Diane Fenster Photographic Arts

Variations On A Return From The Dead

"There is a kind of sadness that comes from knowing too much, from seeing the world as it truly is. It is the sadness of understanding that life is not a grand adventure, but a series of small, insignificant moments, that love is not a fairy tale, but a fragile, fleeting emotion, that happiness is not a permanent state, but a rare, fleeting glimpse of something we can never hold onto. And in that understanding, there is a profound loneliness, a sense of being cut off from the world, from other people, from oneself."
---Virginia Woolf

Variations On A Return From The Dead
Self-portrait series photographed during my recovery from extreme illness.

Excited to receive news that two images from my H•Y•S•T•E•R•I•A: Body As Battleground series are currently touring Argentina and are now at the Procultura Salta from August 12 to September 9 as part of the "Sobre una mujer” (About A Woman) exhibit. The dresses in this series are lumen prints rephotographed to use in the photo montage. The exhibit originated at the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington, DC then traveled to the Culturarte Cultural Center in San Salvador de Jujuy, Argentina. A video from the original installation can be seen here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vR3RKqCvQWE
Thank you again to the curators Elda Harrington and Silvia Mangialardi for including my work.
You can view my entire series here:
https://www.lensculture.com/projects/685950-hy-st-er-ia-body-as-battleground

Variations On A Return From The Dead

Variations On A Return From The Dead
Self-portrait series exploring the emotional, psychological, and physical effects of extreme illness, I am using distorting lenses to recreate my perceptions during this extended period.

Variations On A Return From The Dead
A series of self portraits that symbolize my process of healing from extreme illness using a selection of distorting lenses to recreate my mental and emotional states.

Untitled (Steven B.)
20x24 Polaroid print
from my Ghost Stories series
Still in recovery mode at home. Dreaming of new work but not quite ready to begin creating again. Frustrated at not being able to submit to any calls for entry that require shipping etc as I am homebound. But happy with my improvements.

Next image from my Stargazer series.
Enjoying exploring imaging outside my usual subject matter. Inspiration from a bouquet a dear friend brought to the hospital.

From my new Stargazer series.
I have been back and forth between hospitals and rehab for the past three months. This has led to a photphotographic exploration outside my comfort zone that usually explores portrait, self portrait, and deeply personal themes. I was fortunate to receive a bouquet that included Stargazer lilies. I am captivated by their fragrance and shape so “if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with.”

Diane Fenster
7h ·
please click on each photo
Variations on a return from the dead. Self portraits I found during my journey
The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot. I. The Burial of the Dead
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubersplease click on

Image: Mammo3 diptych
from my new series MAMMO
Continuing an attempt to relieve the torture of a recent mammogram by using the little stickers they paste on you to highlight moles.

GOOD NEWS!
The surgeon who read the CT scan yesterday determined there was no evidence of thrombosis (blood clot) and I don't need to continue with Eliquis, a blood thinner. Yay!
Hybrid lumen image "Luminous Heart" from my Spells For My Protection series was created prior to my valve replacement in 2022.

New series: MAMMO
Title: Mammo1 until I get inspired to retitle.
Trying to make the most out of a very uncomfortable mammogram by photographing myself with those little stickers that are used to identify moles.

Between The Living And The Dead #1
Continuing with my Clothed In Widows Weeds series concerning the death of my beloved husband Miles Stryker.
An Excerpt From Wintering ---by Katherine May
There are gaps in the mesh of the everyday world, and sometimes they open up and you fall through them into somewhere else. Somewhere Else runs at a different pace to the here and now, where everyone else carries on. Somewhere Else is where ghosts live, concealed from view and only glimpsed by people in the real world. Somewhere Else exists at a delay, so that you can’t quite keep pace. Perhaps I was already teetering on the brink of Somewhere Else anyway; but now I fell through, as simply and discreetly as dust sifting between the floorboards. I was surprised to find that I felt at home there.

Winter had begun.

Everybody winters at one time or another; some winter over and over again.

Wintering is a season in the cold. It is a fallow period in life when you’re cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider. Perhaps it results from an illness or a life event such as a bereavement or the birth of a child; perhaps it comes from a humiliation or failure. Perhaps you’re in a period of transition and have temporarily fallen between two worlds. Some winterings creep upon us more slowly, accompanying the protracted death of a relationship, the gradual ratcheting up of caring responsibilities as our parents age, the drip-drip-drip of lost confidence. Some are appallingly sudden, like discovering one day that your skills are considered obsolete, the company you worked for has gone bankrupt, or your partner is in love with someone new. However it arrives, wintering is usually involuntary, lonely, and deeply painful.

Alisio
from my Disequilibrium series
Excited to be included in the fotofoto gallery's 19th National Photography exhibition. Thank you to juror Meredith Brown, Consulting Curator of Art, Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, NY. Meredith A. Brown is a feminist art historian and curator of modern and contemporary art.
fotofoto gallery, 14 West Carver Street, Huntington, NY
Exhibition Dates: March 7, 2024 – March 30 2024

So excited and grateful to discover I've received two awards in the 22nd JULIA MARGARET CAMERON photography competition. CATEGORY WINNER • PORTRAITS Non-professional (Disequalibrium series) and HONORABLE MENTION • DIGITAL MANIPULATION AND COLLAGE Non-professional (Clothed In Widows Weeds series). I am very honored to have my work receive recognition.

Sister Morphine #3
from my series Clothed In Widows Weeds

Gabriel by Edward Hirsch
I did not know the work of mourning
Is like carrying a bag of cement
Up a mountain at night

The mountaintop is not in sight
Because there is no mountaintop
Poor Sisyphus grief

I did not know I would struggle
Through a ragged underbrush
Without an upward path

Because there is no path
There is only a blunt rock
With a river to fall into

And Time with its medieval chambers
Time with its jagged edges
And blunt instruments

I did not know the work of mourning
Is a labor in the dark
We carry inside ourselves

Though sometimes when I sleep
I am with him again
And then I wake

Poor Sisyphus grief
I am not ready for your heaviness
Cemented to my body

Look closely and you will see
Almost everyone carrying bags
Of cement on their shoulders

That’s why it takes courage
To get out of bed in the morning
And climb into the day

Thrilled to receive this news about my image Engulfed Siren...
Congratulations! We are pleased to announce that your photograph "File name: Fenster_Engulfed_Siren" has been selected as a finalist in the Fine Art Awards by Dodho Magazine.
Your work will be featured in our upcoming Fine Art Book, which will be published in February. Only the top 100 images from the competition will be included in the book. See all winners/finalists here: https://www.dodho.com/winners-fine-art-awards/

I am honored and grateful beyond belief to discover that Amanda Smith and Kevin James Tully have chosen to dedicate the PORTRAITS book from their A Smith Gallery exhibit to my beloved husband Miles Stryker, who passed away last year. His portrait, PYREXIA, from my CONTAGION series, is included in the book. This is a limited-edition handmade book available here:
https://a-smith-gallery.square.site/product/-portraits-the-27/2314?cp=true&sa=false&sbp=false&q=false&category_id=72

So disappointed that COVID prevented me from attending the opening reception of Pretty In Pink at the Gray Loft Gallery in Oakland. Thanks again to jurors Jan Watten and Ann Jastrab for selecting Gauchissant #3 to include in the exhibit. And cheers to Barbara Speed for photographing it at the opening!!! I plan on going to the closing reception on February 24th.

Rogue Wind
from my DISEQUILIBRIUM series

These portraits, distorted in-camera (not via software), visually represent my current cognitive state. The titles of the photos are taken from the names of the winds of the world that can wreak havoc on all they encounter.

One of my images, Tatiana, was selected by juror Renee Jacobs, to be included in the upcoming The Woman's View exhibition at The SE Center for Photography. Thank you to Renee and Michael Pannier at the SE Center. Congratulations to all included artists.

The Woman's View Exhibition will open on Friday, March 1, 2024

Sister Morphine #1
from my series Clothed in Widows Weeds
Before my husband Miles was placed on hospice/palliative care, he had requested morphine to ease his passing...
Sister Morphine
—Marianne Faithfull / Mick Jagger / Keith Richards
Here I lie in my hospital bed
Tell me, Sister Morphine, when are you coming round again?
Oh, I don't think I can wait that long
Oh, you see that I'm not that strong
The scream of the ambulance is sounding in my ears
Tell me, Sister Morphine, how long have I been lying here?
What am I doing in this place?
Why does the doctor have no face?
Oh, I can't crawl across the floor
Ah, can't you see, Sister Morphine, I'm trying to score
Well it just goes to show
Things are not what they seem
Please, Sister Morphine, turn my nightmares into dreams
Oh, can't you see I'm fading fast?
And that this shot will be my last
Sweet Cousin Co***ne, lay your cool cool hand on my head
Ah, come on, Sister Morphine, you better make up my bed
'Cause you know and I know in the morning I'll be dead
Yeah, and you can sit around, yeah and you can watch all the
Clean white sheets stained red

Waiting For Nepenthe #3
from my series Clothed In Widows Weeds

When We Meet Again In Paris
-----by Diane Fenster
Would infinity be enough time to spend with you
When the amount of my love would fill the universe
As I tended your bedridden body
And experienced the vastness of your being and your grace

From the veiled lamp Elizabethan room
To the now by the sea
We encircled each other in laughter and tears
As we waited for the cards to reveal our fate
Now I anxiously await the moment
When we can breathe together again into the starlight

As you know, I am more of a visual than a verbal person. I don’t feel comfortable when I have to write. But I wrote this poem while my husband Miles was still alive and sent it to him via email, I believe as a response to some poetry he had sent me.
Now I changed the tense, and am using it as part of the Clothed In Widows Weeds series after taking a deep breath and allowing my words to be revealed.

Miles and I always believed we had first met each other in Paris in the 1920s when we were both Surrealist artists, and we both hoped we would meet there again after this lifetime.

Waiting For Nepenthe #1
from my series Clothed In Widows Weeds
regarding the death of my husband Miles.
Tears in Heaven
---Eric Clapton
Would you know my name?
If I saw you in heaven
Would it be the same?
If I saw you in heaven
I must be strong
And carry on
'Cause I know I don't belong
Here in heaven
Would you hold my hand?
If I saw you in heaven
Would you help me stand?
If I saw you in heaven
I'll find my way
Through night and day
'Cause I know I just can't stay
Here in heaven
Time can bring you down
Time can bend your knees
Time can break your heart
Have you begging please
Begging please
Beyond the door
There's peace, I'm sure
And I know there'll be no more
Tears in heaven
Would you know my name?
If I saw you in heaven
Would you be the same?
If I saw you in heaven
I must be strong
And carry on
'Cause I know I don't belong
Here in heaven
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svzR5_UEMTs

Meaning of Nepenthe:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nepenthe...

We'll Meet Again in Paris #3
from my series Widows Weeds addressing the recent death of my beloved husband Miles Stryker. The weeds in this image were taken from our future gravesite at the Purissima Cemetery south of Half Moon Bay, CA.
Poor Wayfaring Stranger
---Johnny Cash's version lyrics
I'm just a poor wayfaring stranger
Traveling through this world below
There is no sickness, no toil, no danger
In that bright land to which I go
I'm going there to see my father
And all my loved ones who've gone on
I'm just going over Jordan
I'm just going over home
I know dark clouds will gather 'round me
I know my way is hard and steep
But beauteous fields arise before me
Where God's redeemed, their vigils keep
I'm going there to see my mother
She said she'd meet me when I come
So I'm just going over Jordan
I'm just going over home
I'm just going over Jordan
I'm just going over home
Music versions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1Z4PAZX9Bs
Rhiannon Giddens
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZXBw-9gyc0
Jack White.

We'll Meet Again In Paris #2
from my series Clothed in Widows Weeds
This series in progress is an attempt for me to process the death of my beloved husband Miles Stryker.
Late Fragment by Raymond Carver
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

Image: We'll Meet Again In Paris #1
from my series Clothed In Widows Weeds
regarding the loss of my beloved husband Miles Stryker
We always believed we had been lovers and Surrealist artists in our past lives in Paris in the 1920s and we'll meet there again.

Death don't have no mercy in this land
by Reverend Gary Davis
Death don't have no mercy in this land
Death don't have no mercy in this land
He'll come to your house and he won't stay long
You'll look in the bed and somebody will be gone
Death don't have no mercy in this land

Well Death will go in any family in this land
Well Death will go in every family in this land
Well he'll come to your house and he won't stay long
Well you'll look in the bed and one of your family will be gone
Death will go in any family in this land

Well he never takes a vacation in this land
Well old Death never takes a vacation in this land
Well he'll come to your house and he won't stay long
Well you'll look in the bed and your mother will be gone
Death never takes a vacation in this land

Talk
Great God
Yeah

Well he'll leave you standin' and cryin' in this land
Well Death will leave you standin' and cryin' in this land
Well he'll come to your house and he won't stay long
You'll look in the bed and somebody will be gone
Death will leave you standin' and cryin' in this land
Old Death always in a hurry in this land
Old Death always in a hurry in this land
Well he'll come to your house and he won't stay long
You'll look in the bed and your mother will be gone
Death always in a hurry in this land

Well he won't give you time to get ready in this land
Well he won't give you time to get ready in this land
Well he'll come to your house and he won't stay long
Well you'll look in the bed and somebody will be gone
Death won't give you time to get ready in this land

Make your last talk
Talk to me Death
Talk to me

Original Recording
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXPh7EbB1Tw&list=RDPXPh7EbB1Tw&start_radio=1