This Week We Focus on Creativity
Stop me if you have heard this before.
When I write about photographing I sometimes feel that I’m repeating the same thing over in slightly different ways.
But then maybe there’s only one thing to say. And it’s something along the lines of, “Everything is everything.” So after writing my last post (Taking Pictures for No Reason At All) I began thinking that the pictures that drew me into photographing—other people’s, not mine—were mostly freestanding images of great power. They were not usually part of a series or a story, and those that were really stepped out of the line and stood there alone. In other words, they did their own heavy lifting.
Specifically, I’m thinking of a Roy Decarava photo of an empty hallway, of a Robert Frank photo of a pedestrian walking past a building with a neon arrow on it (in Butte, I think), of a Duane Michals picture of a Russian acrobat. Emmet Gowin said that an Ansel Adams photo of new grass against a charred trunk really moved him in the same way.
I think of these photos as moments of purity, perhaps best understood in musical terms. What I mean is that we are all familiar with musical phrases, songs, whole pieces that don’t “mean” anything or narrate anything or convey a preselected thought or emotion. Instead they contain their effect without no outside reference necessary. We expect that of music.
On the other hand, we often think of photographs as being “pictures of things.” So we look for interesting subjects. I’ve done my share of that, but what really drew me on when I first started were those photos I took that just were. I was not chasing a job (I had one) and I wasn’t trying to say something. I just wanted to take a picture that somehow held it’s own meaning, like a kind of pure presence. I hoped that with luck someone else might feel the same thing when they saw it. But that wasn’t what drove me. What I wanted was to be expanded by something I’d done myself.
I’ve spent years making a living, satisfying clients, trying to explore the world of things and ideas, and working to construct this being called Seankernan. But still the only thing that really excites me is when one of those ineffable pictures turns up in my take. THAT’S what the work is. And that’s what I still want from photography. Not a job, a profession, not a show or a publication. I want to wake myself up.
5 Responses to 'This Week We Focus on Creativity'
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Jay Maisel shows us many of the moments better than most. Seeing a talk of his woke me up to the self-censorship I was doing in order to shoot something for a reason instead of just because it stirs my imagination.
Now that I woke-up I would like to sell them as well so I can take more.
Very nicely said.
Pictures from the heart rather than for the wallet is often the kindle that sets the soul on fire.
The real secret is not realizing that part but being able to reach it at will.
shoot from the heart, edit with the head.
Nice!
Simple!
Tweetable!
I did …