Beholding Beauty

“Incubus 1”

“Beauty needs a consensus, or at least the possibility.”

– Michael Freeman, The Photographer’s Mind

The concept of beauty in art is one that continues to draw my attention, I guess because much of my work explores subjects and treatments that don’t fit that term’s usual definition.

Freeman, in his (excellent!) new book, The Photographer’s Mind, begins with a lengthy discussion of beauty and it’s evolving role in contemporary art and photography. One of the points he makes is that members of a culture share a common understanding of what is beautiful. Of course, there is disagreement about whether any particular image is beautiful, hence the catchphrase “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. But when we attempt  to create something of beauty, we are aiming in a general direction that we believe others will agree with. Beauty cannot exist only in the eye of the beholder.

I think this is why I sometimes get a little bored with beautiful images. They speak to culture’s conventions, they are considered beautiful for the very reason that they share common qualities with other beautiful things. Beauty is a confined space that artificially limits our free expression. Ultimately there becomes a sameness about beauty. Images that do not aim at these conventions cause us to consider them on their own merits, without benefit of ready-made criteria. There’s greater opportunity in both creating and viewing such images to experience something new.

 

 

Calla’s Curves

Calla 2

 

“A curved line is the loveliest distance between two points.”

– Anonymous

The calla lilly is one of the most well represented flowers in all of art, whether painting or photography. I suspect it runs neck and neck with the rose.  The calla flower itself is a veritable cone of curls. Here you also get to appreciate the sensuous lines of the leaves as well.

This image is composed almost entirely of curved lines. Curved lines invite the viewer to wander a bit, take a little extra time. Straight lines direct the viewer to a certain spot while curved lines offer alternatives. Paul Klee said that a line is just a dot that went for a walk and in this case the journey is a pleasantly meandering one.

It’s important to let the visual design of an image to allow the subject matter to express it’s natural qualities. Here the sinuous curves tell the calla’s story.

How, Not What

standing tall, photograph

“When an artist is more concerned with what is said than how it is said there is no art.”

– Anonymous

How, not what. What is static and one-dimensional, weighted down by reality. How is dynamic and multi-dimensional, revealing our personal vision.

This is why artists can return to the same subjects over and over and still create work that inspires or intrigues. In fact, some artists paint or photograph the same subject many, many times, intentionally challenging themselves to represent it in new ways. This in-depth exploration of a single subject can be both demanding and rewarding, forcing the artist to explore nuances and subtleties that the first few visits fail to elicit.

The most mundane of subjects can manifest the most sublime of art – because the art is not about the subject, it’s about how we tell you about that subject. And those stories are without limit.

What Did You Expect?

Janus, photograph

“We look at the world and see what we have learned to believe is there. We have been conditioned to expect… but, as photographers, we must learn to relax our beliefs.”

– Aaron Siskind

Photography has a unique quality, which is that the viewer usually starts with the assumption that the photograph represents what was really there. This gives the photographer greater freedom to challenge their viewers beliefs, to force them to “look twice”, as described in my last post.

As Siskind says, we have been “conditioned to expect” – it’s an ability which serves us well in navigating efficiently through our complex world. If we had to stop and carefully consider each situation we encounter, we’d get little done. With age and experience, we become better at knowing what to expect, which allows us to move more quickly, get more done.

It also causes us to overlook much of the sublime beauty and transcendent complexity of the world. One of arts finest attributes is it’s ability to provoke a more considered examination of the world. To create work that demands this, we must “relax our beliefs”, we must defer our own expectations lest they blind us. The attempt to do so forces us to relearn what we believe is there, allowing us to experience the beauty, the complexity that is too easy to overlook.

Even if we are unable to create art that has this effect on others, the effort to do so is it’s own reward. I wish everyone had the desire to create such art, not because there would be more great art to see, but because we’d all have greater appreciation for the world around us.

[By the way, on a technical note, the image above was captured in camera in a single exposure – talk about looking twice!]

A True Original

table setting, photograph

“When originality becomes a goal, it is no longer original. The artist is merely trying to be different.”

– John Daido Loori, The Zen of Creativity

Here is a most subtle distinction to ponder: original vs. different. What is he getting at? Loori goes on to say:

“The word original comes from origin, the source. Different just means something that is set apart from everything else. […] originality can be reached only through a long, arduous process of self-discipline and mastery of the medium. Then, ultimately, our own uniqueness naturally finds it’s own expression.”

Difference is easier to achieve – just do the next one in a way that is unlike the previous one. Original means that you have connected in some way with an internal source of inspiration. Originality has nothing to do with the relationship of what we create to other works of art – it has to do with it’s relationship to what is inside of us.

The premise here is that we can only connect with this inner wellspring by achieving a state of unselfconscious mastery. I think this is one of the reasons it is valuable to work on a series, a coherent body of work that is explored over and over. I know when I work this way, it makes me much more conscious and thoughtful as I explore new approaches to the subject. When I don’t work on projects in this manner, I find I’m taking random shots, any of which might be interesting and even different on their own, but rarely do they reveal much about me or much that is of lasting value.

Loori finishes by stating

“Originality is born of craftsmanship, skill, and diligent practice, not from trying to stand out in a crowd.”

It’s one of those things that you can only achieve by giving up the attempt to achieve it. When you stop focusing on standing out in the crowd, you actually might have a chance to do so.

The Dark Side

san francisco nights, photograph

“… it’s also important to recognize that what we’ve created may be private work, rather than something to offer for publication or exhibition.”

– John Daido Loori, The Zen of Creativity

Do you ever create this kind of private work?

We’re not referring to work that is kept private because it isn’t up to our personal quality standards, but rather work that just isn’t suitable for consumption by others. It might be something that was inspired by an inner muse that you are not ready to share. The work may even be disturbing to others. Not all art is “feel good” art.

As artists I think it is good to challenge our audience, but not to intentionally upset them. Since we explore our inner state through our art, it makes sense that a wide range of feelings and emotions are represented.

I know many artists are tempted to produce only work that uplifts, themselves and others. We are all enriched by such work. But I recommend examining other modalities in your art as well.

I was recently told by someone that a body of my work “should be seen, but was not commercial”. In other words, it had something to say but nobody would probably want to buy it and hang it on their wall. There are all sorts of categories that art falls into beyond the familiar ones so many of us focus on.

So tell me, do you have a collection of private work hidden away somewhere? What can you tell us about it?

Healthy Competition?

transits 32, photograph

“When we are in competition with ourselves, and match our todays against our yesterdays, we derive encouragement from past misfortunes and blemishes. Moreover, the competition with ourselves leaves unimpaired our benevolence toward our fellow men.”

– Eric Hoffer

There are many opportunities in the art world to become embroiled in competition: juried shows, camera clubs, publication submissions, etc. It’s challenging to heed the excellent advice of Hoffer to compete only with ourselves. I do like the consequence he points out, that of minimizing any ill feelings toward others!

Competition in art seems so arbitrary – how can one compare a photograph (or painting) of a landscape against a figurative piece? Or between two pieces with very different styles? What qualities of the pieces are being compared and contrasted? I don’t envy jurors of these events – it’s a necessary task, but one incredibly hard to do well, I think.

Even competing with oneself is a challenge. How does one measure improvement? Often there are too many variables at play – if we created the same type of work over and over, we might be able to compare results, but I’m constantly changing what and how I create the work. Progress, if even identifiable,  surely occurs on a non-linear trajectory.

This year I’ve decided to engage in more events in which my work will be judged by others. I’ve had some success so far, and some rejections. I am a competitive person by nature, so am working on keeping that tendency in check.

This will be my last posting for a short while – this weekend I am off to Photoalliance, a portfolio review in San Francisco. There I will be confronted with lots of feedback from curators, gallery owners, artists and publishers. I will be looking for direction, networking and inspiration. Hopefully I will keep any competitive urges at bay…

What Color is Your World?

Georgetown bedroom, photograph

“..Why would anyone want to photograph an indisputably colourful world in monochrome? If colour film had been invented first, would anybody even contemplate photographing in black and white?”

– Russell Miller

I love B&W photography. But Miller raises an interesting question about the role of B&W photography and it’s place in history.

We had many years of only B&W photography and many of the most famous photographers worked primarily in that mode. As a result, many of the most recognized photographs are B&W. Would things have been different had color film been invented first? I believe they would. I’m not saying that we wouldn’t have B&W photography but I suspect it would be a very minor niche, probably done as infrequently as monochrome paintings.

It’s interesting that television and the movies started off also as B&W only but now there are extremely few movies and no TV shows produced without color. We even go as far as to “colorize” old B&W movies (which interestingly enough seem not as visually interesting as they did in their original state).

My own experience selling color and B&W work is that the average person, not the photography collector, prefers color work by a wide margin. It makes it hard to allocate wall space in shows to B&W work if I’m trying to recover costs or make some money. I wish this weren’t so. It’s possible my own color work is just better than my B&W and my experience may not be the same as yours in this matter.

Putting additional pressure on B&W photography is that most people are shooting digital cameras which always capture images in color. Of course, it’s easier than ever to convert these to B&W but we don’t necessarily go out with the intention of shooting B&W which was the case when we were loading B&W film in our cameras.

I’m not sure why B&W photography has had the staying power it has, but I’m glad for it. It’s a different and special way of seeing.

Wabi-Sabi

Wabi-Sabi 1, photograph

A funny thing happened this week – one of those whimsical coincidences that can reveal. I read a book that had been recommended by Donna Watson on her wonderful blog Layers. The book is Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers by Leonard Koren. In it I found a phrase the not only resonated with me strongly but was the exact same phrase that had been used by Robert Adams which was the inspiration for my last blog posting. I realized that my previous posting had mysteriously foreshadowed this book and that there was a theme here for me to explore further.

Here is the quote from Koren:

“The simplicity of wabi-sabi is probably best described as the state of grace arrived at by a sober, modest, heartfelt intelligence. The main strategy of this intelligence is economy of means. Pare down the essence but don’t remove the poetry”

There’s that phrase again – economy of means. Why was it haunting me?

First, what is wabi-sabi? I won’t attempt to explain it fully here (Koren’s book does a wonderful job of that) but basically it is a fundamental Japanese aesthetic of beauty. In his introduction Koren describes wabi-sabi:

“Wabi-sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional.”

I have always been drawn to photographing objects in some state of deterioration. I’d rather shoot an old, decaying building than a new shiny one, a beat up old car than this year’s model, an antique rather than something just made. I never understood what appealed to me in these objects and sometimes felt self-conscious pursuing them.

The concept of wabi-sabi has given me a context within which to consider these subjects. Koren discusses some of the metaphysical, spiritual, moral and emotional foundations of this interesting aesthetic. For example, a metaphysical aspect is “things are devolving toward, or evolving from, nothingness”, while a moral precept is “get rid of all that is unnecessary”. The economy of means phrase refers to the unpretentious simplicity vs. materialistic complexity that is also fundamental to wabi-sabi.

I like the idea that what and how I photograph can cause me to think about the world around me in a more conscious manner. I have a feeling a wabi-sabi series is in my future.

Economy of Means

The Avenues, photograph

“Instead their work is usually marked by an economy of means, an apparently everyday sort of relationship with their subject matter.”

– Robert Adams

John Barclay’s blog mini-series on simplicity has gotten me thinking about the the apparent simplicity of much great photography. I use the word apparent because we all know that the appearance of simplicity in most good art belies the difficulty of achieving it.

Sometimes it seems easier to make things more complicated – how’s that for a paradox? In painting, for example, I sometimes had a tendency to put in much more detail than was needed in the work. It was almost as if I was trying to distract the viewer from  my lack of design, technique and vision with trivial and unimportant … stuff.

In photography, I can be seduced by crazy lenses, powerful software post-processing and weird lighting and angles. I’m of two minds about this – on the one hand, I love to play with new ideas and approaches and often have felt that “straight” photography was a little boring. On the other hand, I’m aware of the power of a simple, straightforward photograph and how a lot of image trickery can end up feeling gimmicky. I’m sure there is a balance to be pursued in this area.

I like Adams’ phrase “economy of means” – it’s a reminder that you don’t need exotic equipment or technique to create a great picture and that an “everyday sort of relationship” with the subject, while not flashy, can be every bit as potent.