From the category archives:
Photo
* Tao Te Ching
* Dogen, 
This set of images by Robert Kinmot has been in my queue for posting since about last September. Quite a bit’s happened since then – we’ve moved out of our apartment, had it renovated, and moved back in, a process much bigger and more disruptive than expected. There have been a total of six moves – including house sittings and two sub-lets in a difficult Sydney rental market fueled by the hot summer and high traveler numbers.
Back to the images – they’re more powerful now than when I first saw them on the SFMOMA site. I know there’s a whole conceptualist backdrop to Kinmont’s work, but looking at these images now, coming back home (literally), I’m drawn at a more emotional level to Kinmont’s own homecoming – his return to art making after a 30 year break. These are poignant images from 1969. They remind me also of dusty roads around Rotorua New Zealand (where I grew up) – riding the Raleigh Sports on unmade roads through dark bush.
Then there’s the real home, the nondual ground, the sublime emptiness; the way the photographer’s eye relaxes into the natural humility and accepting lack of these dependable dust-brushed ways. Very beautiful.
Robert Kinmot
My Favorite Dirt Roads, 1969
Check out also Kinmot’s unpublished notes on the SFMOMA site, which add another level of story, an autobiographical richness, to this work.
