An Existential Moment of Blue and Gold

At the heart of Vernon Chalmers’ aesthetic lies an existential awareness of solitude. The emptiness of the horizon, the minimal human presence, and the vastness of light suggest a contemplation of being itself.

A Moment of Blue and Gold : Woodbridge Island, Cape Town

Abstract

"This essay explores Vernon Chalmers: A Moment of Blue and Gold through a phenomenological framework, focusing on perception, temporality, and consciousness in photographic practice. Drawing upon the ideas of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, and Sartre, it examines how Chalmers’ photography transcends documentation to become a lived engagement with light and being. Through analysis of intentionality, embodiment, and temporality, the essay argues that Chalmers’ “blue and gold” imagery reveals a visual phenomenology of presence, where consciousness meets the horizon of experience.

Vernon Chalmers: A Moment of Blue and Gold – A Phenomenological Reading 

Introduction

Vernon Chalmers’ A Moment of Blue and Gold embodies a poetic engagement with perception, temporality, and consciousness through the lens of phenomenological photography. Rooted in the interplay between observation and experience, Chalmers’ photographic practice invites a deeper reflection on how meaning arises within moments of stillness and light. His “blue and gold” aesthetic becomes a metaphor for the dynamic relation between self and world - between the perceiver and the perceived. By grounding this reflection within the phenomenological tradition of Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and existential readings of aesthetic consciousness, Chalmers’ work can be understood as an inquiry into the lived experience of vision and presence. This essay examines A Moment of Blue and Gold as a phenomenological gesture that situates photography not as documentation but as revelation: a moment where consciousness meets the horizon of being.

The Phenomenological Frame: Perception and Intentionality

Phenomenology investigates the structures of experience as they appear to consciousness (Husserl, 1931). The world, in this view, is not external or objective but revealed through intentional acts of perception. Chalmers’ photographic engagement with the liminal space between sea and sky - the meeting of “blue and gold” - echoes this Husserlian insight. His lens captures not merely what is visible but the how of visibility: the horizon as experienced, rather than seen.

In A Moment of Blue and Gold, the photographic composition often includes a tranquil seascape suffused with diffused light - suggesting a suspension of time where the act of seeing itself becomes foregrounded. Merleau-Ponty (1962) argues that perception is not a detached observation but a bodily participation in the world’s unfolding. Chalmers’ images, suffused with perceptual immediacy, embody this “intertwining” of self and world - the chiasm of being where the seer and the seen are reciprocally implicated. The photograph thus becomes not a static representation but an event of perception that sustains phenomenological depth.

The Horizon of Being: Temporality and Light

In phenomenological terms, the horizon is not merely spatial but temporal - it denotes the implicit background that gives meaning to any given moment (Heidegger, 1962). Chalmers’ use of natural light, particularly during the blue and golden hours, gestures toward this temporality. These fleeting transitions between night and day capture what Husserl would describe as the living present, where retention (the just-past) and protention (the about-to-happen) merge into a singular continuum of consciousness.

The “blue” evokes stillness and introspection, a temporality of depth and distance, while “gold” symbolizes emergence, warmth, and the becoming of the world. Together, they mark a phenomenological synthesis - an oscillation between presence and transcendence. For Chalmers, the camera becomes a tool of attunement: a means to dwell within this transitional temporality where time is not measured but felt.

Merleau-Ponty (1964) speaks of light as the “texture of visibility,” the medium through which things come into being. Chalmers’ luminous compositions reveal light not as an external illumination but as an existential field in which being is disclosed. In A Moment of Blue and Gold, light is both subject and object - a phenomenological bridge between perception and presence.

The Self in the Image: Presence and Reflection

Chalmers’ photographic philosophy resonates with existential phenomenology in its concern for the situated self. The act of photographing, for him, is not merely observational but participatory - a dialogue between self and environment. Sartre (1943) suggests that consciousness is always consciousness of something, and in this directedness, the self finds its orientation. Chalmers’ horizon photographs exemplify this directedness: the gaze toward the horizon mirrors the photographer’s search for self-understanding within the flux of being.

The reflective surface of water - often present in A Moment of Blue and Gold - serves as both literal and metaphorical mirror. It echoes the phenomenological notion that perception is self-revealing; we do not merely see the world but discover ourselves in the act of seeing (Merleau-Ponty, 1962). This self-world reciprocity becomes a central motif in Chalmers’ visual phenomenology. Each photograph thus functions as an existential mirror, revealing the photographer’s own consciousness inscribed in light.

Aesthetic Intentionality and the Lived World

Phenomenology’s aesthetic dimension lies in its attentiveness to the lifeworld - the pre-reflective ground of all experience (Husserl, 1970). Chalmers’ photography exemplifies this orientation through his emphasis on ordinary landscapes rendered extraordinary through perception. His work is less about the dramatic spectacle of nature and more about the subtle attunement to being. The camera’s frame isolates, yet simultaneously opens, a space of contemplation where the viewer encounters the world anew.

The “moment” in A Moment of Blue and Gold signifies this aesthetic intentionality: an awareness that perception is always temporal and relational. Each photograph captures not a fixed instant but a continuum of becoming - a lived temporality that the viewer re-enacts through aesthetic contemplation. In this sense, Chalmers’ work invites phenomenological empathy, where the viewer is drawn into the same field of perceptual awareness that the photographer experienced.

As Brough (2015) argues, phenomenological art dissolves the separation between object and subject, transforming perception into an event of meaning. Chalmers’ imagery accomplishes precisely this: it draws the spectator into a meditative participation with the visible, fostering what Merleau-Ponty calls a “communion with the world” (1964, p. 26). The image thus transcends mere representation to become a phenomenological disclosure - a lived experience of seeing.

Existential Resonance: Being, Solitude, and Transcendence

At the heart of Chalmers’ aesthetic lies an existential awareness of solitude. The emptiness of the horizon, the minimal human presence, and the vastness of light suggest a contemplation of being itself. In the stillness of the photograph, one perceives an echo of Heidegger’s (1962) notion of Gelassenheit - a letting-be that allows phenomena to reveal themselves without imposition.

The blue hour, in particular, holds a metaphysical quality in Chalmers’ work: it signifies both withdrawal and revelation, a space where the boundaries of self dissolve into the expanse of perception. This aesthetic of stillness aligns with the phenomenological ethos of presence - a state in which being is neither grasped nor possessed but encountered.

Chalmers’ moment becomes, therefore, a meditation on finitude and transcendence. It is an invitation to dwell within the flux of light, to recognize the impermanence of perception as the very condition of meaning. The photograph, rather than freezing time, becomes an opening - an ontological threshold where consciousness and world coalesce.

Conclusion

Vernon Chalmers’ A Moment of Blue and Gold stands as a visual philosophy of phenomenological seeing. Through the delicate interplay of light, horizon, and reflection, his photography reveals the structures of perception as lived, embodied, and temporal. Rooted in Husserlian intentionality and Merleau-Pontian embodiment, Chalmers transforms the camera into an instrument of existential awareness. The “moment” becomes not a fragment of time but a field of meaning in which self and world converge. His blue and gold vision thus offers a phenomenological meditation on what it means to see, to be present, and to belong within the luminous unfolding of the world." (Source: ChatGPT)

References

Brough, J. (2015). Art and phenomenology: The unity of appearance and meaning. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 14(2), 203–218.

Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, Trans.). Harper & Row.

Husserl, E. (1931). Ideas: General introduction to pure phenomenology (W. R. Boyce Gibson, Trans.). George Allen & Unwin.

Husserl, E. (1970). The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology (D. Carr, Trans.). Northwestern University Press.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception (C. Smith, Trans.). Routledge.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964). The primacy of perception. Northwestern University Press.

Sartre, J.-P. (1943). Being and nothingness (H. E. Barnes, Trans.). Philosophical Library.