The Telling Image is a Nautilus Book Awards Gold Winner

The Telling Image is a winner of the Nautilus Book Awards!

The idea for a book often aligns with a point in time, a story or observation that inspired it. Yet the process of writing a book is more porous than simply a beginning and an end. The Telling Image brewed in me for decades before its publication. After the physical book was in stores and at conferences and in the hands of readers, it still was not in its final stage. The book is simply the suitcase of the multiple ideas that are enclosed. And those ideas embed uniquely in each reader. So a book begins, not ends, at publication. It is never ‘finished’, as its ideas have thousands of carriers in those who read the book.

I was deeply gratified that my book was recognized by the Nautilus Book Awards with a Gold Award for The Creative Process. This felt particularly wonderful to me, as it was a long and meandering thought process that led it from field to field until I found an encompassing way to speak of many things – how we see, how we think, organize, find pattern and meaning – and how the very answers to these questions shift at major transition points in history.

The Nautilus Awards recognize books in many genres that nurture positive change. It aims for Better Books for a Better world. And it combs the world to find the ideas bubbling in all categories, from 36 states and a dozen other nations. We need this kind of harvester in our world. One that looks for the best expression of our highest aims.

Writing is a solitary process. It often feels like a spider throwing out its silk thread without knowing whether it will reach and attach to any destination. It is an act of faith. So it is with great gratitude to Nautilus Book Awards that I can smile knowing that the thread of ideas I flung out to the world was so graciously received.

Announcing The Telling Image

The Telling Image

Shapes of Changing Times

by Lois Farfel Stark

Now Available for Pre-Order! 

I am very pleased to share with you the cover for my new book, The Telling Image: Shapes of Changing Times. This book has been ten years in the making. As many of my friends can attest, these ideas have been swirling with me since my years as a documentary filmmaker for NBC News. During my travels, I was trained to look for the telling image—a picture that gives the essence of the story. In covering countries in times of tension and transition, I had to look through other people’s eyes to learn how they saw the world. I filmed in Abu Dhabi before the United Arab Emirates were unified, in Cuba ten years after their revolution, in Northern Ireland when their religious conflict burst into urban warfare, and in Liberia covering its social split.

While history gives us versions of a story, a telling image has the power to tap a deeper understanding. I practiced seeing with new eyes, open to take in the unfamiliar and to discover clues to another culture’s worldview. Dropping into a foreign country and trying to understand it enough to present its various factions, historic background, and current controversy was daunting and humbling. I knew I needed to lasso the topics at play, and I knew I would never know everything. One approach I took was to step back and look at the situation with the largest lens, seeing all sides, noticing the geography that influenced the culture’s way of living, and learning the historic background. I had to find an image that could relay the issues and emotions, the culture and landscape, in a way that could convey more than words can explain.

Searching for the telling image of a story, I found one, hiding in plain sight. It was shape itself. Once I looked for shape, I saw it everywhere—in shelters, social systems, and sacred sites. From indigenous cultures to modern societies, our answers to survival, social bonding, and sacred symbols differ vastly. Yet the blueprint for each culture became clear when I looked for shape.

Now you can join in my journey. I extend my thanks to my friends, colleagues, and supporters who have been there with me along the way. Without you, this book wouldn't be possible.

If you'd like to receive more updates about my book, click here to sign up for my book newsletter and get a free excerpt of the book. Or you can pre-order your copy on Amazon. 

Advance Praise for The Telling Image

Group sales and publicity information

Press Release

Shape: Hiding in Plain Sight

"Nature does not change, the map in our mind changes." 

The mission of TED talks is to spread ideas that matter. TED talks have become a vital artery is today’s world. Originally the acronym stood for Technology, Entertainment and Design, drivers of change. But the very name TED makes it friendly, like a person speaking to you, one on one. And that has remained its character through its evolution. In tone, it is a conversation from one person to another, even when the other is a global audience. In subject matter, TED Talks encompass the full spectrum of human imagination, communicated through personal passion.

So it thrills me to be able to add my voice to the chorus that endures in TED formats. My personal passion has been trying to understand how humans shape their world, and then how that shape shapes them. We can be liberated or locked by the way we order the world. We always see through a lens, even when we are not conscious of it, like a fish not knowing it is swimming in water. The best we can do is to realize our prism can become our prison, and then enlarge our lens to take in more of the world. I will be giving a TEDx Talk in Dallas, Nov 15, 2016. The press release for the event is attached. The recorded talk will be uploaded on YouTube by the middle of December 2016. I welcome you to gather round the fire of TED’s global circle.

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HIDDEN SHAPES CLUE US TO HOW THE WORLD WORKS, WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS

In Dallas SMU TEDx Talk, Emmy Award Winner Lois Farfel Stark Invites Us To Enlarge Our Lens, and Glimpse the Big Picture 

DALLAS, October 24, 2016 -- How can we make sense of the world?

To this timeless question, Emmy-award winning TV producer and documentary filmmaker Lois Farfel Stark, responds, quite simply:

Shape.

Stark, who was a producer and writer of documentary specials for NBC network and has created over 40 documentaries, filming in Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Cuba as well as throughout the U.S., will explain this concept in a TEDx Talk at SMU in Dallas on November 12, 2016 titled “Shape: Hiding in Plain Sight.”

Her November 12 TEDx talk will examine how shape reveals the mindset of cultures through time and provides cues to our future. Illustrated with a series of captivating photos, including originals taken by Stark, “Shape: Hiding in Plain Sight” offers a remarkable journey through time and place, from tribal ceremonies in Liberia and the pyramids of Egypt to Dubai and China -- where a hotel built in the shape of an upright ring upends all expectations. 

Drawing on her experience as a filmmaker and global explorer, Stark reveals how shapes such as those of shelters, sacred sites and social systems reflect our frame of mind. Round thatched huts and labyrinths show us that migratory humans saw the world as a web. Church steeples and skyscrapers show us that urban humans viewed the world as a ladder. 

“Nature does not change. Only the map in our mind changes,” Stark notes. Even the digital world holds a hidden shape. The network is the map we impose on everything. It is not just technology that develops. The very way we think shifts.

“Shape: Hiding in Plain Sight” prompts reflections on chaos becoming pattern, opposing forces becoming balance and the beauty of the big picture: how we are all connected, to nature and to each other.

A transcript and the photos are available upon request.

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About Lois Stark
Lois Farfel Stark is an Emmy Award-winning producer, documentary filmmaker and author of the book The Telling Image: Shapes of Changing Times (Greenleaf, 2017). During her distinguished career with NBC News, she produced and wrote over forty documentaries on architecture, medical research, wilderness protection, artists, and social issues.  She has covered Abu Dhabi's catapult to the 20th century, the British withdrawal from the Persian Gulf, Cuba ten years after their revolution, the Israeli Air Force in the Six Day War, Northern Ireland during its time of religious conflict, and Liberia's social split.

Along with an Emmy, Lois is also the recipient of two CINE Gold awards, two Gold Awards from The International Film Festival of the Americas, the Matrix Award from Women In Communications, the American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award, and the Silver Award from the Texas Broadcasting Association. She has served as a trustee for institutions in education, health, the arts, and public service, including Sarah Lawrence College, her alma mater.  She lives in Houston.