Nature photographer Kurt Lolo recently shared a bewitching photo. It is a shot of a raven in flight, its big wings wide open, in that way that ravens and crows have of giving the impression that their wings are hands with fingers, as if they were aware that they are a part of our ancient mythologies and our dreams and repressed anxieties of today. The photograph shows the raven with its menacing beak, the sharp tip of which curves downward, with the feathers of its big tail fanned out, with its inquisitive posture of the head, and its unnerving presence. The raven seems to be a sceptical chronicler of human history since Antiquity. The raven in this photo is in his all black costume, against a clear blue sky, and apart from the very minimal hint of a reflection of white light on the upper part of the extended wings, black and blue are the only coulours present in this photograph. This fascinated me, I could not stop thinking about this picture. After two days of puzzlement, I understood that this photo had the quality of a superb calligraphy done in Spartan colours : the smooth style of the ebony black and the clear blue, creating the effect that the the bird was still wet with the black ink of its drawing done by a master of ancient Chinese calligraphy, that distinguishes itself by the capacity to evoke movement on pieces of silk or paper. The photograph of Kurt Lolo has that energy, that hypnotising and precise rhythm. That itself is a minimalist tour de force, but I felt there to be more to the enigma of this photo and its undeniable spell. The magic of this photograph is that it is a photo that is a calligraphy that is a pictograph, a hieroglyph, that could have escaped from Ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia from 5000 years ago. A pictograph or hieroglyph is defined as a symbolic depiction of a word or phrase, and is the most ancient form of writing on earth. Kurt Lolo's raven has a very powerful symbolic hold, not necessarily because the raven is a conflicted bird when it comes to its meaning : it is the way the nature photographer presents the bird to us, as an abstraction of contradictions, of mysteries, of doubts, of resentment, of magic. There are 40 species of crows and ravens, and the one who resides in North Africa is the species Corvus cornix. In Australian aboriginal mythology, the raven is a trickster, a deceiver. In Irish mythology, the raven is associated with Morrigan, the goddess of war and death; in other countries the raven and crow are considered the incarnations of dead heroes, of ancient spirits. There is also the belief that a raven brings bad luck, and in the Appalachian mountains of the US, in the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, South Carolina and the northern part of Pennsylvania, the southern part of Ohio, and parts of the south of Upstate New York, the crow and raven are seen as bringers of illness and bad luck, if the birds are seen circling above a house three times. So, the raven has maintained its power over our imagination into the age of computers and the internet. The singer of the English rock band " Porcupine Tree ", Steven Wilson, has a song that has as the title " The Raven That Refused to Sing ", a haunting song that speaks of sorrow, loss, tenderness and frustrated love at the hands of death and its whims. In the song, the raven represents the spirit of a girl who died very young, and whose spirit expresses itself through the voice and song of an enchanted raven who lives in the forest. But once trapped, the raven no longer sings, and the person who lost his sister decides to kill the bird instead of accepting that his dead sister's spirit cannot express itself save through the raven when it is free. The brother, now an old man in the story, loses this way the contact he had with the spirit of his sister, and this time, with the death of the raven, the contact with his sister is permanently severed, as is his meaning in life. This song dates from 2013, and is very concrete and very recent evidence of how the raven continues to exert its power on our imagination, and in this story, the raven is a force for good, and a source of teaching for humans, who are shown as lacking in kindness and wisdom.
Kurt Lolo's photograph of this month of October 2018 has a visual power that as a pictograph evokes a whole context, a whole world. There are thousands of photographs of crows and ravens in the world of photography, but it is rare to find a photo of a crow or raven that represents an entire mythology, in a profoundly spiritual way, where the image of the bird becomes the word, that becomes the symbol with all its complex implications. The signature also that Kurt Lolo uses for this photographs is very artistic, and enhanced in its elegance with a delicate drawing of a camera, which underlines in a wonderful way the spirit of this very exceptional photograph, its superb quality, and the respect of the photographer vis a vis his subject. It is a raven in flight that transforms itself into a symbol, a magnificent flag in black and blue contrast, and that makes me think of the Flemish flag, which is a rearing black lion on a bright yellow background. This way, the photograph of Kurt Lolo is an SOS also, an appeal to the importance of maintaining alive the legends and mythologies, the cultural identities, and ethnicities of the peoples of the earth who are at risk of becoming more and more invisible, assimilated, erased into the anonimity of the global corrupt and destructive industrial machine. That this enigmatic photograph would be conceived by a Berber photographer and made in the magnificent and unique nature of Northern Algeria, in Kabylie, seems to be an intuitive gesture that inspires hope and courage, when seen from a historic perspective that also has an aura of prophecy to it.
Trudi Ralston
The information on the world of crows and ravens, and the mythologies associated with them, courtesy of Wikipedia.
The information on Steven Wilson of the English rock band " Porcupine Tree " and the 2013 song " The Raven That Refused to Sing ", courtesy of YouTube.
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