A new look

I have changed the look of the blog to accommodate some readers who felt the previous theme was too hard on the eyes. It has taken me a while I know but I have finally gotten around to it. The theme is Andreas04 by Andreas Viklund. I am still hosted at WordPress.com being too much of a cheapskate (not to mention too lazy) to look at self-hosting options.

I actually like this theme better or perhaps it’s just a case of a change is as good as a holiday. In any case I hope it’s easier to read though I don’t guarantee that it will help my posts make more sense.

Oh, and if this theme sucks then let me know, WordPress.com offers plenty to choose from.

Perfection rules, Okay

Some time ago a friend was working on a photograph in Photoshop. He had been working on it for a few days on and off. There were many layers that I could see and many more that I couldn’t judging by the size of the scroll bar on the side of the panel. I asked him what it was he was trying to achieve and he simply said “it’s not quite right”. I looked at the image and after a minute quietly said, “it’s perfect as it is”. My friend laughed and mumbled something about nothing being perfect. “You’re lying or you’ve no idea what perfection is” he said. And as if to spare my ego he added, “I’ll go with the latter”.

That seems to be a common belief amongst most people and seemingly all the more so amongst artists. Nothing’s perfect. It’s almost as if perfection is a pie-in-the-sky goal that serves no purpose other than to drive us to be more creative. We seek it the way a pilgrim seeks salvation, following any means, any methods, any rules that show promise but all the while with a sneaking suspicion that the goal is unreachable.

In conversations I find that if perfection is defined as “being without flaw or defect” than it is generally agreed that nothing can be perfect and apparently, all the more so when it is man-made. To be fair however I do hear people attribute the term of perfection to certain things at certain times. Mostly it is attributed to something in nature, a perfect sunset, a perfectly beautiful flower, a perfect view. Recently a friend told me that he’d just had a perfect day which consisted of spending the day in pajamas and watching movies while eating junk food. However, while he may have described it as a perfect day I am sure that if he was to spend the rest of his days doing exactly the same thing the days would quickly become less than perfect. In any case I have never heard it uttered by an artist about his or her own work. Almost as if the artist sees herself and her art as one and knowing deep down that she herself is flawed finds it impossible to witness the perfection in her own work. I should perhaps state at this point that I am making somewhat sweeping statements from my observations of only a handful of artists whom I have the pleasure to know. And as a further disclaimer I will add that none make a living from their art. But if I may, I will continue.

Someone once told me, you won’t know if it’s what you want until you’ve defined it. The trouble with defining perfection is that it seems to be subjective. I have talked to artists who have no problems seeing perfection in the work of their idols but find it impossible to see it in their own art. They may like what they’ve created but they invariably stop short of calling it perfect. The ancient Greeks, interestingly enough, had no problems seeing perfection in their own work and I see that as being due to the fact that they had a workable definition for perfection. The term perfection was attributed to anything that fulfilled its purpose. So a spatula for example, which can flip a pancake as it was intended to do (can you guess I had pancakes for breakfast this morning?), would be considered perfect, though I am not sure if the Greeks had spatulas, much less pancakes. In any case, the ancient Greeks also believed that humans had a purpose, namely to be happy, and since happiness is achievable than it was deemed that humans could attain perfection.

As my friend struggles with his image, trying so diligently to bring out the beauty he can envisage in his mind’s eye, he finds himself (though perhaps not consciously) bound by rules and theories about making the perfect photograph. There is no doubt that rules on composition, depth of field and lighting can all contribute to the aesthetics of an image. Even the breaking of these rules can at times work wonders. But the entire time there are rules, either to be followed or to be broken. And all the while he may be asking himself: “where is the beauty?”

When I make an image I too inadvertently follow rules. Not consciously the way a beginner might do but at some level some rules are remembered and interpreted perhaps even broken for the sake of achieving this… well, this ideal of perfection. And this perfection, it seems to me, is often tied in with beauty where art is concerned. Lately however, I have been wondering if beauty is indeed what I am trying to achieve with my photographs. Anyone who knows me well will know that I tend to use photography as a catalyst to understanding the meaning of life, the universe and everything. But within that context I create individual images and for each image there is a desire, subtle as it may be, to make it just right, to make it perfect. The thought that this may be unachievable is gently pushed aside by another desire, namely a desire to create beauty. Or at least that is how I have interpreted it until recently.

Art can evoke any number of a vast array of emotions and feelings. I find that the making of art, in my case, photographs, is equally charged with all sorts of mental turbulence (as per my previous post). From negatives to positives, from peaks to troughs, from anger to jubilance. And throughout all of that an image forms itself and while there might be beauty that emerges in the process there is sometimes something else there as well, something that for some reason seems to require some sort of permission to… to be. That something, when I allow it to emerge is a feeling of joy or contentment, a kind of bliss. The image may not be perfect, the rules may not have been applied, or broken, as well as they should have been, the photoshopping skills may have been lacking and yet despite all of this there is a sense of happiness. Not the happiness I feel when I buy a new laptop or if I was to win a trip overseas but rather a happiness born out of a simple act of creating something that deep down was created so that it could be shared. This feeling is pure and it’s simple. It doesn’t come with an adrenalin rush or so much as a “woo hoo!”. But it’s there, blissful contentment, more satisfying than your regular marketable joy and longer lasting too.

And so I have come to the conclusion that for me the creation of art is not about creating beauty or interpreting reality or expressing myself or passing the time, it’s about being happy, the simple kind of happy that is always there for the taking but that I fail to recognize all too often because I’m so used to the kind of happiness that comes with the fanfare and  the wrappings, the kind that is short-lived leaving me just wanting more and more in an unsustainable cycle.

As my friend steps out of the room to get himself a coffee I look again at his image and think to myself, “but it is perfect because it makes me happy just to see it” and in so doing it has fulfilled its purpose because that’s what art seeks to give, happiness, pure and simple. And if the ancient Greeks are to be believed then art, in making us happy, also makes us perfect.

The angel and the devil

Whenever I feel like writing about something a sequence of events invariably occurs in the mind. It starts off innocently enough with thoughts popping up relating to what it is I plan to write about. But it isn’t long before thoughts come in thick and fast instilling everything from fresh ideas to self-doubt to totally unrelated topics. These thoughts might go something like this:

“That’s a great topic, some people will find it useful for sure”
“This stuff will just confuse people again”
“They’ll think I’m a genius”
“They’ll think I’m a freaking weirdo”
“Who am I kidding I’ve barely got three regular readers”
“I wonder if there is any chocolate left downstairs?”
“Why am I doing this anyway?”
“I should go for a run, at least that would be useful”
“Maybe I could slip in that great story about the koala guru in Nepal”
“How the hell is that related to this topic”
“How about some green tea?”

You get the idea. I know I’m not alone in this respect. It always reminds me of those cartoons where the main character has an angel on one shoulder and a demon on the other each giving out conflicting advice. While everyone would be able to relate to this I find that often times it is artists who are not only most aware of this mental chatter but also the most vulnerable to its effects. I say this because creativity requires in itself the need to put yourself out there, to bare your soul, so to speak, to the vagaries of the big bad world. It’s quite possible that there are some creative types out there who create solely for themselves without ever showing anyone their artwork but I suspect that they would be few and far between. Also I would venture to guess that the urge to create would wane after a time because generally art is created to make some sort of statement, to instill some kind of communication and so at least two people need to be involved, a creator and a viewer.

This kind of mental chatter can be an annoyance at best and self-destructive at worst (especially when you start referring to the chatter as “the voices in my head”). It is always tiring and may well prove to be detrimental to the process of being creative to the point where the artist is unable to reach her full potential since the source of her creativity, the mind, has been hijacked by an angel and a demon. Of course the question is: which do you believe? While I have used the analogy of an angel and a demon it is not always obvious that the angel is right. A negative thought, “everyone will hate my work”, which might be seen as coming from the demon on the left shoulder may seem like a perfectly valid point while the more positive thought, “how could anyone not love this artwork” coming from the angel may just seem like wishful thinking.

Some time back I read an article somewhere (unfortunately I could not find it again) which reminded me of a lesson I learnt from Martial Arts. When I was studying Tong Long Kung Fu, a close quarters, explosive and powerful martial art I was told that before a martial artist could defeat his enemies he had to vanquish the mind for a fight was won or lost in the mind not with the fists. It was a few years later while learning Tai Chi however that I understood the meaning of vanquishing the mind. The thing about the mind is that it is difficult, if at all possible, to control. At least from my own experience. As a student of Tai Chi I was often told to have no-mind or empty-mind and I would struggle to stop thoughts to the point that I would stumble or forget a move or worse, I would end up hurting myself. I was expending a massive amount of mental effort in order to perform my moves effortlessly. Something was wrong. Finally I went to my teacher and explained that I could not empty my mind of thoughts and that Tai Chi was just not for me. His response was: “Trying to empty the mind of thought is like trying to make water dry. Your attempt to do so is going against the very nature of mind. That is not what is meant by empty-mind. You are a suppressor of thoughts when you should be a moderator.”

Suppressing thoughts or even trying to ignore them will always fail and is akin to bottling up emotions. Eventually those thoughts come back sometimes even stronger than before. As a moderator however we are simply lessening the intensity or strength of the thoughts. As a moderator we allow the thoughts to be without providing them support because without support, without that mental attachment, the thoughts simply move on. While this may sound straight forward, the moderator requires keen awareness and therein lies the difficulty. We often acquaint awareness with support so that when we become aware of a thought we immediately decide whether we like it or not and we surround the thought in memories and judgements. Photographers will probably relate to this process. Photographers walk around with a keen sense of awareness and upon seeing something will immediately associate it with past memories, future visions and a variety of feelings. This process however, where mind is concerned, makes the thoughts stronger leaving us with no alternatives other than suppression if we are to be free of it. At least temporarily.

I tend to see creativity as a basic human trait. By that I mean that I see humans as creative by nature with a built in desire to express themselves and the way they perceive the world. And by “creative” I don’t necessarily mean artistic. It could be cooking, gardening, making wine, dressing yourself, even programming. These are all creative outlets. The fact that not everyone in the world displays this trait however, does not negate my premise. I would suggest instead, that suppression rather than lack of desire is the reason why so many people appear to be non-creative. As usual I have no evidence to back up this claim, it’s just an observation.

When the desire to be creative bubbles up to the surface the artist may not like what emerges and so prefers to squash the urge. He may use an excuse along the lines of “the world won’t appreciate what I have to offer” even though “the world” holds no opinion whatsoever about either him or his creations. What is really happening is that the creative urge is accompanied by an angel and a demon who constantly question his sense of self and bring up a multitude of unexpected feelings and emotions. Unable to cope with this barrage of thoughts they are suppressed and the blame is cast squarely on “the world” or maybe just “society” or perhaps simply ignored at least as much as a near constant gnawing feeling of unfulfillment can be ignored. And this happens at any level. Where I work there is no dress code and yet I’ve met people who feel the need to conform to what they perceive as acceptable rather than go with their own creative ideas of what they think is cool. They feel that there is pressure from the workplace to dress conservatively but in fact the pressure comes from within, from the angel and the demon. They hate the self-doubt and all the other mental chatter that happens when they wear what they like.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the trick to being creative lies essentially in learning to recognise the destructive forces of the mind, the angel and the demon, and to free myself from their clutches without suppressing them. Rather than figuring out which thought to go with, I need to recognise that neither the angel or the demon have my best interest at heart. They are both out to get me. So as I sit here writing this post I allow the thoughts to come, I watch in a conscious but impartial manner, the angel and the demon fight out a battle, the outcome of which holds no interest for me. And like two tired, heavyweight boxers who’ve gone 15 rounds, the angel and the demon eventually retire to their corners both vanquished by nothing more than a moderated lack of attention.

And the words to this post continue to flow unimpeded from the same source which created the angel and the demon, namely, the mind.

 

A light influence

In my previous post Andreas Manessinger made a comment and asked a question that I thought was worth sharing in a separate post .

Andreas’ comment and question:

…evidence suggests that people do NOT experience the same things, or if they do, they at least neither believe it nor act according to it.

I read Goldhagen’s “Hitler’s Willing Executioners” at the moment. This is a post-Auschwitz thing. It progresses slowly, but the more I read of it, the more I see parallels between the Nazi view of Jews and our view of foreigners. And ultimately both are utterly absurd. We should know that as they should have known it, the only problem is, as a society we don’t. Reality has only so much of a chance to influence our view of it. How much more chance could a picture have?

He is right. In life people do not experience the same things and when they do they will perceive them differently depending on their past, their culture, their circumstances. After all, we are, each of us, products of our own upbringing. But this was not the context to which I was referring to when I wrote about seeing the true nature of things. The context I was alluding to is beyond experience and perception, it is beyond the concept of self, beyond any concept at all.

But what I wrote about serves no practical purpose.

What I was suggesting was that when two people “hear the light” and there is seeing into the nature of things then without so much as a word spoken between them they know they have the same understanding of THAT which is.

And it serves no practical purpose.

Because with that understanding everything remains the same, there is love and there is hate, there is tolerance and there is discrimination, there is beauty and there is ugliness. To paraphrase D. T. Suzuki, “Before seeing, men are men and mountains are mountains. While on the path to seeing, things become confused: one doesn’t know exactly what is what and which is which. After seeing, men are men and mountains are mountains only somewhat as though your feet are a little off the ground”.

As I said, serving no practical purpose.

So let us look at it with a more practical mind set and explore Andreas’ question on whether a photo can have any influence. Allow me to start from the viewpoint that is the story of me as this is one viewpoint with which I am most familiar. For me, there is no doubt that the making or viewing of a photograph can influence my view of the world. Some photographs have brought tears to my eyes while others have made me laugh. Some images have made me aware to the plights of others and in the process heightened feelings of gratefulness for the life I have. The photographs of Minor White, Ansel Adams and Henri Cartier-Bresson had a direct influence on my desire to pursue photography. I can also safely say that photographs have had a direct influence in my becoming a “greener” person, more so than any statistical tables and charts or for that matter reality itself since in my part of the world humanity’s impact on the environment is much less obvious. And then there were those simple travel images that drove me to great adventures in lands far from home and far from my comfort zone. So on that personal and practical level some photographs have had a significant influence on my perception of the world.

Andreas’ point though, goes beyond mere personal influence. His question is whether a photo can have any influence on humanity as a whole and how we as a whole, view the world. I would suggest that the answer is yes, it’s possible. At least if history is anything to go by. I would even venture to say that photographs have a greater chance to influence our view than reality itself because while reality is subjective, photographs are often perceived as being objective and for whatever reason, it seems to me that humanity puts more weight behind objectivity. Or maybe not, I may be wrong. It’s possible that people have become more cynical, more skeptical and less trusting. These days people know that photographs can be staged or manipulated and so they may be more inert, more immune to any influence an image might exert.

In any case it has been suggested that the following images have influenced and changed the way we view the world. For better or for worse.

Earthrise 1968 - William Anders NASA

1972 Kim Phuc in a napalm attack in South Vietnam by Nick Ut

1989 Tiananmen Square protest by Jeff Widener

World Trade Center Attack 9/11

Here are more pictures presented as a YouTube slide show.

Hearing the light

The name of this blog, Plop, is taken from a haiku by a Japanese  poet named Bashō. The full haiku, which has been translated in various ways, goes like this:

furu ike ya / kawazu tobikomu / mizu no oto

The ancient pond / A frog jumps in / Plop!

This haiku is often mentioned when people talk of Zen. It is said, somewhat romantically perhaps, that Bashō attained satori (enlightenment) upon hearing the “plop” of the frog jumping into the pond. At the very least Bashō had a precise grasp of reality. If nothing else his haikus show that he could see clearly and simply into the life or ‘isness’ of things.

The haiku is an art form which can easily be dismissed as cute or quaint and of little value but there is more to the seventeen syllables than endearing sentiment. Dr. R. Blyth defines the haiku as “the expression of a temporary enlightenment, in which we see into the life of things”. D. T. Suzuki sees the haiku as “a significant intuition into Reality”. This is to say that the haiku in its use of simple words, in its description of common things, points to something less apparent but, paradoxically, just as obvious.

The reason for my choosing Bashō’s haiku as an inspiration to name this blog was in part because of a connection which I perceive, between haiku and photography. This connection may not seem apparent at first but I cannot help but see a link or a similarity of goals between the two art forms. Quite simply put I use the medium of photography as an exploration into the nature of self, of things, of life. I do so by looking at the common things around me, the things which I, all too often, take for granted and thereby ignore, and then try to “see” their essence, their “isness” just as the poet who writes haiku tries to do. But just as any random seventeen syllable poem will not necessarily make a haiku neither will any random photograph give us “a significant intuition into Reality”. For a photograph to impart some sort of meaning it needs to possess something of a subtle nature, or as the French put it a certain je ne sais quoi.

As it turns out a French writer and philosopher by the name of Roland Barthes explains this subtle essence of photography beautifully in his book “Camera Lucida“. Barthes explains that for a photograph to have that deeper appeal which goes beyond the “um, nice” or “yeah, pretty” superficiality, it needs to consist of two co-existing elements: Studium and Punctum. Barthes defines Studium as “an extent, it has the extension of a field, which I perceive quite familiarly as a consequence of my knowledge, my culture”. In other words it is by Studium that we are at first attracted to a scene or a photograph. Something we see connects with memories which have been formed by our upbringing and our culture. We are seeing something obvious and instantly recognisable. In itself it may even be enough to reveal the photographer’s intentions. On its own however, Barthes tells us that Studium may keep us interested only for a short while before we move on. To make us linger longer over an image or to have us return to it many times over, a photograph needs a second element which Barthes called Punctum. As Barthes explains, Punctum “will break (or punctuate) the Studium”. In other words, the Studium, the common everyday element of the photograph is disturbed or rocked by the Punctum which will in its own way seek out the viewer and hold her captive. The Punctum will often be nothing more than a detail but a powerful detail at that.

“A detail overwhelms the entirety of my reading; it is an intense mutation of my interest, a fulguration. By the mark of something, the photograph is no longer ‘anything whatever’. This something has triggered me, has provoked a tiny shock, a satori, the passage of a void… This brings the Photograph (certain photographs) close to the Haiku.” Roland Barthes – “Camera Lucida”

Now I am not sure if Barthes would extend his concept of Studium and Punctum to other art forms but for me in the Studium of the ancient pond and its frog, the “plop” is the Punctum. It is that which points to the inherent nature of the aesthetic objects. The pond and the frog paint a lovely picture we can easily relate to and appreciate but it is the “plop” that awakens us. A photograph can have a similar effect. The question I’ve asked myself is: how do I create such an image? Of course I cannot really “create” a photograph as such. At least not from scratch. To paraphrase Dr. Carl Sagan, “If I want to make a photograph from scratch I would first need to create the universe”. Perhaps then, the question is more along the lines of how do I capture the essence, the eternal quality of what I see which is already there even before I set my eyes on it?

I will point out before I continue that at this point I am not writing about mastering the technical aspects of photography. That is an entirely different topic which I will leave to much more capable and gifted artists/photographers. What I wish to explore is the simplest way possible to capture the inherent nature of the aesthetic objects around me.

Photography, and art in general, is often thought to be a means of communicating some idea or sentiment from the artist to the viewer. It may even be fair to say that the artist usually communicates her ideas by using form and content. But it is not just form and content that are at play. Techniques such as balance, composition, tones, colour can also be used effectively to convey a mood, a feeling and in doing so a link is created between the artist and the viewer through the aesthetic object depicted in the artwork or photograph. I see this as an illusion, a sleigh of hands in the way a gifted illusionist can make you see something that is not really there. That I see it as an illusion does not take anything away from the artistic value of the artwork. Rather, what I am saying is that what we feel or sense from the photograph is more about the artist’s perspective which we then associate with the objects in the image. For example if I was to shoot a tree on a bright sunny day with the sun behind me to capture the rich colours so that I may reflect my cheerful mood my image would be quite different to one I would make if I was in a dark mood and shot the same scene facing the sun thus creating long shadows and deep contrast. Both images may well reflect whichever mood I wish to communicate but will either image tell me anything about the nature or the essence of the main object in the picture, namely the tree?

To create a work of art there is no doubt that a certain amount of technical knowledge is needed. It is necessary to become competent in one’s craft before we can expect to produce anything that might be considered aesthetically pleasing. Usually such expertise comes with much study and practice. In photography there is a need to fully understand the equipment, not only the functions of the buttons and dials but also the camera’s limitations. Then there is the technicalities of the craft. With photography it’s focal length, depth of field, film speed, white balance, shutter speed, f-stops, noise, lenses and so on. And I won’t even start on post-processing. The thing is that at some point, after much sweat and tears, all of the technical stuff becomes second nature. Much of the decision making about settings etc is done subconsciously and the mind starts to concern itself more with the aesthetics, the composition, the colours, the tones, the shadows, the highlights, the feel. But even that can potentially become second nature and operate purely on a subconscious level. It is perhaps at this point in the development of a photographer that the creative mind is born. In my view, the creative mind is akin to what my martial-arts teacher referred to as empty mind. By empty I do not mean dull or inactive. Minor White explains it best.

The state of mind of the photographer while creating is a blank. I might add that this condition exists only at special times, namely when looking for pictures… For those who would equate ‘blank’ with a kind of static emptiness, I must explain that this is a special kind of blank. It is a very active state of mind really, a very receptive state of mind, ready at an instant to grasp an image, yet with no image pre-formed in it at any time. We should note that the lack of a pre-formed pattern or preconceived idea of how anything ought to look is essential to this blank condition. Such a state of mind is not unlike a sheet of film itself-seemingly inert, yet so sensitive that a fraction of a second’s exposure conceives a life in it. (Not just life, but a life.)

It is while operating in this state of mind that intuition, whatever that may be, seems to take over. The shutter is released not because of any conscious decision but rather as an automatic action to a feeling. The “feeling” in this instance is not of a personal nature. It is not about how I feel or even about how the subject feels to me and it is not something that can be conceptually grasped. It could be said that the creative process is driven by insight and not by discursive thinking. Or as D. T. Suzuki puts it:

The artist’s world is one of free creation and this can come only from intuitions directly and immediately rising from the isness of things, unhampered by senses and intellect.

For me, empty mind, or what Zen calls no-mind, cannot be achieved by effort and does not constitute a mind free of thoughts. The concept is one I find difficult to explain though I can say that the conscious act of emptying the mind is self-defeating. It happens of its own accord. Also it is only after the fact that I note consciously that such a state of mind occurred. To consciously think “Aha, I am in a state of no-mind” would be contradictory to the definition of no-mind because in such a state attention is withdrawn from everything, including any thoughts that may enter the mind, but opens itself instead to aesthetic contemplation.

It may be worth pointing out that empty mind is not restricted to the photographer. With empty mind, as a viewer, I may also grasp the very essence that a photographer captured without any juxtaposition of my own biases and with no need for interpretation. Of course for many of us it is the intellectual discourses on art that we enjoy so much and so what I am suggesting here may not sound like there is any point to it. But if we can suspend our intellect and our biases towards form and structure it may be possible, either as a photographer or as a viewer, to let the forms simply be and in so doing reveal their true essence. And so, regardless of education or status, anyone can hear for themselves, the haiku which the light recites ever so softly.

Like the sound of a frog jumping in a pond, we can hear the light celebrating the commonplace.

Branching out to the right, growing out to the left, just walking the dog

Of space and time

Once upon a time
I thought art was a waste of space.
Later, when I tried in vain to create my own,
I came to think it was a waste of time.
Now that I’m older
and care much less about what I think,
I spend all my time
seeing art in every space.

Art, Lies and Videotapes

While cleaning out some old video tapes I came across one that caught my eye. On my tapes I stick a piece of paper on which I write the last show that I recorded on it. This one caught my attention because the paper was full of crossed out shows and the last thing I had recorded on it was a movie called “True Lies” (I’m a sucker for action/comedy). I always liked the title, “True Lies”, a paradoxical phrase of course but there is no denying that life is full of them, true lies I mean, those lies we tell ourselves over and over to the point that we believe them to be true (admittedly this may be different to the way you understand the term). Now for most of us telling ourselves “true lies” is for the most part harmless but I suspect that for artists it can be quite detrimental to their art and perhaps to themselves.

While I consider my images as being artistic in nature I have said that I do not consider myself an artist. However I did, once upon a time, aspire to be one. Growing up on the outskirts of Paris I wanted to follow in the footsteps of Cartier-Bresson, Adams and White. I wanted their skill, their creativity. I wanted the fame and the recognition they received and I used to think that it couldn’t be all that hard… just point and click… right? At least, such were the notions of a young child. I remember getting my first roll of film developed. I was so excited. Shots of the dining room, shots of the stairs, shots of the alley next to our house and of the park at the end of the alley. To the child that I was then I was Ansell Adams and the small hill in the park was my El Capitan. I was an artist and it was so easy, look, see, shoot. Of course no one else was quite as excited as I was about my “art” and it wasn’t long before I started to question myself as an artist. I wasn’t yet 10. Self-deprecation set in slowly and thoughts started to creep in, “If only I had a better camera”, “If only I lived near Yosemite”, “If only I had a darkroom”.

Now I truly believed I was meant to be an artist, that I was due the fame and the recognition. And so believing this and believing the thoughts that kept creeping in, as I got older I kept buying new camera gear, new lenses, new metering gadgets. When I was older still I went travelling around the world visiting great cities and landmarks. I even made it to Yosemite. And every time I created “art” which no one else recognised as such, new thoughts would creep in. “Nobody gets it”, “Ansell was just lucky”, “I suck at this”. These thoughts along with the original belief of being destined to be an artist were, in hindsight, all lies of course but all true from the perspective of “me”. Anyway, at some point I stopped making images. In retrospect I was lucky. If I had persisted I may have ended up losing my passion for photography and my appreciation of art.

The problem with believing the lies is that they smother the creative flow that seeks to be expressed. The excitement I felt after developing my first roll of film was quickly extinguished not because I had failed to be creative but rather because I had seemingly failed to get the recognition from others. But imagine, if you will, a young boy standing in a park next to a small hill with an old twin lens reflex camera in hand. That little hill is demanding his full attention in no less a way than El Capitan asked it of Adams. The image of that little hill is fated to be and it has chosen that little boy as a means to an end because at that very moment only the little boy could see the hill for what it truly is. But had that boy truly seen the hill for what it was than those lies would also have been seen for what they truly were, just thoughts that had no bearing on the creativity that took place in that single moment of seeing.

After many years of only taking snapshots of my kids I bought a digital point & shoot to replace an old compact film camera. This new camera was very small, jeans-pocket small and I started to take it with me everywhere. It wasn’t long before I found myself making “arty” images and reliving that same excitement I had felt as a child. I really liked what I was shooting. Now I was older and hopefully wiser and as I continued to explore my re-kindled joy I remembered the disappointment I had felt as a child when I couldn’t get anyone else to appreciate my images the way I did. If I wasn’t to fall into the same trap that had made me give up artistic photography all those years ago I needed to figure out what it was I wanted out of my images. The beliefs I had held as a child returned but this time I questioned their validity.

It became apparent to me, that an important step in being able to create something I would be happy with, was to see the lies for what they truly were. Of course it is not to say that simply seeing “I suck” as a lie — or more precisely, as just a thought — would automatically make any old snapshot a work of art. I may truly suck at making artful imagery. That I suck may not be a lie at all. But I felt quite certain that it was possible for me to make images that at least I would consider beautiful. After all, I had a vivid memory of a young boy who had once upon a time, been ecstatic at his own photographic prowess. I came to realise that if I was disappointed with my results, if I could not find bliss in what was created than it was likely that a lie lay somewhere in consciousness parading as truth, a thought flaunting itself as reality. Was it true that others had to like my work for it to be good? Was it true that I hated the world of business and saw being artistic as a way out? Would being artistic really balance out my life? Was being creative my only path to happiness? And if it wasn’t something that I was seeking than perhaps I just believed that I would never have a “style”or that I was just misunderstood. So many thoughts find their way into my head, demanding my attention, demanding recognition. In order to see clearly I needed to clear those thoughts that I took to be reality. The breakthrough for me came with the realisation that I didn’t need to work out what was a lie and what wasn’t (after all, how would I ever know for sure?). Instead, I stopped hanging on to the thoughts, I let go of the beliefs, I became detached on a mental level and simply allowed my self to be lost in the activity of seeing. The more I did this, the more joy I found in my picture making. Ironically, it was when I stopped looking for external affirmation of my artistic ability, that my “arty” photographs began to be noticed. It was when I accepted I would never be an artist that I began to be regarded as one by family and friends.

Art, to be fully realised, may need a letting go of whatever is keeping us from seeing the beauty that craves to be expressed and I suspect that for the most part the “whatever” is all in the mind.

Should art come with emoticons?

I hadn’t planned on writing this post until a post by Paul Lester inspired me to do so. So for what it’s worth here are some thoughts.

A phone conversation with my wife some time back kicked off this whole exploration into the connection between photographers and their images. Or perhaps more to the point, what information about the photographer could an image reveal. The conversation with my wife went something like this:

Wife: I just got an email from Sam and I think he’s really angry with me.
Me: Oh really? What did he say?
At this point my wife proceeds to read the email in a somewhat angry voice.
Me: Whoa, hold up. Read it to me in a regular voice.

Which she did. And of course with a regular voice it was not possible to tell whether Sam was in fact angry.

Later that same day I was having a conversation with a friend about a photography blog I like to follow. When I mentioned the blog’s author my friend exclaimed “Oh that guy. He is such an arrogant asshole”. Surprised, I asked “Oh, so have you met him?”. “No but you just have to read some of his posts to know the type of guy he is. Even his photographs are full of arrogance”, and to prove his point, he whips out his iphone and promptly brings up a post by this allegedly arrogant photographer and with tones of indignation and contempt begins to read the words of a post which I recognised immediately as one I had quite enjoyed. When he finished I took his iphone and read it back to him using tones of amusement and hilarity and a touch of well meaning sarcasm. He looked at me, somewhat bewildered and taking his phone back, simply said, “you read that post all wrong”.

In these days of quick emails and 140 character tweets and SMS messages there is a real risk that our words will be wrongly interpreted.  And with this misinterpretation there is a risk that we will be misrepresented when people relay our words to a third party. Where these messages are concerned though, we can use combinations of characters, usually involving colons, semi-colons and brackets to help the recipient of our messages get an inkling of our emotional state at the time of writing thereby reducing the risk of misinterpretation. These character combinations are known as emoticons. So if I was to write “you’re such a dufus :)” then there is no mistaking that this is just a friendly jibe. Hopefully.

But this clarification of our mood or emotional state becomes a little more difficult when it comes to art. Especially visual arts. Going back to the conversation about the allegedly arrogant photographer, I questioned my friend how he had come to the conclusion that this particular photographer’s images were supposedly arrogant. His answer, “Well he supposedly lives in one of the most beautiful places on earth and then he takes a shot of some crap on the ground and calls it art!”. However it was difficult to gauge if my friends sentiments stemmed just from the pictures or if he’d made up his mind from reading the blog.

At this point I decided to carry out a totally unscientific experiment the results of which have absolutely no merit whatsoever. I put together a bunch of images into a little slide show and then showed them to people whom I felt certain would not have seen the images before and would not know who the photographer of each image was. Some of the photos were mine and some were taken by people I knew. I also included the shots of “crap on the ground” just for good measure. My questions to my subjects were “What does this photo mean to you?” and “What does this photo tell you about the photographer?”. Now as I said this experiment was totally unscientific, I didn’t even take notes but the results had me wondering if anyone had done a proper study on this matter and if someone has I would love to know about it. For what it’s worth though, here is the outcome of my own little case study.

As I had expected, the first question was easily answered by most people and what was interesting was that there was a certain amount of similarity between many of the answers. For example a photo of graffiti resulted in words like urban decay, misspent youth, hopelessness, visual pollution and so on. A photo of a mountain view was related to calm, natural beauty, peace, hope and strength. The results to the second question however left me a little perplexed. Prior to doing this little study I had asked a different bunch of people if they thought it was possible to know something about an artist solely from their artwork, specifically where the artwork was of a visual nature. Most answered along the lines that they thought it would be difficult to do so. It was generally agreed that some guesses could be made but only from an entire collection rather than just from one or two pieces. For that reason, in my little slide show I had included a few images from each photographer though for obvious reasons, not entire collections.

It turned out that none of my subjects hesitated in giving an opinion when asked “What does this photo tell you about the photographer?”. This lack of hesitation surprised me but what surprised me more was the variety of answers given. No two people gave the same answer for the same photographer. The photographer previously described as arrogant was described as sensitive, mindful, boring even lonely (arrogant never came up). One other photographer, a female but whose gender I did not reveal, was described as someone who was out of touch with femininity. My own photos had me as lonely, crass, without direction and rigid. One person described me, purely from my photos, as someone desperately trying to find beauty where there was none. A few nice things were said but I did find the whole thing quite amusing. Just for the record, when I told my subjects that I had taken those particular photographs it was usually met with blank or embarrassed stares followed by “Oh… well… then that’s not you” or “Well why on earth do you take photos like these?”. As I said, quite amusing.

I am not qualified to draw any conclusions that could be deemed academically worthwhile and my sample size was too small to have any significance but there was one thing I noticed which I found most interesting. The conclusions people drew about the photographers from the images seemed to me more about themselves than the photographers. They seemed to be describing their own traits at least as I perceive them to be, which is of course tainted by my own traits. After all it is so difficult to judge others without fully knowing what filters we view them through.

Perhaps, in the end, art tells us more about ourselves than about the artist and our own art holds a pointer to a truth that is just ours to see ;) :) <3

This is one image which had some people scratching their heads as to why someone like me would even consider making such a picture ;)

Blind Awareness Revisited

In my post Blind Awareness I reviewed a book called “Seeing Beyond Sight: Photographs by Blind Teenagers“ by Tony Deifell. Recently Tony was asked to be a part of  Authors@Google and the talk that he presented was filmed and placed on YouTube. In his talk he tells some of the stories from Seeing Beyond Sight and uses the themes to explore the idea of “innovation” more directly. The blurb on the wed site states:

Tony Deifell taught photography to blind children. More importantly, they taught him what it means to see. He draws surprising lessons about innovation and leadership from the experience. Whether it is business strategy, customer behavior, team building or personal development, he shows us how we are each bound by the ways in which we see the world.

 But for me what is much more telling are his insights into the concept of Seeing. Without wanting to give too much away Tony explores the different stages of Seeing, beginning with ”Distortion” and ending with ”Illuminance”. In an email, Tony told me that he “…forgot to say during that talk that once you think you’ve reached “illuminance” you can go right back into distortion — esp b/c of ego and stuff. It’s circular, not linear. But, then again, that’s the fun of the journey.”

If you have an interest in photography this is well worth watching and if your interest is more towards understanding life and some of the questions it raises then you will be equally well served.

If you feel so inclined please rate Tony’s video, digg it, stumble it, tweeter it, share it so that his pointers may spread a little further.

It’s art for fate’s sake

Before starting on this post I would like to say a quick word of thanks to the people who have kindly sent me email. Especially those who have shared their insights or questioned my ideas and my photographic work. It is always appreciated.

~§~

Not too long ago I received an email from a reader who questioned my choice of subjects in my photographs relative to my philosophical outlook of life which she assumed to be either Buddhist or Taoist. She wanted to know how I saw a connection between my usual images of urban grunge and decay and the ethereal beauty of Taoist or Zen teachings. Her expectations envisaged images of pebbles and meandering brooks, Japanese gardens and orderly patterns, of proverbial frogs jumping into ponds.

Firstly I need to point out that I am neither Buddhist or Taoist. I find it best to hold no beliefs or concepts which tends to be how I perceive all philosophies and religions. It is true that I favor quotes from Zen and Taoist scriptures but only because they are the least distorted interpretations of pointers that have been given by teachers throughout the ages. At least as far as I can tell. These teachings, or pointers, are common to many religions but in some, such as Christianity and Islam, the interpretations of the parables/pointers seems to be done in such a way as to benefit the few in order that they may control the many. Again this is just my view on the matter. In any case, as I’ve already mentioned, I prefer not to hold onto concepts and see no benefits in being dogmatic about unprovable principles. Beliefs, after all, are just thoughts. Totally intangible.

Now having said this there is no denying that I still philosophise about life and such as the posts in this blog will testify. But I do so with the understanding that it is all quite useless and conceptual and that it is best not to put a label on it (even though the need to communicate does require the use of such labels). I tend to philosophise purely for entertainment value. I do not mean to be flippant but I have no other way of expressing it.

So how do my photographs relate to my philosophising? Well in short, they don’t. At least not in any mystical or esoteric way. The photographs have little to do with anything. In fact I have never as yet printed one and only began keeping them when other people started to express interest in them. This is not to say that I don’t enjoy my images. Quite the contrary. I get a lot of pleasure and joy from my images. There’s excitement when I finish processing an image and blow it up to the full size of my 17″ screen. I love immersing myself in them and being subtly aware of the myriad thoughts they evoke, the good, the bad and the ugly. And of course I get a kick when others appreciate them and bring to them their own feelings and interpretations. That, in part, is what art is about, the sharing of joy and fun, feelings and emotions, memories and imaginings. That’s how I see it though it surprises me how many artists don’t see it this way. Perhaps that is a sign that I am simply not an artist, merely an hobbyist. In any case that is a whole other topic.

Getting back to the topic at hand, while I thoroughly enjoy my images I am not attached to them and from a philosophical point of view they are almost illusory in nature. It’s not the image that is important to me or the subject, it is the imaging, the process of making the photograph and the most important part to that process is the initial seeing. The subject matter is not part of the process, it is, for all intensive purposes, inconsequential. The subject is illusory while the seeing is real. In other words it is unimportant whether the subject is a grungy alleyway or cherry blossoms in full bloom. What is all important is the clear seeing and the detached acceptance of what is seen. There is a strength, a power, an awareness that comes at that moment of seeing and accepting. I do not shoot the alleyway because I choose to, I shoot it because it is inevitable that I do. At the moment of seeing there is a sense that everything this present moment has to offer is a fated consequence of the past. Life has unfolded itself to this very moment just as it is, despite any apparent desires on my part for it to be otherwise. So if there is to be a connection between my photography and my philosophising than it is between seeing and amor fati, the love of one’s fate. Fate is life and life is truth and art connects it all together in a boundless embrace of beauty and clarity.

There is a possibility at this point that I will be labeled a fatalist or a determinist. That is fine, I don’t mind but those labels may carry with them an implication of capitulation, of not having control. There may even be an assumption that I am forced to like all that happens, all that I see but that is not what amor fati points to. It points to not fighting against what is, choosing instead, to accept it, as it is. Paradoxically, as so often happens in life, out of this simple acceptance comes freedom and independence. And thus the very limitations that fate appears to beset on me are transmuted into beauty and creativity.

So in photographic terms, my success in creating a photograph that I will like, comes from accepting fully that which is presented to me. When I allow the mind to relax its grip on the world perceived, through the simple act of acceptance, creative energy is released and transformed into… well… art, or in my case, a photograph. A photograph that brings me bliss.