This is the first in a series of monthly articles which I hope will form the basis for a book about photography and the nature of creative perception. They are written specially for Pixiport, though articles will become available in an archive on www.incamera.visioninfocus.cc I would of course very much value anyone's feedback . It can feel a little cold out in cyberspace!
The Eye Within: Part One: Standing still to start the dance
What's the difference that makes the difference?
What makes some photographs examples of creative art and others simply competent records? Why do some images have soul to them and others, while technically perfect, leave us feeling cold?
I believe that part of the answer lies in the state of mind of the photographer during both the capturing of the image and the post-shooting work that makes that subject expressive. That state of mind is the result of being able to spend time with the image.
Taking the time
To contemplate actually means to be "in time with" the object of our attention (from the Latin "con", meaning "together" and "templo", meaning time). It's the basis of meditation, and I believe that a meditative approach to photographic image-making is one way to discover the latent depth in what we are working with and to reveal that in our work. Often it's only when we get to the computer or the darkroom that we find the time to "take the time". We can spend hours revisiting a shot that took seconds to spot and shoot, and it is this investment of time I feel that can confer an energy almost to an image.
An image's ability to communicate is in direct proportion to the sincerity of its execution. We don't have a machine yet to record this type of energy so for now my idea is just that. But I think that how we feel about our work carries out to the viewer. And if we manage to really contemplate our subject we will develop a far deeper relationship with it, that will speak of a deeper, more heartfelt connection with its source.
Knowing when to act
The path to creativity is both active and passive. The passive or contemplative phase needs to precede the active. We almost need to become a blank piece of film ourselves, to open up totally to our subject just like the camera does. Only then can we find the unexpected. We need to become one with our subject. But once we find that prize, that pearl from the depths of the ocean of possible images, then we need to enter the active phase, using all the technical controls and crafting skills available to us to really steer that vision in a coherent direction: to make the score sing!
This process demands an equal respect for the original scene, a need to "stay with it", to remain "in time" with it, but now it's our turn. It's as though the subject is saying: "OK you've bothered to get to know me; tell me about yourself". All too often, I've failed to make a similar remark to my subject - and I'm not just talking portraiture here!
East meets West
So for me the creative process is about both static contemplation and active crafting.
Without a deep sense of receptivity and an ability to absorb and fuse with our subject we won't discover the rare and unnoticed. But without a determination to communicate what we find, to "direct" the talent that's on the stage, that vision will remain only a half-realised potential. And yet if we seek to impose our craft and technique on our subject we will quickly kill its life, its potential to surprise us and nourish us with new insights.
I feel the process is both Eastern and Western. We need to pass through an almost meditative phase in order to let the subject speak its insights to us. But then we need to act! We need to bring that vision home, show others what we've found. That's a curiously Western preoccupation. This is the quest of the seeker, the explorer, and their need to bring back evidence of their exploits. If our motive for this is others' praise or admiration then we have missed the point and we are only serving our egos. But if our motive is purely a wish to share the vision we have been treated to, and indeed to preserve a reminder for ourselves of what we found on our journey, then I believe the result is free of the insecurities of the ego.
Out of my hands
The photographs that I cherish the most are the ones where I don't quite feel totally in control of the subject; the photograph somehow goes on "observing" me, giving me a little more each time I make the effort to peer into its hidden depths. As a photographer, my job has been simply to give the subject a platform on which to go on communicating with the world. I honestly find some images haunting in this respect. The dead truly seem to go on living through a profound image. It's as though you bring the subject to life, whatever it is, a person, a flower, a building, a landscape, every time you observe it, every time you spend time with it, every time you grant it life through your participation with it. I feel that the spirits of the noble and beautiful indigenous Indian peoples of Edward Curtiss's photographs seem to go on living through his stunning images. No wonder primitive people felt that the camera had the ability to steal their soul.
Too much control
But if I have consciously structured every aspect of the picture, if I've decided in advance what I want to extract from the subject, then it lacks that element of surprise; I've failed to relate to it and it's refused, or been unable, to communicate with me. This for me is the difference between craft and art. They are both beautiful but the latter has its own soul. It's as though the collaboration of photographer and subject produces a third element or entity, which is the shared offspring of both of them.
Bringing it home
Equally I have often wandered in a deep state of fascination with the work of light around me, enthralled, enraptured even, by its shimmering presence. But I haven't taken a single shot. Sometimes this can actually be quite a good exercise. It is contemplation. But it's not creativity. I haven't brought anything tangible back from my journey. It's as though there is a world of potential out there but it needs to be both discovered and then nurtured in order to really bring it through to conscious appreciation by the audience.
Chipping away
If I can borrow a metaphor from the world of sculpture, traditional sculptors used to produce anatomically perfect figurative studies in clay. These would then be literally transferred to a piece of marble via a pointing machine; this apparatus was used to measure the depths of various significant points on the clay model from a structure that was built around it. The stonemason, not the artist, would then simply drill into the block of marble to the required distance, chipping out the unwanted rock. Hundreds of such measurements were taken and eventually the form of the original model would be transposed to the rock. The result was technically brilliant and utterly dead in terms of art!
In the early twentieth century a group of radical modern sculptors, notably Jacob Epstein, led what became known as a "return to the block", the process of direct carving. Just like the earliest practitioners of sculpture, i.e. so-called primitive societies, these sculptors began with the block of stone or trunk of wood itself. They didn't make preparatory models in clay. Instead they lived with the material to be carved, became inspired by it, wondered at the mysterious form that was contained within it, that it was their job as a creative artist to "liberate". There was a sculpture in there somewhere: you just had to find it!
The journey was unpredictable: despite having an idea of where they were headed, they still had to work with the fissures in the stone or the knots in the wood that they encountered. The material was not simply a substance on which to impose their vision; it was a living thing to be respected. Indian religious sculptors were regarded in the same light as priests; at the end of a day's carving they would carefully sweep up the chipped off lumps of stone and perform a ritual of gratitude for them. They honestly believed that the rock was suffused with a spiritual presence. Whether that's the case or not; these ancient and modern sculptors shared a reverence for the subject and the ability to work with it to discover something visionary, something that surprised them.
Revealing the vision
And I think photography can be like direct carving. We need to respect our material - and as photographers, our "material" is the visible world before us. We need to spend time with it, to be in its presence. We need to consider it from every angle, just like the sculptor planning the first blow of the chisel, to begin to think even as we are shooting it how we might later work with it on the computer or in the darkroom. It's as though, paradoxically, we need to keep stepping out of time into the future to wonder at how we will represent or incorporate this subject in a print, and then return to see whether our intended "vision" will be appropriate.
It's a process of relating. And if we force the pace, if we just transfer the clay model to the stone, then we will end up with something similar to what the stonemason created, a recording in pixels or silver, that has no soul. The technology actually remains the same, but our mental/emotional approach to the subject is what will confer upon it a hint of the energy which makes a piece of primitive art so genuine and disquieting at the same time.
Sitting still and soaring high
In future articles I'll talk more about this two-phased approach to creativity: contemplation and action. It's as though you need to look at the world with an inner eye, to access a quality of vision which sees beyond the subject as it is to what it could also become. I believe that we need to unlearn a lot of our habitual ways of seeing the world in order to cut through to this other level. Then our photographic skill comes into play as we attempt to communicate what our inner eye has perceived. As photographers we are being challenged not just to see but to perceive.
Try one thing
I'd like to finish by inviting you to try an exercise. There are many images on Pixiport which illustrate the approach to image-making that I have been talking about here, but there is one which just says it all. If you have a moment, give this a try. Click the link below and look at your watch. Set yourself a goal of spending two minutes in the presence of this image. Two full minutes. Just with that one image. See if you can establish the quality of contemplation that the artist clearly achieved in its creation and see if you can follow the subsequent crafting that she needed to carry out to reveal the depths of that subject, to cement a relationship with it. It's a timeless image. And it's sold out!
Gallery Image Number GA9-21Enlargement of
Marie
Parting thought: If we are present with our work, then it will have presence.
The next article will look at how we become more fully present in the moment of our creative work.
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