band of clouds on the horizon were a
portent of landfall and a new world.
mystical traditions clouds express the
unknowable nature of the divine (for
example, The Cloud of Unknowing, a
medieval work of Christian mysticism).
has a religious drift to it. When the clouds
part, we glimpse the light. Veiling God, too
terrible for human eye, the cloud already
symbolizes the presence of God.
gods; and in Egypt of the creation deity.
Later, as Jacqueline Taylor Basker outlines
in her fascinating essay "The Cloud as
Symbol: Destruction or Dialogue":
image of the cloud for Yahweh. As
an aniconic people, who could not
use a tangible material image to rep-
resent their god, the cloud provided
a convenient insubstantial object to
use as a visible symbol. During the
wanderings of the Jews in the des-
ert, the cloud hovers over or in the
`tent of witness' and plays a sym-
bolic role as a recurrent theophany
(an appearance of the Divine) in
Old Testament scripture to witness
the presence of God.
underlying the divine nature of Christ, as
we see in the Transfiguration described in
the Gospel of Matthew (17:5):
cloud enveloped them, and a voice
from the cloud said, `This is my
Son, whom I love; with him I am
well pleased. Listen to him!'
can recall religious ideas about the eye of
God or clouds of glory, while also evoking
secular notions of castles in the sky--or,
in opposite mood, mushroom clouds and
nuclear destruction.
religious myth, water precedes creation. We
sense this in Sweeney's spectacular series of
horizon photos taken from Raumati where
he sometimes lives on the lower West Coast
of New Zealand's North Island. In these
images, where water meets sky in changing
light, it is as if the void takes shape--a
creation myth enacted for his lens. For
Sweeney, who grew up Roman Catholic,
the first verses of Genesis would surely
have inspired his vision:
heaven and the earth. And the earth
was without form, and void; and
deep. And the Spirit of God moved
upon the face of the waters. And
God said, `Let there be light': and
there was light. And God saw the
light, that it was good: and God di-
vided the light from the darkness.
emerges out of water and ultimately
dissolves back into it, purified and
washed clean. As Eliade says, water is
the "reservoir of all the possibilities of
existence." Likewise, the horizon line
opens us up to unlimited possibility,
releasing us from life as it has taken shape
around us and into the infinite beyond.
"The health of the eye," wrote Emerson,
"seems to demand a horizon. We are never
tired, so long as we can see far enough."
in particular how this view from Raumati
used to excite his wonder about what
might lie ahead for him--a virtuality that
became actual when he left these islands
surrounded by water to reimagine himself
on the island of Manhattan.
land that called him forth. New York in
particular is the symbolic and storied center
of the world, especially compared to New
Zealand geographically and by association
culturally on the edge of the world. But
necessarily coterminous for religious man,
the center and the edge fold over each other
for Sweeney. Hence, in his photography, he
brings together nature--symbolized by the
New Zealand landscape--and culture--
symbolized by New York.
centrality or sacrality. Culture, on the
other hand, is man-made, temporal, and
by comparison regarded as peripheral. So,
already in Sweeney's work there is a certain
displacement if not inversion between
the idea of New Zealand and New York.
According to this reading New Zealand
would be a natural paradise and central
while New York, teeming and distracted,
would be far flung and on the edge.
polar world views artfully turned upside-
down--his framing of nature is determined
by both the history of religion and of art
(and in this way are mediated or unnatural;
while his urban views, equally mediated by
art history, are presented as natural pieces
of infinity.
incomparable natural splendor. As Sweeney
says in conversation, "If mountains were
show business this would be Broadway."
At the same time, we can't help but be
aware of its "chocolate box" vista--a view
a million other travelers have snapped in