see in a mirror (or, as one translation puts it, "a glass") dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love."</p>
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