Genetic Imprints | John Running

The image comes first.

In the beginning, before there was language, there was a non-verbal way of comprehending the world. There was the image. Now, except in our dreams, we tend to translate images into words.

Recently, I made a series of photographs in my studio of women with wild animal skulls. Now that I have made these images, as I am trying to find words, it comes to mind that these photos are more about something from our distant past – from all the way back to the time of the ice.

I recently read the idea that, back at the time of our emergence, the female - the woman - was more than a fertility deity. More than a mother, she was also the first practitioner of medicine and magic and that, in fact, she was the Creator. Back in our stone age emergence, God was female and this still imprints our genetic codes.

For me, the image comes first. I see it in front of me – a woman holding an animal skull. I suggest to the model that this is about life, not death. She works with some direction at first but soon it seems to me that as she carries and caresses her animal totem she becomes a soul carrier and spirit guide.

I react to this by submitting myself to the model and her intuitions. We become collaborators as we respond to our GENETIC IMPRINTS.
John Running

NOTE: I want to thank, honor and acknowledge my partnership and collaboration with my models: Betsy, Kaylee, Kim, Natalia, Natalie and Sara. As I kneel before them they reveal their “Genetic Imprints.”

 

John Running was born in 1939 in Buffalo, New York. He moved from New York to New Mexico to attend college and, after interrupting his studies to serve in the US Marine Corps, completed his degree in Anthropology at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona, where he has lived for the past forty years. Running makes his life and livelihood as a freelance commercial and documentary photographer among the varied cultures in the vast physical beauty of the southwestern United States.

Running is best known for his work photographing the Navajo people, the largest Native American nation. Originally, photography served Running merely as a documentary tool - an asset to his anthropological studies. "To see, to record, to comment, and to present..." Increasingly, it became and today remains his main love and livelihood.

Running’s credits range from “People Magazine” to “Communications Arts Magazine.” His commercial clients include Sterling Commerce, World Photo Press of Japan, Nikon, Lee Jeans and Island Outpost. Photo assignments have taken him to Italy, France, Peru, Palestine, Lebanon, the West Indies and the Bahamas. He has also published seven books, including Honor Dance, Pictures for Solomon, Dancer, Halo of the Sun and The Joy of Partner Yoga.

When John Running creates portraits, he develops a mutual trust with his subjects. He spends time with his subjects in their environments to create a relaxed mood, thereby enabling sitters to "show" themselves to the camera. He is able to dispel the self-consciousness that often accompanies being photographed. Running's subjects bear the unique characteristics of their individual personalities and positions in society. His portraits are powerful and sensitive and demand a viewer's awareness and thought.

Of his photography Running says, "Although my photographs may be a personal statement of sorts, they tend to be more of a statement about mankind." Running's art combines the talent of a social anthropologist's perception of cultural flux and change with an artist's sensitivity to psychological power, composition and aesthetic form.