Layne Morgan

It has taken years to appreciate that the "flaw" I was born with was a precious gift.

I thought everyone saw the way I did, with blurry, double vision. I thought I was like everyone else.

I didn't get my first pair of glasses until I was 11 years old. So I learned to see from every part of my body, not just from my eyes.

I thought everybody saw this way.

As a poet at a young age, I was influenced primarily by my father, who documented our lives in still photos and 16 mm film, spending countless hours splicing and editing our everyday profundities into a collection of family chronicles.

In my youth, I carried a 110 cartridge camera. In those days, like my vision, we'd get  duplicate images, an extra photo for free with every roll of film printed.

Years later, I bought my first Kowa 35 mm camera body with three lenses for $100.

Together, my camera and I went everywhere. Looking though the viewfinder, I could turn the lens and magically bring the framed image into focus.

When it came time to declare a college major there was only one subject that interested me: photojournalism.

Immediately out of college I was hired as staff photographer for Dallas-Ft. Worth Home and Garden Magazine. I began working in 2 1/4 format and proudly bought my own Mamiya 645 with three lenses.

My camera brought the blurry world into focus just by a turn of the lens. Repetitive patterns, colors and shapes mimicked what my eyes saw.

Fifteen years later, in 1991, I was awarded Texas' best photographer by the Texas Magazine Photographers Association. It selected four individual images of mine taken during my travels to Thailand, Japan, Nepal and France. 

I called my photography "poems without words," and exhibited in three Dallas, Texas galleries. Later, I collaborated with a friend who fired small ceramic frames for my photographs. We sold the popular mixed media images as bookmarks, napkin rings and design elements.

Through photography, I learned to appreciate the precious gift that came with my limited vision. It was like an unlimited spiritual insight to see the light and color of aura energy, the energy surrounding every living thing — in nature as well — and the geometric shapes that thoughts form.

Following further training in light and color I earned the title of Master of Energy Medicine and encouraged others to open their eyes to see the world in a new paradigm. 

The mystery of thought forms, the clarity and color of auric light and the wisdom in accepting the gift of sight revealed to me the organic relationship that light and color had to sound.  

The past several years training in macrobiotic energy healing brought further clarity and understanding to the world of energy and set the stage for the night I was gifted with an innovative photographic technique, setting the stage for the project presented here.

I am innovative, inspirational and authentic, having traveled the world with my camera for the past 40-plus years seeking new visions, techniques and photographic adventures.