Artist Blog

Every week an artist whose single image was published by Der Greif is given a platform in which to blog about contemporary photography.

by Edward T. Hall. "He [men] is distinguished from the other animals by virtue of the fact that he has elaborated what I have termed extensions of his organism. By developing his extensions, man has been able to improve or specialize various functions. The computer is an extension of part of the brain, the telephone extends the voice, the wheel extends the legs and feet. Language extends experience in time and space while writing extends language. Man has elaborated his extensions to such a degree that we are apt to forget that his humanness is rooted in his animal nature. The anthropologist Weston La Barre has pointed out that man has shifted evolution from his body to his extensions and in so doing has tremendously accelerated the evolutionary process. [...] In light of what is known of ethology, it may be profitable in the long run if man is viewed as an organism that has elaborated and specialized his extensions to such a degree that they have taken over, and are rapidly replacing, nature. In other words, man has created a new dimension, the cultural dimension, of which proxemics is only a part. The relationship between man and the cultural dimension is one in which both man and his environment participate in molding each other. Man is now in the position of actually creating the total world in which he lives, what the ethologists refer to as his biotope. In creating this world he is actually determining what kind of an organism he will be. This is a frightening thought in view of how very little is known about man." Edward T. Hall: The Hidden Dimension. (1969) Doubleday & Company, Inc., New York