I'm not really a fan of Annie Leibovitz's photos (I don't always like the way they're lit, and find that they tend to lack a certain spontaneity), but I like this quote from her: "The camera makes you forget you're there. It's not like you are hiding but you forget, you are just looking so much."
This quote came via Ward Jenkins, who recently posted some great pages from his sketchbook, and shared some nice insights on his creativity:
"When I draw and sketch people and places around me, I lose myself in the process. Even though I have a certain knowledge of how to start each sketch or drawing, it's still a surprise to me how it turns out. [...] I'm constantly surprised by the results I see on each page, each drawing. [...] Even though I might approach each drawing differently, I know that my overall style comes through, creating an overall artistic signature, or 'voice', that can't be denied. The end result might look similar to the viewer, but, I know personally, I took the 'road less traveled', and that my artistic journey was one of newness and wonder with each page, each drawing."
I don't entirely lose myself in the process of photographing in the same way that Ward describes himself doing when drawing (and the same way other people have mentioned doing), but I do find that properly looking at things — and for things — sets off a chain reaction of finding even more things to look at. It's a simple fact: the more you become aware of your environment, the more of it there is to be aware of. (Shilpa has a recent post on colour and serendipity which illustrates this to great effect.)
People who wield cameras on a frequent basis might relate to this experiential way of seeing, but it's often inexplicable behaviour to those who don't. Friends who don't experience it often get confused and even a little annoyed by the way I might suddenly stop in the middle of the street, or run off around a hidden corner when I've spotted something that they had not only not seen, but can't understand why I would want to capture anyway. As they see me crouching into an awkward pose, or rearranging sauce bottles on a cafe table, the reaction is often along the lines of, "is there anything you don't photograph?" The tone of voice is often one of surprise, and even slight disgust, as the subjects I am usually most fond of are those that most people would consider "boring" — but that is what I like most about those subjects.
Even other photographers have had a similar reaction, as they wonder why I would bother with such inconsequential details. Ironically, this reaction has often come from those people who cannot experience a single thing (particularly social gatherings) without taking a photograph of it. Sometimes those people are so busy shooting that they aren't actually looking, and I can understand why other people get annoyed with them. There's a certain detachment, of holding everything at arm's length by hiding behind a camera; eternally being the observer but never the participant.
I think my approach is different. I like to focus on things that are usually overlooked or considered unworthy of attention because they are too mediocre to even consider — things like brick walls and sauce bottles, cracks in the pavement, paint splashes on concrete — not to keep life at arm's length, but to treasure the tiny details that people take for granted and show that they are worthy of not being forgotten.
It's interesting to me to find new ways of looking at these things in order to bring out their attractive qualities; whether it be the colours or the shapes or the textures, or a combination of all three. Of course, even though such subjects may be an unlikely focus to the casual observer, they've been done to death by other photographers — and therein lies the other challenge: how to make such images look fresh and new, and imbued with your own personality. This can be much harder to achieve with a camera than it is with a pencil; everyone can develop an idiosyncratic drawing style, but a camera is designed to ostensibly be impartial. Of course it isn't impartial; for one thing, what I consider to be attractive qualities is entirely subjective and will differ from the person standing next to me (which is presumably why I get these questions in the first place), but it's surprising how often one photographer will frame the same subject in exactly the same way as another, without having been aware of the first (as I unintentionally did in the pictures linked in this paragraph); whereas a pair of people drawing the same thing will usually come up with different illustration styles (in life drawing sessions, for example).
"I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste." -Marcel Duchamp
This second quote Ward mentions in his post is a good reminder not to get too complacent in one's work, too, and is one I've seen espoused by a number of creative people I admire. Rian Hughes said something similar in a recent interview1:
"Sometimes I’ll purposefully set myself up to work against familiar approaches, just to make things difficult and interesting. [...] I’ll probably find a way to make the technology do something other than what it was intended for."
This attitude is also prevalent amongst a large number of the geeks that I know; the ones who hack stuff to create new and wonderful things. It's something I often admire in others but don't try nearly as often as I should myself: I need to be reminded that it's good to leave my comfort zone once in a while. Unfortunately, it's not something I find easy to do (obviously, it's a comfort zone and moving out of it is, well, not comfortable), and I think it's something I'll continue to resist until I have some external encouragement. As it is, I can only be envious of those who seemingly manage to do it so easily, apparently even without the safety-net of a support network to encourage them. I'm not confident enough to do without a support network, but I'm also not good at asking for help from others, either. It's a stupidly self-destructive habit; whilst outwardly it may seem like I'm being resolutely independent, really I'm just muddling through and not always successfully. It's important to have a constructive response from your peers; in particular, that those people whose work you respect and admire also notice and appreciate your own efforts, especially when you make the effort to try something new.
I'm not really sure where I'm going with all this actually. Just some ideas I needed to get out of my head. I suppose having done so, it would be good to know what other people think. That would be in keeping with what I said in the last paragraph, after all.
1I've had that link bookmarked for ages and kept forgetting to post it; it's worth a read, if only for the fact that he's finally made an announcement about his upcoming return to comics (whoo!) — news which I've been sitting on but desperate to share ever since he told me about it nine months ago! And I've been looking forward to his two books on design for almost a year; he had the run of the IPC magazine archives for his source material, and I can't wait to see the results (especially as at the moment there's almost nothing about them online).
on Jun 24th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Excellent essay, mondo, and much of it sums up the way I feel. I especially identified with:
"As they see me crouching into an awkward pose, or rearranging sauce bottles on a cafe table, the reaction is often along the lines of, "is there anything you don't photograph?" The tone of voice is often one of surprise, and even slight disgust…"
Now I've had almost exactly the same reaction several times. I showed the resultant photos once, straight off the camera, to a friend I'd been out walking with and who'd come out with something like this. They were forced to admit that the shots were in fact pretty selective.
Aside from the points you make well, I think it's also partly to do with how people register activity – somehow the time I'd spent looking around, talking to them, or just walking, didn't count, all they'd registered was 'photo time'. Maybe there's something there about human psychology, that we expand discrete 'events' to fill greater time than they do, as opposed to more continuous action.
Yeah – the point about social gatherings is well taken. Must admit, for a short while I got a bit manic with this, but now, at most, I take a shot or two for memorabilia and put the camera away, I'd rather talk to people.
on Jun 26th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Cheers Fin. I was thinking of a lot of people that I've met (largely through Flickr meetups) who seem to have their cameras set to constantly click, but never actually look at what they're shooting, and although they might be technically "good", I find their photos are often quite boring. Shooting from the hip can work really well but the people who are most successful at that do actually know how to look for the best photo opps, and don't just click unwarily.
Of course, you can have happy accidents when you shoot haphazardly, and those are good too! But I think you're more likely to find them if you know how to look in the first place.