Ray Grasse Photography
Ray Grasse is a writer, photographer, and musician based in the American Midwest. He received his degree from the Art Institute of Chicago under experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage, and studied for years with teachers in both the Kriya Yoga and Zen traditions.
He worked for ten years on the staffs of Quest Books and The Quest Magazine, and is author of The Waking Dream, a study of synchronicity and symbolism, Signs of the Times, an exploration of historical cycles, Under a Sacred Sky, an anthology of articles on cosmology and astrology, An Infinity of Gods, a series of conversations with the late mystic and occultist, Shelly Trimmer, Urban Mystic, about the Chicago-based yogi Goswami Kriuyananda, The Sky Stretched Out Before Me, a seres of autobiographical essays, StarGates, an anthology, and When the Stars Align, an anthology of astrological and philosophical essays.
As visual influences, he cites cinematographers Gregg Toland and Karl Freund, painters like Vermeer, Dali, Da Vinci, Caspar David Friedrich, and William de Nuncques, and his own teacher Stan Brakhage. "Brakhage had an exceptional talent for looking at conventional scenes in unconventional ways, which had a huge impact on me."
He has a special interest in the ways photography can serve to capture the surreal or spiritual dimensions of ordinary subjects and environments. About his "Night Vision" series he writes: "Night photography offers a way of uncovering worlds hidden both within and behind the surfaces of daily life. Primarily through the use of time exposures, the lens becomes a tool for exposing secrets normally hidden from our ordinary time-frames. The result is imagery that resonates more in some ways to the language of nightly dreams than the daylight of waking logic."
He is also a well-known astrologer with clients around the world. For more information, see his website www.raygrasse.com.
