John Longbow

John Longbow’s manipulated photographs are visually intense.  Longbow wants to find the spirituality in the environment, both natural and man-made.  His goal is to create a totem of each piece.  A totem is when an object is believed to have spiritual significance and is adopted by its symbol.  Longbow’s piece, Effigy of Baba Ramdez, is a great illustration of finding the totem. Baba Ramdez popularized yoga, an already spiritual exercise.  The image puts Ramdez in the center of some kind of Indian protest.  Ramdez has become the totem for health conscious Indians.
 
Mandala is a common form of spiritual art for the Hindus and the Buddhists. They are well known to be created of geometric shapes and to grasp the spirit. More recently, Christian mandala’s can be found and portraits and an environment can even be seen.  Longbow has chosen a more contemporary version to find the spirit through art by capturing events and abstracting the scene later.