WHEN PHOTOGRAPHY

BECOMES ART

Some photographic old-timers find themselves naturally resistant to digital technologies because it seems to make the process of photography a little too easy. When I was first learning photography (in the pre-Jurassic era of 1970), it was known that every person of accomplishment had, in their turn, sweated bullets over the Zone System and the subtle craft of making a fine print. Now, these darned youngsters come along with their whip-snap “digital image capture devices” and pound out inkjet-o-graphs with rapidity — and even have the nerve to call it art. (Listen carefully and you can just hear the rocking chairs creaking during such discussions.)

Of course, those who are actively engaged in digital photography will defend themselves by saying it’s not as easy as it looks. They will explain that it requires considerable skill and hours, if not years, to develop the technological abilities to succeed in a rapidly changing environment; that the medium of a photograph does not determine its validity; that new tools offer new vision, etc.

The debate ensues — and sometimes rage soon follows.

I can’t help but think that both camps are missing the far more important point. The hard part of photography has never been technology. There have been hundreds, if not thousands, of technically accomplished photographers — and a peek back through the early photography magazines and photographic annuals will yield a harvest of technologically accomplished photographers whose work is now forgotten — because it deserves to be. You see, the hard part of photography has never been technology, but rather the more difficult process of artmaking — a process that is stubbornly unsolvable through technological means and remains the sole province of the human heart, the human mind, and human soul. If art were solely about technique then why is it that the technical masters like Rembrandt or Ansel Adams don’t make masterpieces each and every time they create a new piece? Is it because when one achieves technical mastery one hasn’t, in essence, accomplished much of merit? Technical mastery is important, it is a challenge, it may take years to accomplish, but it is merely a first step. Mastering technique is like graduating from high school; it is an achievement worthy of a small celebration, but is best seen as the conclusion of preparation rather than as final accomplishment.

So if the real challenge of photography is not printmaking, then what is it? This is a difficult question and one that I believe — even after 35 years of pursuing it — I cannot answer to my complete satisfaction. I know a little bit of what it is; I know it when I see it, but defining it eludes me. I sometimes see glimpses of it in others’ work. I know that great art is about compassion when I see W. Eugene Smith’s photograph Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath, Minimata, 1972. I know great art is about reverence and humility in the presence of great things when I see Ansel Adams’ Clearing Winter Storm. I know great art is about optimism and endurance when I see Paul Strand’s work in the Hebrides — and I know it is about pessimism when I see Robert Capa’s photograph of the falling Spanish soldier. I know it is about the human search for spirituality when I look at the work of Linda Connor. I know it is about the loneliness of life when I look at the work of André Kertész. I know is it is about revelation when I look at the work of Josef Sudek and I know it is about the obscurity and the confusion of life when I look at the photographs of Robert Frank or Garry Winogrand.

In short, great photographs are never about photography but seem to be about life, and not, generally, the small things in life. The best photographers appear to be engaged in the great dialog of life — the dialog that is usually the field-of-play for philosophers and theologians, for mystics or even political scientists. The great photographers don’t seem to be asking questions about f/stops or shutter speeds, developers or enlarging papers, but are asking the same kinds of questions that were asked by philosophers Aristotle, Plato, Thomas Aquinas, Nietzsche, or Freud — the same questions asked by the poets Aeschylus, Dante, Goethe, Victor Hugo and Mark Twain. What is man? Who am I? What is good? Why is there evil? How should we treat one another? Why don’t we? Why does suffering exist? These are the questions of art because these are the questions of humankind.

It is a tall order to consider such questions in a medium that is graphic instead of verbal. It is not easy. But, that is precisely why photography is so worthy of being called a fine art. Music, too, is nonverbal, but it has the ability to move us to tears. Who can look at Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother and not feel something of her pain? Is this a great photograph because Lange so adroitly used the correct aperture and film development? Or is the magic in this photograph the skill with which Lange shows us the human heart in such frankness?

But I suppose I should return in my thoughts to less lofty individuals and less accomplished artists and talk more pragmatically of you and of me. We are not Cervantes or Alfred Stieglitz. Heck, I’m not even sure I’m Tiny Tim. But I would contend that it makes no difference that you and I are not great artists in the sense that our mortality is exactly the same as theirs and our questions about the mysteries of life are exactly the same, too. And that is precisely why it is worth our time and our efforts to produce art. There is value in what we produce, but there is even more value, at least for us as individuals, that we engage in the creative act and ask such questions and search for such answers. We make self-portraits because we want to understand ourselves and to assert our existence. We make photographs of others so we can understand the community in which we live. We photograph the grand landscape so we can know the context and the planetary stage on which our dramas unfold. We photograph nostalgia so that we can remember; abstracts so we can play with the patterns in our visual mind; flowers so we can marvel at the wonders of creation. These are worthy, soaring pursuits, even if our results remain grounded and somewhat pedestrian.

There is a common theme in all of this, and that is our compunction to explore the world in order to find understanding, in order to find meaning. For some (I think of Diane Arbus or Joel-Peter Witkin) the world they find is frightening, uncomfortable, disturbing. Through their photographs we can explore our dark side. For others, (I think of Elliott Erwitt and occasionally Edward Weston) I see their laughter at our human folly.

And there is another reason why we should strive for more than mere technical excellence: Just as we do with the photographs of those who have gone before us, if we’re lucky, if we work hard, if we have talent, and if we are sensitive, we might just make photographs that others can use to explore their humanity. I am reminded of that jazz singer from the 1930s, Connee Boswell, now long forgotten — except that her excellence and creative life were acknowledged as the role model, inspiration, and musical mentor by a grateful Ella Fitzgerald, whom everyone knows. We do not always know how our work or our life will influence others, but known or not this, too, is a reason for us to strive for more than mere competence in technology. The future is unpredictable and our impact on it — that is to say, on the photographers of tomorrow — is equally unknown. We owe them our best, just as we do those who have gone before us.

Some believe that the great artists are extraordinary people doing extraordinary things; others would propose that great artists are simply ordinary people doing extraordinary things. In some regards it makes no difference which of these is correct because in either case it is people doing things, creating what they can while they can. We must never forget that every artist who accomplishes great things started, at one point in their career, from exactly the same position that you and I are in — unknown, contemporary, just another person using their best efforts to try to bring forth something which does not yet exist, which is, of course, the essential act of creation.

As naïve and simplistic as it sounds, I think about this when I am out photographing. I am viscerally, consciously aware that Edward Weston, or Eugene Atgét, or Harry Callahan, or Minor White have probably looked at the same subject I am gazing at. They (or someone) have probably photographed it, too. We are fellow travelers, those previous photographers and us alive today. Figuratively, they are standing next to us (although there are some who would say that Minor White may actually be standing next to them — in his white robe and flowing hair, like Gandalf back from the great beyond — but I digress) watching our creative response. Or, so it feels. It is not intimidating. I find it a comfort. It would be much more frightening to be all alone in a creative desert that stretched both directions in time, isolating me from others in some hellish art-void. Sure, it may be a bit creepy to think that Diane Arbus is sitting on your shoulder, or that Fred Picker is looking through your ground glass, but it is comforting to remember that they, in their turn, had their previous generation of photographers to inspire and motivate them. We are links in a long, creative chain.

I may never be a great artist and I may never make great artwork, but this will surely come to pass if I don’t try, or if I mistake the challenges of technique/technology with the challenges of understanding and expressing the human soul. Anyone — no, everyone — can master technology. It is the artist who can turn such mechanical prowess into a work that resonates with the human heart. And, that is the challenge that transcends all equipment, all technique, and all time.

ABOUT CONTENT

No unique observation here, but we all know that Content is King. What a lovely and concise little maxim! Let me, however, ask a much more difficult question: What exactly is “content,” that king we are all supposed to include in our artwork? I suppose it would make a great deal of sense for us to have an understanding of exactly what content is before we try to create it. I’ve always been amazed, however, when discussing this with photographers how difficult a concept this is to pin down. I’d like to make a stab at it here, not so much with the intent of definitively resolving any questions, but rather as a means of opening the conversation.

The Problem of Delightful Graphics

Conventional wisdom would tell us that photography is a graphic medium — but I’ve never been sure that explains very much. It could be said without debate that all visual media are essentially graphic. Whether an image exists in paint, in photographic materials, in pen and ink, or even in stone, the graphic qualities of any of the so-called visual media are of tantamount importance. But if that’s all a visual art form needs to be successful, then any splash of paint, any random photograph, any shape of stone, could be considered a work of art. (In fact, this very tenet has advocates in today’s modern art world, but that’s another discussion for another time.) No, instead we differentiate between works of art that are meritorious and others that are less so.

What differentiates the meritorious from the, um, not-so-meritorious is not always the expertise with which the materials are handled — the old “sharp photograph of a fuzzy concept” maxim. Instead, what differentiates the meritorious from the less so is that mysterious thing called content.

At its deepest level, I’ve always thought that content had to do with ideas — insight, understanding, wisdom, empathy, sensitivity, and the human bonds the tie us all together. This is all well and good, but that’s a difficult thing to quantify (or to teach) and it would appear to be a handy thing to be able to think about this in more concrete terms.

The Message

I remember in my early days of photography when a critique would often begin the discussion of the message of a photograph. Discussing artwork in such terms has long fallen out of favor because the term “message” carries with it an over-burdensome didactic personality. Few of us want to experience artwork at the end of a garrulous schoolmaster’s ruler as we are lectured at with a message. We want our artwork to be informative, but not dictatorial. As an aside, the extreme of this position is the so-called “interpretive school” where the artwork is perfectly meaningless and open to any interpretation the viewer chooses to layer upon the work. The problem with this, of course, is that the work is first and foremost perfectly meaningless. Ahem.

So, “message” has become decidedly unfashionable, and we don’t talk much about artwork having a message anymore. In its place, I would propose a much friendlier term: storytelling.

Storytelling

Storytelling is the oldest form of artwork in human culture. Long before cave paintings, long before there was something called “art,” there were stories around the campfire — stories of battles and conquests, of migrations and, I suppose, love and romance. Of all the things that separate we humans from the rest of the animal kingdom, the greatest of them all may be our ability to tell and comprehend stories.

I have long thought that the essence of practically all artwork is storytelling. The Sistine Chapel is a story in paint; Homer’s Odyssey is a story in epic poetry; Star Wars is a cinematic story; and The Nutcracker is a story in dance and music. And then there are the “intellectual” stories like Magritte’s story about perception, or Kafka’s ubiquitous explorations of the meaning of consciousness.

Limiting our view to the world of photography, Robert Frank’s The Americans is a seminal story of identity that changed the way we look at photography as well as the way we look at ourselves; Ansel Adams’ spectacular images of Yosemite comprise a story about the pristine environment, and touch our collective memory with incredible power; Robert Capa told us a story of suffering in conflict; Cartier-Bresson told us a story of our transition into modernity; Atgét told us a story of an aging Paris that was disappearing before his eyes; André Kertész told us a personal and private story as did Diane Arbus, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, and Minor White. All of these great photographers made technically and compositionally wonderful images — but without the story they convey, their images would be disempowered.

As I write this in the beginning weeks of February 2013, there is still a considerable buzz about last weekend’s Super Bowl — that extravaganza that has grown beyond a mere football game and has evolved into a pop culture phenomenon highlighted by, no less, the television commercials that have become an annual ritual. This year, the commercial that has everyone abuzz is one that should cause all of us still photographers a moment of pride — as well as inspiration — the commercial known as “Paul Harvey.” This powerfully emotive advertisement (for pickup trucks) is 120 seconds consisting solely of 35 still photographs while the late radio commentator Paul Harvey provided a voice-over of slightly more than a paragraph.

That a presentation of still photographs would be the most powerful, most talked about, most emotional content in the midst of this moving-image medium is a testament to the power of content and still photography in storytelling. How could we photographers not be inspired after viewing this commercial?

The Gates of Perception

In studying this television commercial during several viewings, I noted a characteristic that I’ve often found in the best image/text combinations: both the text and the images are individually outstanding, even without the other. The 35 images in this commercial are simply terrific as images and could very easily stand on their own. Paul Harvey’s text is powerfully written and performed — and can also stand on its own. Combine the two, however, and magic happens. This is no different than in the best combinations of melody and lyrics, moving image and soundtrack, or music and dance.

I think there is a simple explanation for all of this — at least one that makes sense to me. We have five gates of perception — sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell — to which the Buddhists add a sixth, the conscious mind where the sensory inputs are combined. Communicate through any one of the sense-gates and a powerful story can be told. Communicate simultaneously through more than one gate and the combination in the conscious mind can be even more powerful. If the goal of our photography is to communicate our experiences of life to one another, it makes perfect sense that using more than one sense-gate can help us do so more effectively.

The Inescapable Role of Words

The more time I spend as a photographer (and especially as a publisher) the more I realize the irrevocable connection between image and story. This leads directly to the inevitable marriage between image and text.

Somewhere in the history of photography, an absurd notion was born that any photograph that needs text (i.e., story) is an inferior photograph. Is a film an inferior one if it needs a sound track? Is Robert Frank’s classic less powerful because it needs The Americans as a title in words? How silly.

As a teaching technique, discouraging students and budding photographers from using words may be a useful tool for aiding them to focus their attention and sharpen their visual craft. But as a practical means of exploring content in photography, it is ridiculous. Ideas, concepts, and words play an incredibly important role in the process of telling a story.

This is not to say that every photographer needs to become a creative writer; there are more than a few ways to create text to combine with one’s photographs. Fortunately, it is not mandatory that the photographer become a wordsmith. Collaboration is one of the methods most frequently used by photographers — the most famous of which are perhaps Dorothea Lange and Paul Taylor, Walker Evans and James Agee, Margaret Bourke-White and Erskine Caldwell. We can’t all be as multi-talented as Wright Morris (novelist) and Wright Morris (photographer). It is, however, almost inevitable that some words will be necessary before the photograph can reach its fullest potential. A book, an exhibition, a project needs at the very least a title — in words. Few photography projects can stand alone with only a title; beyond that, additional words are likely to be necessary — artist’s statements, introductions, afterwords, etc.

Tones — Photographic and Verbal

As photographers, we all know the importance of creating just the right tones, colors, or nuances in our images. The same can be said of titles, text, and the use of words in our storytelling. I’ve always loved to illustrate this with the example of the husband who mistakenly tells his wife she is “such a sight” rather than the more complimentary phrase that she is “such a vision.” Language is such a tricky thing that it’s easy to find ourselves “baffooned beyond comprehensil.” (Where is Norm Crosby when you need him?)

Part of the reason this comes to mind is because of the global collection of photographers featured in this issue of LensWork*: Li Tan is a Chinese photographer who speaks no English; Martin Stavars is a native of Poland now living in London who speaks limited English; and Francesca Phillips was born in England with English as her first language, but now lives in Spain. The challenges of using words in our storytelling is not simply one of writing the well-crafted text, but can also be the challenge of doing so without the advantages of a native speaker.

Words have nuances that often escape the non-native speaker. I’m reminded of the sign in one Japanese hotel room that advised me, in English, that “Smoking in bed can be hazardous to your life.” Indeed. Words — slippery as they may be — can be a powerful partner for bringing a new depth (and content) to our photography projects.

*Written for LensWork #105

ON FAITH & FAME

I am aging. I am either at the age at which the masters of photography produced their great works or am just past it. Almost without exception, the great photographers produced their best work in their mid-to-late 40s, 50s and 60s. I am now 50 years old and this means I have a problem.

I have spent the last 30 years producing work in relative obscurity. Okay, let me be more honest. I am producing work in very-close-to-absolute obscurity. I hope someday to be only relatively obscure. According to my calculations, about 0.0002% of Americans have seen my photographs. I cannot bring myself to calculate this for the world’s population. I understand fame and success perfectly well, but only as very distant, intellectual concepts.

Depressing as this might seem, I find that it places me comfortably side- by-side with an incredibly large group of my fellow photographic artists. Consider this: There are a billion or so people who own cameras and who take pictures on a regular basis. There are probably a few million who pursue it as a more serious artistic endeavor and of these, only a few hundred thousand likely pursue it with enough vigor, discipline, attention and regularity to truly be considered photographic artists. There are only a few dozen living photographers/artists currently listed by two or more galleries in the current directory of the Association of International Photographic Art Dealers. Any reasonable calculation indicates that I need to increase my visibility by a factor of a few million before I might be considered a Photographer-of-Importance.

Is it safe to gamble that an extremely high percentage of you reading this article face exactly the same statistical depression that plagues me? What are we to do? This, by the way, is not an idle or egotistical question. I don’t seek fame because I desire adulation. I see fame as a measure of impact — of whether what I am doing is important or meaningful. After all, photography is an expensive and time-consuming undertaking. If it is not meaningful — if what I am doing is not important — then why spend the time and money to pursue it? Any undertaking that requires such dedication also requires some practical thought. I’ve seen too many photographers who have worked long and hard to achieve technical competency simply give up the pursuit of making art once they can make well-crafted images. They’ve done so because, they tell me, they don’t see any reason to continue. They admit they will never be published, never be famous, never have an exhibit in a major gallery or museum, never make a living from the sale of their artwork. This may be true, but none of these are reasons to be an artist. The reason is that the logic of doing art is based on process rather than product, events rather than results, travel rather than destination.

Warning: Be cautious here. It is far too easy to use this line of thinking to justify either the work permanently stored in the closet or the bad stuff in the mat board. “I just photograph for myself.” Or, “Seeing is more important to me than making.” Attend enough workshops and you’ll hear all the excuses possible about why the work stinks. The “process rather than product” argument is a frequent excuse for the lack of craftsmanship, timidity, and embarrassment. It is also a common shield against criticism. I am not invoking “process rather than product” as an excuse for not having an audience or not producing great work, as you’ll see in what follows.

There are far more important reasons to consider the process and creativity of making artwork.

Fame

Most photographers will, if pressed, admit they would like to have an audience. Few photographers would turn down a fully-funded book offer. Fame and acknowledgment appear to be important to most people making art. This gets dicey in assuming that success and fame are the end results of a predictable sequence of events. That sequence of events goes roughly like this:

Step #1: You catch the photographic bug and decide to become a photographer.

Step #2: You learn, observe, think, practice, and grow.

Step #3: You formulate your artistic statement and produce the work.

Step #4: The completed work is cast onto the public tides.

The next step is where most artists become confused and/or frustrated. The next step seems obvious:

Step #5: Success and fame, money and adulation, validation with honors.

No? Oops. What happened?

If success and fame are missing, the assumption is that something went wrong in the previous steps. Perhaps the artist didn’t learn and grow enough? Perhaps the artistic statement was shallow? Was there a problem with the craft or the depth of vision? We didn’t pay attention in school, brush our teeth with regularity, eat our vegetables, or keep our checkbook fastidiously balanced. Fame in the art world is for a talented and elite few — and I am merely dogmeat. The assumption and doubts mount as one’s career lengthens when fame and success are not forthcoming. But, let’s not all join together and jump; there is hope for the creative life. I propose that this self-doubt is not warranted because the premise is flawed.

First, it is crucial to understand that success and fame are frankly not the result of hard work or brilliance. Chance exists where control does not. In the making of art the artist is in control, sort of. The artist directs the actions and choices in each step in its turn. In a larger sense, the artist, during this process, holds the fate of their work in their own hands — at least within the practical limitations of craft. (Ah, those pesky molecules!) When the artist lets go of the work and sends it out into the public arena, they have little, if any, control over the work’s fate; the audience determines its destiny. Worse, each person in the audience has likes and dislikes and can pass judgment on a given piece of artwork in an instant. Even if the artwork changes their predisposition, it does so only with their permission.

For example, have you ever considered why Ansel Adams was so famous? A possible answer is that his photographs were so superior that his fame was inevitable. However, other photographers who have been equally talented and creative have remained obscure. Is Ansel Adams’ widespread popularity the result of aggressive marketing and brilliant career management? Surely this helped, but others who have had expended as much effort and management have remained obscure. What is the source of fame? I have a plausible theory. Is it possible that Ansel Adams rose to the pinnacle of photographic fame and success on the fortuitous coattails of a parallel change in society? Is it possible that after decades of photographing the pristine mountains of the high Sierras and Yosemite, the work for which he is chiefly known, that he found himself at the fortunate position of having a large stock of wonderfully crafted personal images at the very same time the environmental movement took root and spread in full force across America? Remember, Ansel Adams didn’t become a truly household name until the 1970s when the groundswell of popular opinions and attitudes created the backpacking culture. Writer Colin Fletcher told us how to be The Complete Walker. John Denver, the Sierra Club, the Nature Conservancy, and graduate studies in environmental ecology rose to visibility and combined in cultural consciousness as a movement. In the midst of this shift in the cultural mindset, Adams steps up with a large body of beautifully executed work that fits the theme perfectly. He rides the wings of success carrying his work to mainstream pop culture.

This is not to say that Ansel Adams was an overated photographer who doesn’t deserve the success, fame, and adulation he received. Instead, I suggest that the final step in his path to success was luck. His hard work over decades created the potential and the circumstances created the possibility. The audience and the confluence of cultural trends brought the potential and the possible to fruition. Adams was an individual who found himself at the right time, at the right place, with the right body of work — and we are the beneficiaries of this good fortune.

By the same token, why didn’t Edward Weston become as common a household name? Why not Minor White, Wynn Bullock, Paul Strand, Josef Sudek, Eugene Atgét? These are certainly well-known names within the photographic community, but none of these photographers were ever on the cover of Time Magazine.

Fame is the result of random chance and cosmic tides. As individuals, we have essentially no control over the fame of our artwork or our persona in the pop culture… unless you are Andy Warhol, but he is merely the exception that proves the rule — assuming you accept that he was, actually, an artist.

Second, artistic success is not a linear affair.

In the life of an artist, creativity is often circular or, in its three-dimensional incarnation, spiral-shaped — a coiled spring. The creative life passes through the same stages over and over again. Each new piece of work, each new phase of life, and each subject matter is shaped by the previous activities of the artist’s life. The spiral gives the artwork direction, movement, and life.

If this metaphor is reasonable, it would seem that the artist’s life is one of process. What is this process? What does it mean to be an artist?

Faith

More and more (read: “as I get to be more and more of an old person”), I realize that artmaking is a dialog, a reading-and-response affair, a conversation without words, a participatory sport. Works of art are bridges between people and often the obvious bridge is between artist and audience. This is a contemporary bridge, but it is also a temporal and temporary one. Today’s audience, at an exhibition for example, is bound both by time and geography. Publication and electronic distribution expand these limitations a bit. These bridges are good and, as artists, we naturally value the connection to admirers both complimentary and compensational.

There is a different bridge that I believe is even more important, more demanding, and more to the point of being an artist. This is the bridge between you and those who have worked before you. There is art and there is Art — and I am not talking about stuffy concepts, but rather of a human concept. Art (with a capital A) is a line of ancient questioning with a tradition — like science or philosophy. Those who have made art before us have contributed to Art and expanded the dialog. The questions they asked and the answers they created are the dialog they extend to us through time. They challenge us; they ask for our response; the art they left us offers their answers to the questions of life. As artmakers, we can ignore them, snub them, repeat their mistakes, and leave only repetitive banalities for the future. Or, we can recognize our place in the line of history and do our best to respond to our predecessors with our art as they did with theirs. It is this ongoing dialog, progressing though time, which is the process we engage when choosing to make art.

This implies a certain degree of literacy when examining what has been produced by those who have gone before us — which brings us to faith. For 100 years or so, people have been producing fine art photographs. I doubt those earlier practitioners knew how far photography would have progressed, both as a technology and as an art medium. Why will we be any different? Do you suppose Atgét wandered the streets of Paris thinking that we, in the 21st century, would admire his art … on the Internet?

Those of us working today cannot possibly conceive of what the future will hold for our work — we do not know what impact the visual legacy we leave will have on tomorrow’s visual literacy. The only thing we can do is to be sure we are working to (and beyond) the limits of our inheritance and doing the best work we can. Technologically, what is diffcult for us today will, undoubtedly, be easier for our heirs. But spiritually and emotionally, the content of our artwork will likely still resonate the same challenges with every generation that follows us. The questions of life remain; the quest of the artist starts a new circle in the spiral with every generation. This comforts me; it justifies my faith. I may not know, ultimately, the destiny of my art. It may or may not be influential, important or worthy of note as history unfolds. Luck and destiny will rule this more than me.

There is importance, however, to the fact that I do the work — for me and for the process that is unfolding over time. That the Renaissance painters felt the same motivations, asked the same questions, live-worked-died with the same artistic doubts and artistic challenges as a photographer in the 21st century is the best evidence that photography is both a worthy art medium and worth a life of dedication. As I ask the important question of life and work through my responses through my artwork, I am connected to all artists in all times. I see this more clearly as my visual literacy improves.

By visual literacy, I mean that it is important for all of us to recognize the extension of generations of artmaking in all media that is being continued by we photographers. Our inheritance does not originate with Niepce or Brady, Stieglitz or Weston; it originates in the caves of Lascaux, the Book of Kells and the illuminated manuscripts of the Dark Ages, the music of Mozart, the paintings of Picasso, the poetry of Shakespeare, and the trumpet of Miles Davis. Photography, as an art, fits comfortably in the tradition of Art because it is another means of expressing the human soul.

Thought of in this way, photography — your photography and my photography — is a noble thing. It is our response to Mozart, our rejoinder to Dante, our echo to Billie Holiday, our reply to every artist who has proceeded us, photographic or not. It is far too easy for us to forget this as we click away and debate the vagaries of technology or the fickleness of the market. Sure, the minutia of our speck of time weighs heavily on us as the landlord demands the rent. But Beethoven, too, had bills to pay and a life to live. Ansel Adams had to change the oil in his car, just as we do. But the joy of art, the thrill of artmaking, is that for a part of our life — measured in fractions — we get to engage in conversation with all those artists who connect with us through the remnants of their artmaking. In our turn, we will add to the discussion, shout our dissent, contribute our perspective, or offer our insights to the great and timeless line of those who did the same in their lives.

We must listen. We must listen very carefully, because the echo of their art can be so faint when compared to the din of our times. We must hear it and respond. This is what it is to be an artist. This is why we can and must have faith — faith that our response and contribution to the discussion that Art is important. For whom? We cannot know any more than Bach knew who would be listening to his music now. How? We cannot know any more than Atgét could see the future with an Internet (or his rescuer from oblivion, Berenice Abbot). This is why picking up the camera is not just a hobby, but a passion and a responsibility worthy of great faith, great dedication, great effort, and great work.

In my youth, I photographed for me. Later, I photographed for others. More and more, I find I photograph in response to those who made art before me. I am not deluded into thinking I am as important as a great artist; frankly, such comparisons are non sequitur. Fame is not the issue. I am not concerned about any place that I might, or might not, have in history. Success is not the issue. What is the issue is how we respond, what we make — and whether we recognize the dialog that is before us, whether we are sensitive enough to hear and respond as best we can. Fame is elusive and beyond my influence; faith is an easier reason to continue creating because it simply requires that I receive it from my predecessors and pass it on with my work as faithfully as possible.

THE PURSUIT OF WHICH EXCELLENCE

Billions (literally) of people own and use cameras with regularity. But not all of those billions would consider themselves photographic artists. We do. That’s one of the reasons why you read LensWork and we publish it. As a community, we share something about a relationship with photography that is different from the average camera owner. But what precisely is it that makes our approach to photography so different? What does it mean to be an artist?

For me, one of the primary components of the photographic artist has to do with the pursuit of excellence. In almost all walks of life, particularly in day-to-day affairs, “good enough” is a more reasonable objective. But in our artwork we pursue excellence at all costs; we spend money on resources and training far out of proportion to any financial return on investment; we spend the precious minutes of our lives pursuing subtleties in our photographs that we know almost no one will see except for those who share our passion for the photographic image; we invest our very identity with this somewhat hazy pursuit of photographic art. For many of us it motivates our soul and provides us with the incentive to greet each day with enthusiasm. This may not be rational, but it adds to the meaning and purpose of our lives in ways that makes a life without photography painfully diminished.

Wonderful. We have passion, and we pursue excellence. But, this business about excellence can be a touch baffling. One artist’s definition of excellence may be quite different from another’s. In fact, one of the most important tasks we have in learning about ourselves is knowing how we define excellence. More importantly, knowing how we do not define excellence can help us clarify our career.

For example, it took me years to learn that I did not equate excellence, in any way whatsoever, with print size. Others do. And that’s OK… for them. If making giant photographs is part of your definition of excellence, then you should pursue it — which means understanding how to create giant photographs with fidelity. Large-scale prints as part of your definition of excellence would influence your choice of cameras, your working methodologies, the space required in which to make your photographs, and the kinds of presentation required for your finished work. It may even significantly influence the subject matter you choose to photograph. But if, like me, you decide that your definition of excellence does not equate to print size, then other methods, other methodologies, and other types of presentation become possible.

Here’s an even more dramatic example: What if your definition of excellence is entirely encapsulated in the image content, not in the medium itself? If so, prints may not be important to you at all. Perhaps on-screen presentations like PDFs or web pages are all that is required for your pursuit of excellence. It’s not that you wouldn’t make prints, but rather you would be indifferent as to whether or not your photographs were reproduced in photographic materials, offset printed in books, crudely reproduced in newspapers, or produced using some other method of distribution. It’s easy to imagine Weegee or Eugene Smith with this definition of excellence.

Perhaps your definition of excellence has to do with the completeness with which a project is constructed. Eugene Atgét did not make a photograph or two in the streets of Paris; he made thousands of them, photographing not only a wide variety of locations, but also at a wide variety of times of the day. His dedication to this single theme over the course of many years would seem to indicate that his ideas about excellence had to do with the thoroughness with which he documented his chosen subject.

It’s obvious that to master craftsmen like Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, the pursuit of excellence also involved a relationship with the physical print. The subtlety of tones is all-important in their work, and therefore much of their pursuit of excellence is the pursuit of exquisite tonal relationships in their prints. It’s difficult to imagine Cindy Sherman or Garry Winogrand sharing this definition of excellence with these masters of a previous generation.

I often find this line of thinking useful in understanding the work of photographers with whom I’m recently introduced. Rather than ask myself whether or not I like their work, whether or not I understand their work, whether or not I agree with their work, I instead suspend such thinking until I feel I have a handle on what is their definition of excellence. Sometimes photographers make this easy by simply telling us — in their introductions, in their artist’s statements, in their personal philosophy and credo about their work. More often, we are left to decipher such information for ourselves.

My methodology for doing so is to first consider the work as a whole. I try to look at a body of work from the greatest possible distance, as counter-intuitive as this might seem. How does this work fit in the context of this photographer’s career? How does this work fit within the context of this photographer’s generation? How does this photographer’s work fit within the context of the history of photography? Once I have a handle on the larger view, I consider individual images. How does each image fit within the context of the project? This kind of thinking invariably leads me to a better understanding of this photographer’s definition of excellence. It becomes easier for me to understand the work from their perspective — importantly divorcing my own photographic prejudices from the consideration of their work. Once I understand the work from the photographer’s perspective, I still may like it or dislike it, but it may be more important in the long run that I understand it than that I care for it.

Curiously enough, this same line of thinking is useful in working through my own photographic projects. I resist deep analysis in the beginning phases of a project; I find it more useful to just follow my whims. Eventually there comes a time in a project when a little reflection is called for. Here again, the type of reflection can either enrich and deepen your process or work counter-productively. I resist the temptation to think of my own work in that dichotomy of like/dislike. I may do so later on, but in the middle of the project I find it much more practical to define — specifically for this project — what is my definition of excellence. Is it print quality? Is it tactile physicality? Is it visual content? Is it verbal? Is it some combination, or all of the above? Is excellence a function of thoroughness (like Atgét) or print quality (like Adams)? Each project can have its own criteria and those criteria become the strategy for completing a project. This is precisely why sometimes my projects are prints, sometimes folios, sometimes PDFs, sometimes web presentations, sometimes a combination of these, sometimes all of them. Each project is unique. For each, this clarification about how I define excellence is an illuminating and guiding form of introspection that helps bring each project to completion with the greatest chance for harmony between form and function.

THE CASE OF THE

MISPLACED IDENTITY

Perry Mason strode confidently towards the judge’s bench… no, wait, that’s the beginning of an Earl Stanley Gardner mystery. Let me start again.

For the longest time, I’ve observed with curiosity the various warring factions within photography. I’ve been bothered by this because I haven’t been able to make heads or tails out of why there would be such heated debates between the various schools of photography — in particular, the prevalent anger expressed by so many traditional large-format photographers toward the early adopters of digital tools and techniques. At long last, I’ve developed a working theory as to why there exists such animosities — and it has nothing to do with photography itself.

Years ago when I had my consulting company, one of my clients owned a Western store; they sold cowboy boots and hats, Western apparel of all kinds, silver belt buckles, horse tack, etc. Their customer base was — to be specific — not the general public, but “Western folks.” They were great people, and I enjoyed my time with them immensely. But, they comprised a well-defined sub-culture of society defined by their Western lifestyle. As a group, they could easily be identified by characteristics that were identifying traits: a unique kind of clothing, a certain way of speaking, a certain kind of music, recreation, cuisine, pastimes, and mannerisms. To join the tribe, one would simply adopt the characteristics of the group and one was well on their way to membership.

The more I thought about this, the more I realized that this was just one specific example out of many that came to mind. Each tribe has its own clothing, its own implements, its own cuisine, etc. The world is composed of tribes, and to a large degree the process of adolescent maturation is one of learning these human games and finding the tribe in which we feel most comfortable, most at home. I would secretly chuckle at the apparent folly of it all.

But, then I realized that I, too, was a member of such a tribe. It was only by observing a tribe like that of the Western lifestyle that I was able to see that a similar sort of tribalism applied with equal validity to my own life — in the form of the tribe of “fine art black and white photographers.”

While still in high school I found myself being seduced in the direction of four distinct tribes — the athlete (as captain of the football team), the academic (as president of the math club), the rebel (details I shall not divulge in public), and the artist which, in my case, manifested itself in black-and-white photography. As my school days drew to a close, I realize that I could, for the duration of my life, remain a photographer, but pole vaulting was not likely to occupy much of my adult life. So, having selected my tribe, I threw myself in with gusto: I built a darkroom; I subscribed to the Fred Picker newsletter, purchased my first photo vest, began collecting my library of art books, learned the lingo, and announced to the world that I was a photographer. Most importantly, I sought, found, and started hanging out with others who shared my passion (West coast, black-and-white landscape photography) and with whom I can talk shop to the wee hours of the morning. We had our heroes, our vocabulary, our inside jokes, our group-think attitudes. Without being conscious of it, my tribe started to define my identity as I unconsciously gravitated to the tribal definitions. The problem was that my identity was not a function of my artmaking but rather the tools my tribe used.

There is deep psychology at work here. We know who we are because we define ourselves. In fact, the strength of that definition is tantamount to the strength of our self-identity. Fast-forward a dozen years or more and such ways of thinking and defining ourselves become habits. My self-image was so strong in me that I selected my apartments or houses based on the layout for a potential darkroom. In fact, whenever I moved my residence, I would build the darkroom before unpacking the kitchen. At social gatherings, I would introduce myself by describing my tribe. As far as I was concerned, PhD and MFA were three letters shy of a full load; I was Brooks Jensen, LFBWLP (Large Format Black and White Landscape Photographer).

So, what happens to such powerful identity-shaping thoughts when challenged by a technological revolution? This, in my working theory, is precisely what happened with the advance of digital technologies. Those of us who, like myself, defined ourselves with a certain style of photography using a prescribed kind of equipment found that we were challenged by the new technologies. For example, we knew that only large-format photography could produce grainless results, sharp as a tack, like those of our heroes Adams, Weston, et al. But when we started seeing grainless, tack-sharp images from digital cameras, it wasn’t that our equipment was being challenged, but rather our sense of identity was being threatened. A digital upstart could be a fine art photographer and produce work that successfully competed with ours without having to undergo our special initiations (workshops, Zone System testing, years of struggling in the darkroom). It wasn’t a problem for us that other people were making good images, but rather that they were making good images without having to be a member of our tribe. This made our tribe vulnerable; it challenged not what/how we produce, but who we are.

Like I say, this is my working theory. Are there any lessons that would be useful to learn from this train of thought? Well, for me, there have been. The more I thought about this the more I realized the fundamental error was in my definitions of self. You see, my self-perception as an artist was not defined by my artwork, but rather defined by my methods, my equipment, my practices. I had unconsciously slipped into a case of misplaced identity.

With this revelation came a complete reassessment. Rather than a definition based on stuff, I developed a new vision of my self-image based on the artwork I chose to create. With this reassessment, the questions of how and with what tools disappeared entirely. All that was left was a focus on what I wanted to create and how I wanted to relate and interact with the world. With conscious effort, I was able to let go of the idea that I was a photographer who used a certain kind of equipment and replaced that definition with one more appropriate to my creative life — the idea that I was a storyteller who used photographs to explore the world.

True, I have not escaped the tribal mentality, but rather have consciously selected a tribe that is more in harmony with my current creative life. Curiously enough, having done so I find myself far more tolerant, and far less rigid — because my self-identity is not defined by my tribe but rather my tribe is defined by myself identity. This may seem like a subtle difference, but it’s not. The tribe definition is no longer in control of directing my creative life and my artistic output.

This kind of self-examination may seem like a bit of narcissistic pseudo-psychology, but the power of our definitions of identity are incredibly persuasive in influencing our behavior. We are all so careful with our photographic craft that it seems perfectly reasonable to me that we should exhibit an equal care with our definitions of self in order to not constrain our creative life unnecessarily. Dabbling in self-image psychology can be a slippery slope, but knowing who we are, what we are, and why we choose to make artwork would seem to be important foundations — preliminary foundations — on which to build our lives of making art.

THE CONTEXT

OF THE QUESTION

There is a famous story about Edward Weston and his self-image, a story which is apparently true. I’ve written about this apocryphal story before, but it is worth considering again with a different slant. Weston had been sent a manuscript from a publisher for his approval. The envelope was addressed to “Edward Weston, artist.” He is reported to have returned this manuscript to the publisher having crossed off the address line and written in hand above it “Edward Weston, photographer.” I have often heard this story told by photographers who use it to demonstrate an unmistakable photographic pride. To do so, however, is to miss an important point — the power of the definition to (of all things!) define.

One of the root axioms of science is that the context of the question is the single most influential factor in determining the answer. Change the context of the question and the answer can change dramatically. For example, What is the smallest particle of matter? Scientists spent centuries looking for the smallest particle they could see, breaking rocks into sand, sand into molecules, molecules into atoms, atoms into subatomic particles. As it turns out, the smallest particle isn’t even a particle. It’s more like a wave than a solid. It’s not a thing; it’s an event. But it took us such a long time to realize this and when Einstein proposed that energy and matter are two forms of the same thing it shocked the scientific world. He changed the context of the question and science has been reeling from the implications in his answer ever since.

Back in the 1950s psychologist Maxwell Maltz created the study of a branch of psychology known as psycho-cybernetics. Common sense tells us that what we see determines what we think. His basic idea was that this is exactly backwards — that our thoughts determine what we see and how we act. His primary conclusion was that our definition of our self-image is the most powerful determinant in our behavior. “As a man thinketh, so is he.” Today this may not seem like a particularly revolutionary idea, but the consequences for photographers are profound.

Consider Edward Weston’s position more carefully. Because he perceived himself as a “photographer” rather than an “artist” he defined his medium so tightly as to exclude non-photographic processes. For example, he eliminated from the realm of the possible such creative areas as hand-coloring, the marriage of image and text, or even chemical processes that don’t use the camera. Of course, he may have done this purposely and with strategic conviction. Even in his Daybooks he is mute on this.

Don’t misunderstand me. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with self-limiting definitions. This is, after all, the world of art in which almost any methodology can be valid. That Weston chose to define himself a certain way creating straight photographic images is not a problem — but it might have been a limitation. It’s this limitation that deserves some attention. Purposeful limitations can be useful. Thoughtless ones might be quite stifling to the creative life.

All of this was brought to mind when I was attending the last Houston FotoFest. As a reviewer, I had the opportunity to examine numerous portfolios and meet the photographers. The review session with each photographer would often begin with exchanging pleasantries and business cards. I was amazed how many photographers presented me with a business card that defined their style of photography! I met numerous people with cards that announced their specialty:

John Smith

Black and White

Landscape Photographer

Are these marketing descriptions or self-image definitions? This is a subtle difference, but a crucial one. I met photographers who defined themselves as a “Cibachrome photographer,” a “Panorama Photographer,” and even one photographer who announced herself as a “Black and White Women’s Issues Portraitist” — I am not kidding! If Maltz’ psycho-cybernetics ideas are at all valid, such definitions lead to an extremely narrow arena of work. It seems important to be a specialist these days, but can become a little silly when it so defines one’s options as to create a box of rigid and miniscule proportions.

I thought a great deal about it during the several days of the conference. I finally began to understand why photographers choose to define themselves this way when I was presented with a biography/resumé from a photographer who defined himself as a “Large Format Photographer.” Question: what does this moniker define? His physical appearance? The size of his exhibition photographs? His camera? Or was it defining a certain approach and relationship to subject matter? As I brought into mind this image of “Large Format Photographer,” I immediately realized it included a whole range of issues in the creation of his artwork — the format of his photographs, a certain style of presentation, arctic-white-and-God-help-us-if-it’s-any-other-color mat boards, a methodology, a state of mind, a deliberate, solitary and even meditative technique — often in the pristine landscape. As we talked about his vision and his creative drive and re-examined the photographs in his portfolio, it became more clear to both of us that his style of using the camera was working against his creative vision. His ideas and vision were animated, alive, asymmetrical, and colorful. His images tended to be static, symmetrical, centered — using that all-too-common “bull’s-eye composition” that is seen so often in tripod-based photography. Furthermore, he repeated a well-defined tonal scale in all of his photographs that tended to make metallic surfaces glow, and make all organic materials look metallic. His photographs were technically well-executed, but passionless. He was frustrated with this and became aware, as we talked, that the context of his definition of who and what he was had completely dominated his photographic answers. He was a Large Format Photographer and therefore used a large format camera. In fact, it was the only camera he owned.

I proposed that he consider letting go of the idea of being a photographer and embrace the idea of being an artist. Suddenly a number of creative ideas could be considered: images with text, images presented in other than in arctic-white museum mat boards, multimedia presentations, and possibly some experimentation with three-dimensional presentations — and perhaps, God forbid, handheld color 35mm abstracts! As long as he defined himself as a large format photographer, these ideas could not be remotely considered, not even as a safe, unrealized fantasy. If a human were given the gift of wings, flight would still be psychologically difficult until we changed our fear of gravity. The concept of considering artistic ideas that were so diametrically opposed to his large format prejudice were psychologically inconceivable. They didn’t fit the definition of what he was supposed to be doing artistically. But, I suggested, if he could change the definition of his artwork he might be able to change his limitations easily. Or, as G. K. Chesterton said, “The angels fly because they take themselves lightly!”

This is a double-edged sword, of course. One of the chief reasons to squeeze things in life is to intensify the experience. With Weston, by limiting himself to a narrow range of presentation and media he forced himself to think in extremely creative ways within those limitations. In spite of his reluctance to be called an artist, he was a great artist precisely because of this intensity in his vision and execution. Had he allowed himself unrestricted freedom, he may not have produced such an interesting body of work. We will never know.

The point here is that each of us, individually, need to think clearly and commit ourselves to a strategy with intention. Be a large format photographer because you intend to use this limited definition as a strategic tool on your creative path. If it is a tool, you can use it with discrimination and abandon it at will. If, on the other hand, it is an inflexible task master with inflexible rules of what you may and may not do creatively, it can be far worse than a nuisance. Conscious choice is the key. Sometimes, it can be a great exercise to produce a portfolio of, say, ten images in one tightly defined weekend. (Nothing like a deadline!) Sometimes it’s much more productive to allow a more liberal, free-floating, experimental and even boundless definition. Part of creative wisdom is knowing when to squeeze and when to let go. The first step to developing this skill is to recognize that this strategy needs to be a conscious one. Whether one tightens controls or loosens control is not the question. But rather, it is whether one loosens control when it’s important to do so and tightens control when it’s important to do so that really counts.

WHY I AM ENCOURAGED BY

THE PIFFLE ON PARADE

Chapter 1: Pessimism

There are those who insist that the heyday of photography is past. They would point to the fact that galleries are struggling to sell photographs; workshops struggle to fill class rosters; MFA programs are facing reduced funding; and the general public’s diminished respect of photography as an art form. There is some evidence to support their claims, but their reasons tend to blame everything except the photographs. I believe photography’s struggle is simpler than this. When you strip away all the excuses and incrimination, the reason is simple: the public considers most current art photography to be nothing more than mere piffle on parade. Ouch.

It’s amazing how many times in my thirty years in photography I’ve heard a photographer complain about the lack of print sales, the mistreatment they’ve received at the hands of gallery owners and the unfairness of the art world in general. Then I look at their work and see precisely why they are so frustrated. It’s tough to sell work that the public thinks is uninteresting, uninspired or just plain bad; it’s tough to publish when the books don’t sell; it’s tough to exhibit work when no one wants to see it. It is far too easy to blame the public, blame free market economics, blame “the system” or blame some other convenient entity when the artwork just isn’t very good. Nobody overestimates themselves quite like an artist does. Sorry, but this is true for all of us.

Plainly said, anyone can make art — and many of us do. Making art does not however, guarantee that anyone else will care about it, care about us, want to see it, want to own it, or want to pay for it. To do so would imply that they feel your artwork is valuable in their lives. They might not. The value you ascribe to your artwork does not influence their sense of value one whit. Nobody overestimates the value of art like the artist who created it.

Chapter 2: Piling On: Evidence in Support of the Pessimism

Here is a case in point. For a number of years I’ve been an observer for an annual fund-raising photography auction. Photographs are solicited and donated from photographers all over the country — a few well-known photographers, a few regionally known photographers , and quite a number of students and MFA graduates. The auction is usually attended by well over 100 photography enthusiasts and collectors. By watching this event for over a dozen years, I’ve learned a lot about what sells and what doesn’t sell. And, I’ve collected some hard data that leads to some interesting conjectures. My observations may not be a definitive analysis, but they do indicate a few interesting tidbits.

Statistically speaking, the average print sells for about forty dollars. Matted! This figure has remained fairly constant for ten years; it hasn’t even kept pace with inflation. Remember, this is the statistical average, so keep in mind that there are about as many prints that sell for $20 as sell for $60. When the free market reigns and the buyers are unencumbered by the dictates of the gallery system, it’s illuminating to where the free market price migrates.

I should add that photographers who hold an MFA (particularly an MFA in photography), almost without exception, sell for less than the statistical average. On the other hand, people who are painters who pick up a camera and make photographic art always — always — sell for prices far higher than average. It seems that being an artist with a camera is more valuable than being a camera-person attempting to make art. There is a lesson here, one that us camera-people should take to heart.

The best work from well-established artists sells for four to six hundred dollars. Good, you say, at least respectable. But you might think differently when I add that these prices are usually about half the established gallery price for the artist. Hmmm … when the free market reigns the customer’s perception of a fair price can be surprising — and uncomfortable!

Of course, the counter argument says that public appreciation always lags behind innovative vision. Given the opportunity to defend their bad artwork with this cliché, many artists will simply claim that their artwork is too sophisticated for the public to comprehend and appreciate. Of course, when saying this they refer to the same unsophisticated public who, for generations, has appreciated Beethoven, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, George Gershwin, Fred Astaire, Monét, Picasso, Billie Holliday, Miles Davis, Auguste Rodin, and Gary Larson. (I’ll wager you’d have never thought you’d read a passage extolling Monét and Gary Larson in the same sentence! Perhaps this is a personal sentiment.) This, of course, is the same unsophisticated public who has extolled the classic photographic masters like Alfred Stieglitz, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Paul Strand, and Eugene Atgét as well as the more modern luminaries like Robert Frank, W. Eugene Smith, or Minor White. Need I continue with contemporary folks like Michael Kenna, Robert Glenn Ketchum, Robert Adams, or John Sexton? The unsophisticated public, in my observation, is not nearly as uncouth as discouraged artists would like to assume.

I’m not sure why it is so difficult for artists to accept, but let’s face it, crap is crap. It is not sometimes crap and sometimes not crap. It is not neither crap nor not crap. Crap is not both crap and not crap. Such convoluted Zen logic may be appropriate in studying koans but when it comes to artwork such thinking is just plain intellectual crap.

Chapter 3: The Beauty Myth

And while I’m at it, let me address the other silly myth that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” This may be true when we are talking about, as the original phrase was, the beauty of a woman. Although this cliché may be true about women, when applied to art it is not. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but quality is universally recognized. Well, it used to be anyway.

I think some of the misconceptions about making photographic artwork comes from the fact that photography is a universally accessible artmaking technology. It is too easily assumed therefore, that the creation of photographic art is a skill that is universally distributed; that everyone can do it well. This assumption entirely misses the point. The creation of photographic artwork has no more to do with photographic technology than a better brush determines the quality of a painting or that a superior instrument guarantees a quality musical performance.

America is the land of opportunity — home of the free and the brave. We are winners here. We are all Horatio Alger in an artist’s frock. We all have the opportunity to grow up and become President. But, very few of us actually do. Similarly, anybody with a camera can make good art but very few actually do. Potential and achievement are two entirely different things.

Chapter 4: Now That I’ve Depressed You: Rescue from the Depths of Despair

Now, having voiced my pessimism, let me explain why all of this encourages me beyond reason. In the vast sea of people who use cameras there are a lot individuals who have the talent, perseverance, vision, and the resources to produce absolutely wonderful photographic artwork. You — yes you — may be one of those individuals. I am encouraged by piffle on parade because I know that bad quality work acts as a motivator for those in pursuit of excellence. Scattered throughout the donated auction work I referred to above were some absolutely magical photographs created by artists working in virtual anonymity outside of their immediate family. I know that I may look at dozens of books shelved at the local bookstore before I find one whose images are breathtaking. When I find it, I know that photography is alive and thriving.

I am encouraged beyond reason by the simple fact that there are still so many people who are making photographic art and that so many of them are doing so with such passion. Contrary to all logic, contrary to all economic barriers, contrary to all the odds for failure and against success, there are still thousands of you out there creating wonderful photographs. I know because I see so many of them. If you could sit in my seat as the editor of LensWork, you would certainly agree. Sure, we see a lot of work that is not yet ready for publication, but we also see so many great images that we just don’t have room to publish. We see repeated submissions from determined individuals who demonstrate their progress and growth in such impressive ways. Just about the time we are discouraged by the volume of beginning work we see, someone sends in a portfolio of images that simply takes our breath away — someone unknown, unpublished, working in total anonymity. I can tell you with confidence that there are thousands of you toiling in your darkrooms (or on computers) doing work that is just wonderful. Keep plugging away; the universe will not allow your work — if it is truly deserving of an audience — to remain hidden forever.

I am encouraged beyond reason by these times in which we live. A friend of mine just sent me a little photographic project he’d been working on for the last few days. It was a portfolio of a dozen still life images of leeks from his garden. Wonderful! He photographed them digitally, prepared a small presentation to share via an Acrobat® PDF file, and emailed it to me just hours after he’d completed it. Think back a decade or two — or ten. What would he have had to do to share this little project? Think of the labor involved in producing a dozen prints, preparing them for a presentation, and distributing them to his friends. He might still produce it as fine silver prints today — he is an accomplished darkroom technician — or, he might just email it and post on a website without ever physically printing the images. The point is he has a choice to share this project in several ways that are only recently available to us. Furthermore, whatever he learned by doing this small and easily finished electronic project are lessons he can retain and employ in more serious or substantial projects. Even though this was just a quick digital project he was thinking and seeing and working at photography, and that in itself is entirely positive.

I am encouraged beyond reason by the ease with which we can now make stunning photographs. Think how far we have come technologically in the production of a simple image. Remember wet plates? In “art-time,” they were the required technology not that long ago. More recently, just thirty years ago, it was a daunting task to develop the skill to make a beautiful enlargement — we had to master the Zone System, for example. Now it is so easy that there are far more photographers making beautiful enlargements than there is room for in galleries and exhibition places. And the encouraging part of all this is that advancing technology and craft is allowing more and more photographers to concentrate on the important part of making artwork — the content of their vision, not the mere construction of it.

I am encouraged beyond reason by the world of publishing. When I started in photography there was Aperture, the Fred Picker Newsletter, and a slew of magazines filled with advertising and equipment reviews. Sure, there are still a plethora of equipment-oriented magazines, but finding good work to look at in better periodicals is much easier today. More than that, I am encouraged when I compare the quality of today’s publications to any of those from an earlier generation. There also has been a geometric expansion in the world of book publishing in the last 30 years. There was a time not long ago when a dedicated photography book collector could own them all — everything that was published. With so many choices now, we must pick and choose between the overwhelming volume of commercially and self-published photography books. Doing so is a joy because the printing in today’s books is so spectacular and the wide range of subjects and projects mean there is something to appeal to everyone.

So, I am encouraged in spite of the challenges. It is easier than ever to make photographs. It is easier than ever to find an audience for our work. It is easier than ever to make contact with one’s peers and share ideas and images and to learn from each other. We can easily travel farther and faster than the photographers of a few generations ago. We can see and own more photography than ever before because of the revolution in publishing. In short, it is a good time to be a photographer. Ultimately this is why I am so encouraged today — we have so few excuses for not producing great work. Our remaining challenge is facing what has always been the true challenge for artists of all times — what do you want to say? The more we photographers find ourselves engaged in the challenge of making meaningful art, the less we are likely to be surrounded by piffle on parade and the more we are likely to be amazed at the work we see and the work we do.

WHY MAKE ART?

Life is complicated, busy, challenging, difficult. In daily life there is enough seriousness going on that artmaking can seem like a trivial pursuit, a discretionary expenditure of time for the idle and the self-indulgent. But this is an oversimplification of what artmaking is really all about.

In this time of war and political strife, in the age of AIDS and global warming, I was recently challenged by a political activist to “get serious and get engaged” in the meaningful things of life. She proposed that my indulgence in artwork was somehow flitting away the valuable hours of my life when I could be doing something that made a difference. The structure of her criticism brought into focus the fact that so many people do not understand the role of art in the world. In a pragmatic society it’s too easy to think of art as a game, or perhaps an entertainment. It is, or at least can be, so much more than that.

Communication

The fundamental reality of life is that life is relationship — relationships with our families, our friends, our communities, our world, our history, our ethics and morals, our sense of destiny, and our place in the universe. Artmaking is an extension of this fundamental communication.

At its most simplistic, artmaking is communication with the viewers who will look at the fruits of our efforts. But in some regards this is the least important form of communication that takes place as a result of having made art. There is a certain egocentricity in craving an audience for one’s art — an egocentricity that can be unhealthy if its primary motivation is limited to “look at me.” If the connection with viewers is based on a more healthy approach about sharing, I think an audience can be important. But, fundamentally, as so many of us have discovered and admitted long ago, having an audience for our work is the dessert of artmaking, not the primary motivation.

Of more importance to artmaking is our communication with artists from the past — our response to the universal questions of human existence that all artists throughout time have asked and answered in their artmaking. We pick up the thread of those who have gone before us and, in our turn, add our responses to life and communicate these through our artwork to artists in the future. It’s this relationship both backward and forward in time that makes artmaking important. It’s not mere idle speculation; it is our fundamental response to life that connects us with every other human both in history and in the future. We may not be able to speak directly to those in different times, but we can communicate through our artwork in ways that make our responses alive.

And there is another form of communication that, I believe, is even more important than these — and that is the communication with our deeper self. It is human nature to think all day, every day, even in our dreams. The mind is a constantly running dialogue on life. But the constant chatter that fills in our normal waking consciousness is not our only self. The subconscious bubbles up in dreams. Our soul shows itself in our fundamental perceptions and assumptions about life. Every one of us is the accumulation of our years of learning and trained behavior that filter all of our perceptions and thoughts and reactions to all that parades before us in daily life. There is a deeper self in every one of us that lies behind the mask of our public face. Our deepest thoughts, our innermost feelings, our subconscious reactions may not be visible, may not be easily accessible, but they are a part of us nonetheless. Artmaking is one way to communicate with this deepest self and see what it is that lies behind the curtain of our everyday existence. It is a spiritual pursuit; it is a personal pursuit; it is a meaningful pursuit for each and every one of us.

Limitations

The moment we try to make art we confront in harsh realities our own limitations. Satisfaction in artmaking is both fleeting and a rare commodity. More frequently, the idealized artwork that we visualize in our mind’s creative eye fails and suffers in the translation to molecules and reality. None of us are as talented as we would like to be. None of us are as creative as we would fantasize ourselves to be. The confrontations — the battle — is one of the greatest reasons to be an artist. It is humbling; it is motivating; in its frustration it is challenging. One of the great purposes of life is to try, as best we can, to exceed our own limitations. It is human nature to strive for that which we can reach. It is human nature to pursue that which cannot be done. As individuals we strive to do that which is beyond our capabilities. This is the heart of artmaking — especially. To play a composition on the piano that is beyond our fingers; to paint color or reality that is beyond pigment; to express in words that which cannot be spoken; to photograph that which cannot be seen — these are the fundamental wings on which art flies that makes our work both inspiring and worthy of achievement. If it’s easy, it’s not quite art, which is why photography has often struggled to be accepted as a sophisticated and legitimate art form. It does appear to be so until one picks up the camera and tries to use it to express a personal statement. No one appreciates photography quite like another photographer because other photographers are best equipped to appreciate the achievement of a stunning photograph.

Perceptive magnification

In the biological sense, our physical senses exist for only two purposes: fight or flight. We are constantly on the lookout for danger or opportunity. As human animals, our ability to scan the environment is far more important than our ability to see the environment in the artistic sense. And this is one of the great reasons to make art. So much of life is involved in scanning, quickly looking and assessing a situation for its danger or opportunity. But, artmaking is not like this at all. The artist doesn’t scan; they look deeply. Watch a painter or someone drawing with pen and ink. Then look, and look again. They search for details and relationships. They look at the same area of the composition a hundred times until they see it precisely. It is this magnification in the perception of detail, in the perception of relationships, that differentiates normal consciousness from the seeing used in artmaking. Scanning looks for big things; artmaking is minutia. Scanning is instantaneous; the seeing in artmaking is extended in time. By changing one’s perceptive magnification in scale, in detail, in time, the world becomes a different place than the threat we live in on a daily basis. Artists soak up what is before them whereas everyday consciousness tends to bounce off of it. In everyday consciousness a stoplight is just red; in artistic consciousness that red is a variety of subtle reddish shades, shadows and highlights, and in it we see far more than a mere traffic commandment. It is a cliché in art to discuss the fascination of watching, for hours, a spider build its web. We’ve all done it. But this is a fundamentally different relationship to life than that of the gardener for whom the spider might merely be a pest. Audubon saw birds differently than most of us because he painted them. Weston saw his vegetables differently because he photographed them. It is far too common and erroneous an assumption that artists make art because they see the world differently. I think this is backwards: They see the world differently because they are artists. We can, too.

An Excuse

Peer pressure is a powerful thing. Genetically, biologically, we are herd animals. There is safety in numbers and it’s far easier to do what everyone else does. So, artmaking becomes one of the handiest excuses to break from the pack. An artist can linger over a sunset for hours, with permission, because they’re doing the important work of making art. Artmaking is a culturally acceptable form of stepping outside of time and normal comprehension. If you’re a “normal person” to sit and intently watch the clouds come and go for hours at a time would seem to be an idle waste of time. But if you’re an artist, you can employ the excuse that you are waiting to see how the clouds change and how the light affects the landscape differently. People will smile at you and grant you that permission. I remember once photographing a museum of Chinese culture and history in a small town in eastern Oregon where tourists could learn about the Chinese laborers of the nineteenth century. I found it fascinating and wanted to photograph there. By making my interests known, the museum director was more than willing to grant me full access behind the rope barriers to do as I pleased in the pursuit of art. I could stay, I could go, I could move things, I could change lights, because I was making artwork — and they were supportive. Being an artist has given me access to things, places, and people I would never have been able to explore had it not been for the excuse of artmaking.

Pursuit of perfection

Everyday life tends to be a pragmatic exercise. It’s been said that “enough is as good as a feast” — which is true in everyday life, but not when you’re an artist. In everyday affairs “good enough for government work” is good enough, but in artmaking there is a different standard. Artmaking pursues excellence in quality regardless of time, regardless of money, regardless of effort. It is one of the few things in life that we do with this total disregard for economy. This is one of the reasons why artmaking and commerce are such uncomfortable bedfellows. What is the value of the piece of artwork in the market? No matter the answer, it’s not likely to be commensurate with the value of that artwork to the artist who made it. To the artist, artwork is not simply a commodity; it is a manifestation of the artist’s best and highest efforts, their noblest accomplishment in life. It is the pursuit of quality that makes artmaking so addictive in a world in which pragmatism is the rule.

I wish I had said these things when I was told to “get serious.” I’ll admit that instead I fumbled and hesitated because I’d never really thought about it before. I’d never been asked why I make artwork, or thought how important artmaking is in our imperfect world. Now that I have thought about it a bit, a more logical question would be: How could we possibly go through life not making art?

CREATIVITY QUESTIONS

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) once complained that computers were useless. He said, “They can only give you answers.” Just imagine his response if he were alive today! We live in an answer-oriented, Wikipediated, data-overloaded, information age. It is almost like science fiction how readily information is available to us. Answers are a dime a megabyte.

But, art is the pursuit of questions. Art is wonder. Art is inquiry. Art is a peek into the mysterious. At its best, art is, like life, asking the right questions — and the right questions are so often more important than the answers we find. Over the course of my thirty-five years in photography, I have invariably found that asking certain questions is one of the most fruitful activities in which I can engage when working on a photography project — particularly at the beginning of a project. Come to think of it, perhaps it’s even more important when nearing the end of a project.

But what are the right questions? Clearly, there is no single, universal response — you weren’t expecting one, were you? — but I cannot resist at least attempting to offer some for consideration. So, here are a few of my oft-visited old friends and a few comments from my experiences using them in specific projects.

What can I do with this?

Everything is made with a purpose, but the intended purpose is not the only way it can be used. As I run across new ideas, new products, new procedures, or new paradigms, I habitually and reflexively ask how I can use this new thing in my work. Take, for example, Adobe Acrobat. I first became aware of this software in 1998, when Acrobat was in its early stages — version 3. Acrobat was originally intended as a document-sharing format, for use primarily in business, government, and the graphics industry. Fine, but what can I do with this? I was immediately intrigued with its potential as a publishing and delivery platform for fine art photography and multimedia.

Our use of Adobe Acrobat as a publishing platform for LensWork is an implementation of the software for which it was not primarily intended. That the software works elegantly for LensWork Extended is more accidental than it is purposeful — but who cares?

Here is another example: I became fascinated with photographing the blotchy patterns and cement aberrations in the walls of Fort Casey, a nearby historic military facility. I thought they might make interesting abstract photographs to complement my work at Fort Worden. They did not. In fact, they were boring cement walls that I quickly abandoned as photographs in and of themselves. However, last year, in preparing an exhibition of my Made of Steel work, I realized this project would present better on a textured background paper rather than traditional photographic white paper stock. Pushing this idea further, I realized it would be a much more interesting project if each background were unique. The answer was to repurpose these Fort Casey cement-wall photographs by modifying them to be light, tinted visual backgrounds. By asking What can I do with this? I was able to use these images in a completely unintended and unexpected way.

In essence, I think this is a classic case of not allowing our thinking to be limited by definitions. I know what it is, but what else can it be? How can I adapt it? With modification, what could it do? With every idea, with every product, there is the potential that it can be useful in unintended ways. As a habit, employing this type of curiosity is a productive way to think creatively.

How far can I take this?

It has often been said that we don’t know if we’ve gone too far unless we go too far and then come back just a bit. I’ve always found this sage advice in the darkroom, where, for example, I’ll push an image until it’s too contrasty in order to know where I’ll find just enough contrast. This is the essence of the “How far can I take this?” game. In workshop critique sessions, I frequently find that students pull up short rather than push something beyond its limits. Don’t be timid. Remember the advice of Goethe: “Boldness has genius in it.” If you’re going to make the trip anyway, see it through to the very end!

The trick in this, of course, is not the “going too far,” but rather the next step of coming back just a bit. We need to know that we’ve gone too far. We need to know that we need to come back just a bit. But how can we possibly know this unless we push our ideas, our vision, our execution, our process so clearly beyond what is reasonable that we can recognize that we’ve passed the apex of excellence and begun the decline into “overdone?”

Some people confuse “How far can I take this?” with a closely related question, “What are the limits?” These are not the same question. By focusing on the limits, it is far too easy to give up too soon. Rather than apply the brakes before you hit the brick wall, accelerate through the brick wall so you can discover where the true limit resides. Some postulate that creativity has no limits. I would propose that an important aspect of creativity is discovering precisely where its limits are. By this, I’m not referring to “shock art,” whose purpose is to exceed the cultural limits of good taste for the purpose of publicity and notoriety, but rather as a means of discovering the limits of your thought process, your technical process, and the unconscious, assumed limits that are not really limits at all.

What if I combine these two things that don’t seem related

to one another?

At its most fundamental, the process of thinking is often one of classification, of terminology and definitions, of positioning and relationships. Looking out my window, I can ask what that creature is on my bird feeder: it’s a bird, a finch, a mammal, a flying, nesting, egg-laying creature. Such knowledge allows me to place it in a hierarchy of thought and context. These observations are factually accurate, but woefully incomplete.

The creature on my bird feeder is also a consumer, and will, in its turn, be consumed. It is a dancer; a singer; an observer; a complex ecology of host and parasite; the aural backdrop to my computer work; an offspring, a mate, a parent, the current generation in a long line defining its avian genealogy.

Philosophically, any given thing is perfectly unknowable because we can never know it completely. Said another way, any given thing is known by its relationships with other things — and this is the trap that thwarts creativity.

The moment we define a thing, we limit our thinking about it. At the speed of thought, we restrict it, box it, classify it, limit it. But knowing this, we are equally at liberty to redefine how we think about something by recognizing our own self-imposed limitations and asking the question, How else can this thing relate?

A practical example: I often find it incredibly useful to wander through stores that I would never normally visit. Walk through a sewing center and consider the tools seamstresses use. How you might adapt them for use in your photographic efforts? That’s where I found handheld rotary cutters, Velcro buttons to attach my cable release to the tripod, and embroidery hoops that work perfectly as frames for various dodging and burning cutouts. I can’t imagine working without the “centering ruler” I discovered in the graphic arts supply store, or the air gun from the welding supply shop. I’ve discovered the most interesting tools and ideas in marine supply stores, industrial safety suppliers, automotive supply stores, and, one of my favorites, flea markets. And this isn’t limited to products and tools. I sometimes find the most interesting ideas by reading magazines I would never normally bother with. My local library has hundreds of magazines, covering every conceivable topic — well, and even some inconceivable ones. I make it a habit to stop by regularly and take a look, just for the exercise of combining ideas that have nothing to do with my photography with my photography.

In one sentence, what am I trying to say?

Shakespeare said that brevity is the soul of wit. It may very well be the soul of creative and artistic clarity, too.

From time to time I’ll show some new work to some unsuspecting victim and be surprised when they innocently ask what I am trying to accomplish with this work. They are not insulting; they are genuinely curious. I know I’m in trouble when my answer is fumbling, incoherent, rambling, inconsistent, filled with justifications, and touched with a twinge of defensiveness. If I don’t know what I’m trying to say, how can I expect others to understand?

With every project, I try to write a single sentence that explains the project. If my sentence reads like Faulkner — running on for pages — I know I still have some work to do, not with the sentence but with the focus of my project!

Pretend that you’re writing a blurb for your work that will appear in a catalog, a dust jacket, a press release, or a marquee sign. I would propose that our audience should be able to comprehend the context of our project and our most important point through the title, subtitle, and a sentence or two about the project. I often find that photographers write their artist’s statement after the project is completed. Far too often it ends up being an historical statement about how the project came to be. Instead, write the artist’s statement near the beginning of your process, or perhaps in the middle, and use it to clarify the context, purpose, conclusions, or primary points you’re trying to communicate through your photographs. The photographs are the message, but if you can’t describe the message in a short sentence, or a title, or a brief artist’s statement, it may be that you are not yet sufficiently clear in your own mind what it is you are trying to communicate.

What if I were to come at this from the exact opposite direction?

The universe is composed of the yin and yang, the eternal play of opposites. Male and female, up and down, left and right, positive and negative, the illuminated world and the dark inside our camera box. If the world is a two-sided coin, isn’t it unreasonable to think that the answer is always heads?

I think I am like most people in that I have my own personal reflexive and habitual ways of approaching certain problems. We are creatures of habit. But, I have learned that my habits are sometimes the impediments to my success. I’m not against habits — I’m glad I don’t have to reinvent new ways to tie my shoes every morning — but from time to time it’s nice to work against the grain.

I photograph almost exclusively using a tripod, so from time to time I force myself to do work handheld — just for the exercise, just to keep loose. I typically find myself attracted to a photographic composition because I happened to see it from a certain angle. So, before photographing it, I’ll walk around it and look at it in the opposite direction — like a golfer lining up a putt — just to see what it looks like from a completely different perspective. If my instinct tells me it’s a landscape-oriented composition, I’ll search for a portrait-oriented one. Wide-angle lens versus telephoto, color versus black and white, matted and framed verses handheld and intimate, a single image versus a series, physical print versus a digital publication, and (referring back to the beginning of this article) the question versus an answer. Perhaps this is a reflection of my early days as a view camera photographer, but I often find it useful to turn the world upside down and look at it from the exact opposite direction.

What is the structure of this work?

As photographers, we work one shutter-click at a time. Often, we

the world this way, projectless, working randomly. We all do this in one form or another. But then, something happens. We see a subject or an image, and a deep resonance appears from nowhere. Sometimes this is a whisper from the gentle muses, sometimes a bonk on the head that leaves us stunned. We discover a project — one that may direct our creative life for yet unknown years. We’ve found our “photographic turf,” as it were.

But, in the interstice between inspiration and full-on productivity lies that vast wasteland of indecision. We know we are on the edge of a project, but what is it? We know this idea has potential, but in which direction?

With every project, there is a framework, a pattern of content and process, a flow of ideas and visualization, a pace, a scale, a scope, in short, a structure — hidden at first — that is essential. Over the years, I’ve discovered that a large part of my creative process is to discover this structure. Without it, I often flounder, not knowing how to proceed nor what to do next. Once I discover the structure of the project, the rest is, well, not easy, but at least easier.

For me, discovering the structure of a project is best accomplished by spending time with it — quality time, uninterrupted time, silent time. Like good soup, there is no substitute for patient simmering. I look at the initial images. I think about them. I pay attention to how I react to them. I start playing with them — sequencing, printing variations, listening to them. Slowly — I cannot rush this delicate process — a structural form for the project starts to coalesce. I nudge it a bit. The form takes shape. I nudge some more, testing and experimenting. Then, full blossom. I know such a description is painfully fuzzy, but it’s the only way I can describe it.

On my personal website is a project I call Hope Eternal. It is a short video of still photographs of a North Dakota pioneer’s cabin. This started as a pile of prints, nothing more, nothing special. I had photographed it “because it was there.” (I’ve learned to just give in to these impulses, with the faith that my subconscious sometimes knows better than my rational self.) Years later, I was reviewing my image archives and there they were, whispering to me. I spent time with the images, looking, printing, sequencing, playing, fiddling around with no particular agenda. What would it be like to live in this cabin? I could hear the wind. I could feel the patient desperation, the faith, the never-ending struggle to farm an inhospitable land. The faded color, the dry, cold wind. And there it was, there was the structure — in this case, a video, because the sound of the relentless plains wind was absolutely essential to the images. Faded colors, simple faith. The project simply told me what it wanted to be and all I had to do was complete the work.

Questions and more questions

This list could, of course, be endless. I suspect it is. I also suspect that each one of us might have a different set of questions that manifest our individual creative impulses. I don’t want my examples — my questions — to be misconstrued as some sort of authoritative list. They are my questions, ones that I’ve found useful on my creative path. If I had more space, I could explore others. Who has done something similar? Where did they succeed and fail? What is the work itself trying to tell me? What if I changed the scale of the project? How will this work be seen in the context of contemporary life? What about in the future? What am I missing? What have I left unsaid? Where have I said too much?

Picasso was right in insisting that the creative path is one of questions. It is a path that is best illuminated by raising such questions. I know of no better way to discover, to guide, or to deepen our work.

EXCELLENCE

In 1998, the last year for which I have seen the statistics, there were 40,000 new books published — but we still read Lord of the Rings, Huckleberry Finn, and texts from ancient history. There are countless new CDs with today’s newest music — but we still listen to Mozart, Billie Holiday, and (one of my favorites) Crosby, Stills and Nash. There are new TV shows every season, but I still laugh most at Barney Fife and I am terrified by the Borg. We cannot let go of history — be it personal or collective — because history is not only a thing of the past. History lives today, influences us today, prods us today, and challenges us today.

What does this have to do with photography? Quite simply this: photographers who lack visual literacy — a knowledge of the photographers and photographs of the past — do not have the benefits of historical photographs challenging them. Visual literacy means knowing what those who came before you thought, knowing what those who came before you did, knowing what those who came before you accomplished and where they failed. More importantly, visual literacy provides us with more than just a record of what was done. It also provides us with an excellence legacy that shows us what succeeded — and what still succeeds, years or decades later.

It’s important to be aware that photographic work we produce today is seen in the context of the work of the past — in particular, the best work of the past. I was shocked once during a critique of my work when the reviewer proposed that 200 years from now I will be seen as a “contemporary” of Walker Evans and judged against his standards. (He suggested I improve my printing; I suggested he re-think the assumption that my work would survive that long; he countered by asking what virtue I was defending by advocating sloppy printing; I tucked my tail between my legs and signed up for his printing workshop.) I realized the truth of his comment about our “contemporaries” when I remembered that Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand were separated by 26 years in age. In my erroneous mind they are of the same generation. Given a couple centuries of history, the 51 years difference between Evans and myself will likely seem inconsequential.

Comparing one’s own work to the best in history can be tough competition, indeed. But, it is also powerful inspiration. By immersing ourselves in the best, we are uplifted. This is why it’s so important for us to use museums, galleries, books, posters, and other resources to know what has been done, and done well. As Isaac Newton said, “If I’ve seen farther than others, it is because I’ve stood on the shoulders of giants.” We currently have 150+ years of photographic artifacts to teach us. We should count our blessings.

Moreover, I’ve also recently been reminded that all of those artifacts are the gift and legacy of people — hard-working people — who, like us, picked up a camera and decided to see what they could create. Their excellence is what inspires us today, and it is their excellence that we must remember, celebrate, and study.

Recently we’ve lost two excellent photographers of the last half of the 20th Century — Manuel Alvarez Bravo, and Oliver Gagliani. These two men pursued photographic excellence and passion — for decades — and often with limited notoriety and considerable financial and physical hardship.

When I heard that Bravo had passed away, I went to my bookshelves and pulled down a couple of his books. He was a keen observer and commentator on life, a marvelous photographer with incredible insight, impeccable timing, and a sensitive eye. Surely the world would have progressed even if Bravo had never picked up a camera, but thankfully the world is better because of his vision and because of his photographs.

Oliver Gagliani was less well-known, but, in my opinion, still one of the great photographers. I have no doubt that I am biased in this opinion because I knew Oliver, worked with him and have been touched by his spirit as well as by his photographs. Unlike Bravo, Gagliani was significantly under-published; there is only one book devoted exclusively to his work, and it is long out of print. Oliver spent little time pursuing publication or even gallery exhibitions. He was far too busy making photographs, far too excited by what he was creating in the darkroom and seeing on the ground glass. His greatest impact quite possibly was as a teacher who inspired countless numbers of students in his intensive two-week-long workshop on the Zone System. It was a clever ruse — the workshop was really about being an artist and the complexities of the Zone System was only an excuse to get people to commit two weeks of their lives to his intense teaching. Unlike those who teach but cannot do, Oliver was a superb photographer who understood the human psyche and power of art as well as he understood the technical subtleties of additive color or the use of Pyro in negative contraction. He was that perfect combination of humanitarian and technician that combine to make the greatest artists.

Bravo and Gagliani meant a great deal to me because they were both in my visual literacy and both produced work that I’ve looked to time and again when I’ve needed to remind myself of the virtues of excellence. We all have our favorites — mine include not only Bravo and Gagliani but also Paul Strand, Edward Weston, Wynn Bullock, Eugene Atgét, Aaron Siskind, Paul Caponigro, and many others.

The FSA Special Editions

Near the top of my list of inspirational favorites are some of the first photographers I studied in the earliest years of my interest in photography — the FSA (Farm Security Administration) photographers: Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Gordon Parks, Arthur Rothstein, Russell Lee and Marion Post Wolcott, to name a few. I still own and treasure first editions of An American Exodus by Dorothea Lange and Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans — books and photographs that define excellence. Unfortunately, both of these old books suffer from the limitations of early half-tone printing and don’t do the images much justice. Fortunately, in our lifetime, the quality of printing technologies have improved beyond imagination.

I still remember the day I picked up Ansel Adams’ Yosemite and the Range of Light in the bookstore and saw, for the first time, the printing of images in 300-line screen duotone. Suddenly, I realized a reproduction could give me the same visually sensuous experience of tonalities that a photograph could. I saw that excellence in publishing was no longer limited to the presentation of rich content at the expense of visceral tonal sensations.

Ansel Adams gave us many things, yet among his most precious legacy is the guidance about publishing, reproduction, and the widespread distribution of popular images. In addition to all his superb books, the Ansel Adams Special Editions print program in Yosemite Valley was the original inspiration behind the LensWork Special Editions. Now, some 7,000 LensWork Special Editions later, we are excited to add a few of the great FSA images to our program. For me, it feels like I’ve come full circle to the images that first inspired me to seriously pursue photography. Those inky, dotted half-tones from my old books can be supplemented with finely crafted photogravures.

As many of you probably know, the FSA images (from 1935-1943) were placed in the Library of Congress by its director, Roy Stryker, as part of the public record and documentation of those years. Some 130,000 negatives are currently archived at the Library of Congress and you can even buy copy prints directly from them. What is not generally known is that in 1943, when Roy Stryker closed down the FSA photography program due to the pressures of World War II, he selected 1,300 of his favorite photographs from the FSA project and produced master 8x10 prints of these images for his own personal collection. In the 1960s, because of his friendship with Professor Robert J. Doherty at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, Stryker donated this important 1,300 print archive to the University library collection where it resides today as the Roy Stryker Collection. By special arrangement with the University of Louisville, our LensWork photogravure printer, Russ Dodd of Working Theory Press, is producing a series of finely crafted handmade photogravures produced from these Roy Stryker Collection master prints. The first two images from the Stryker Collection are Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California, 1936 by Dorothea Lange and Fleeing a Dust Storm, Cimarron County, Oklahoma, 1936 by Arthur Rothstein. These two quintessential images eloquently exemplify that mystical quality of excellence that make great photographs live in our minds. They inspire, they motivate, they remind us of the history of our craft. What’s more, they show us the potential that excellence in photography has to communicate and to embody a time and place so symbolically.

From time-to-time we will release new FSA images, each chosen for their excellence and for their powerful place in history. Like original prints, great books, and the lives and dedication of photographers like Bravo, Gagliani, Lange and Rothstein, it is our hope that these FSA/Stryker Collection images will inspire, motivate, and connect us with our photographic past.

On the shoulders of giants, indeed.

THE SECOND (OR THIRD)

TIME AROUND

As is often the case, while I was conducting the interview for this issue of LensWork — in this case, with Fritz Liedtke — I found our conversation sparked an interesting train of thought. He talks about how he pursued a certain kind of tonal representation for his Astra Velum series by attempting to print in collodion tintypes. When that didn’t work, he went back to the drawing board in search of a better answer. It wasn’t until he tried a sophisticated variation of photogravure printing that he was satisfied. I could relate to his story, because it’s an experience that almost defines my creative life. As much as I hate to admit it, I almost never get it right the first time.

For the longest period of time I thought this had something to do with me — that is to say, I assumed I was simply incapable of thinking through the beginning phases of a project with sufficient prowess. Having now interviewed hundreds of photographers for LensWork, I’ve come to realize that my experience is anything but unique. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that the art-making process is one of experimentation, failure, more experimentation, catching a glimpse of the correct path, more experimentation, more failure, and eventually, with perseverance, the discovery of what eventually seems obvious — at least in hindsight. Review any interview in a previous issue of LensWork and you will probably see this pattern explained somewhere in the photographer’s creative process.

I’ve found this true not only in the creation of my artwork, but also in our publishing business. Here are a few examples from the history of LensWork itself:

- • The original LensWork was an 8.5 x 11” monthly, folded and stapled in the middle. After producing the first four issues in this format, it became obvious that this production schedule would kill us. We re-tooled and converted it to a new format — book binding, 60 pages, issued quarterly, with text only. Issues 5-12 were produced that way. The LensWork you now know — with portfolios of work as well as articles and interviews — started with issue #13. The third time was the charm, as they say.

- • In 1998 we launched the LensWork Multimedia Edition, a disc-based, PDF-based on-screen version of LensWork. It failed because, at that time, few people knew what a PDF document was and how to view it on their computer. We were simply too early. In a second go around, we relaunched this idea in 2005, this time branded as LensWork Extended. It has succeeded beyond our wildest imagination, with subscribers now in 73 countries.

- • In 2011, we launched the first iteration of the LensWork Road Show. Although hugely popular, we found it was far too disruptive to our production schedule — so, it was back to the drawing board. We’ve spent considerable time researching logistics and strategizing ways to make it successful. In the following pages we’re relaunching the LensWork Road Show for 2013, redux.

What all these examples have in common is not a lack of planning, or an inadequate ability to foresee problems. That kind of thinking does little to promote the creative process. Instead, whether it’s launching a publication, working through a creative portfolio as Liedtke has done, or editing and sequencing a series of prints for a website or book publication, the creative process is one of discovery even moreso than one of clean execution. Put succinctly, the creative process is messy.

Curiously enough, this creates its own kind of barrier for our productive life. When the darkroom or the studio is spotlessly clean and fastidiously organized, that organization itself can be a sort of barrier to leaping into a project with both feet. We know our nice and neat life is about to become a creative chaos, turbulent, filled with conflict, a struggle that can be both uncomfortable and taxing. This is precisely why artists throughout the ages have described the creative process as a battle — it’s a fight against torpor, habit, indecision, and commitment — and this says nothing about the battle with the physical molecules we use to create our artwork. Artmaking is not for the feint of heart, or the feeble of will. It’s a struggle of mind as well as materials, as both resist the creative process. Not to argue with Star Trek fans, but resistance isn’t futile — it’s inevitable.

Now that I think of it looking back at the early days of my photographic life, I was often filled with disappointment. At the time, I attributed this to my inexperience, lack of knowledge, and inability to create the photographs I saw in my mind’s eye. There was a good measure of all of these, but why did they necessarily lead to the emotion of disappointment? Disappointment is, by definition, an emotion that is always felt in contrast to an expectation. Disappointment is not the consequence of failure; disappointment is a consequence of unrealized expectations. Each new round of disappointment was a discouragement. With the passing years and repeated failures, it’s a wonder any of us produces anything.

This has led me to conclude that one of the most important keys to the successful art life is to understand the nature of disappointment, and to recognize it as something that can provide either disincentive or encouragement. Disappointment is a disincentive if it leads to frustration and sense of failure. It’s possible, however, to recognize disappointment as a form of success: as has often been said, “Even the person who falls flat on their face is at least moving forward.” When Liedtke discovered that the time and effort he put into exploring tintypes for his project led to disappointment, he converted whatever discouragement he had into motivation to try something new. He learned from his process. As the old maxim advises, he didn’t fail; he simply succeeded in discovering a way that didn’t work.

In classical Zen training, there is a teaching aid known as “The Ten Ox-Herding Pictures.” At the risk of distorting their original meaning in search of Zen enlightenment, I’ve often thought the first six are a perfect metaphor for the creative process in artmaking. They are:

1. 1. Seeking the ox

2. 2. Finding the tracks

3. 3. First glimpse of the ox

4. 4. Catching the ox

5. 5. Taming the ox

6. 6. Riding the ox home

I need not dwell on the details of this metaphor for the creative process, but I can’t resist the opportunity to rephrase them for art-making:

1. 1. Looking for the creative idea

2. 2. What’s that image doing on my contact sheet?

3. 3. Hmmm . . . could be a project

4. 4. Aha! A title, a concept, a project defined!

5. 5. Working the images, writing the text

6. 6. Layout, production, finishing touches

The reason this sequence pertains to this discussion is that it is decidedly not a single step — conceive and produce perfectly the first time. In my experience, even this simple six-step approach is only an approximation. Often I find I breeze through the first couple of steps and then — plop! — find myself flat on my face. Dead ends are a part of the process, too. It then becomes necessary to circle back, start at step one or two again, and give it a second go. Or a third go. Or a fourth.

For my own use and sanity, I’ve developed a small reminder of the process for those times when discouragement gets me down. Remembering the larger picture often helps me focus on the next step and restart the momentum I lose in discouragement. Translated for a more practical bend of mind, I call it …

Steps in a Project

1. 1. Search: Often, I just photograph something that catches my eye. Or, I’ll look through my Lightroom catalog for threads, connections, ideas, odd images that seem out of place. Seeds for projects are often found there.

2. 2. Ideas: What is concept? Here I look for the non-photographic components — the emotions, human elements, universal connections.

3. 3. Design: Media ideas — which media best allows me to explore the concept? Here is where I start to visualize the final product — literally. What will it look like? Size and scale? How many images will be necessary? What form of text will best communicate the concept?

4. 4. Experiment: Designs and layouts using rough sketches and quick ideas. What do I need to learn? This is especially important if I’m exploring a new medium or process that I’ve not used before.

5. 5. Formalize: Make preliminary decisions in the design and product end state. At this phase, I usually make a mock-up of the final result to get a feel for the finished product and materials.

6. 6. Commit: Tweak and finalize the images and text. Gather all the components I’ll need for the final production. Create the final layouts.

7. 7. Produce: This is where the sweat part happens.

8. 8. Distribute: Find and connect the work to an audience.

It would be easy to see these eight steps as a one-way sequence. It is not. Ever. Looping back is a given — and the point of this commentary. Anywhere along the line, you may have to let go of the progress you’ve made in the project and circle back to an earlier phase. Don’t be discouraged, but rather just understand that this is a natural part of the process.

Life isn’t a straight line, so why should art-making be one? In my experience, it’s more often than not in the second or third time around where the really good stuff happens.

LESSONS FROM JAZZ

Two Experiments in Photographic Improvisation

The greatest artist from throughout all of human history was, of course, the jazz trumpeter Miles Davis. Okay, this may say more about me than it does about art history, but it is an important confession I felt necessary to make as premise to this article.

I have always thought that improvisation is magic — that direct and instantaneous connection between the mind/heart and an instrument of art is the surest demonstration of the true soul of the artist. The Japanese Zen calligrapher Sengai had it. Jackson Pollack had it. So does Eric Clapton, Benny Goodman, Basho, Robin Williams, and Joe Montana — but the best of all was Mr. Davis (I refuse to call him “Miles”).

Naturally, it was a small leap to think about how I could try to use improvisation in my photography. How could I use spontaneous invention in a slow and methodical pursuit like photography? What is improvisation in this context?

My first experiment was 15 years ago, in 1991. It first occurred when I fabricated a new piece of equipment for my 2¼x3¼ monorail — a Polaroid film-pack adapter back. I wondered how Polaroid materials — and the instantaneous in-the-field feedback I’d get from the prints — would change my way of seeing. I devised a self-imposed project to make a portfolio of prints inspired by Lao Tzu’s comments about water from the Tao Teh Ching, a 6th century BC philosophical treatise from China. He said, “The best of men are like water. Water benefits all things and does not compete with them. It seeks the lowest level that men disdain wherein it comes near to the Tao.” I thought about water always seeking the lowest level and decided this would be a theme I could explore photographically. I would call it The Valley Spirit.

I first set some parameters for the project — parameters I hoped would push my process more toward creating in the now. I would use only Polaroid Positive/Negative film; I would use the positives in the field for composition work and instantaneously recompose every image based on this in-the-field feedback, trying to push myself beyond my first compositions; I would finish the project as gelatin silver contact prints from the Polaroid negatives; the finished project would be a collection of five to ten images. This may not seem like “spontaneous invention,” but compared to anything I had ever done photographically up to that point, it was spontaneous by comparison. It was not uncommon for me to have year-old film yet undeveloped and unprinted negatives from the last decade! I hoped to complete the project in ninety days from conception to finished portfolio — which for me was unheard of.

Having set the goals and defined the project, I set out to do the work. In four short weeks, I photographed in three landscape locations, chosen specifically because I hoped they would work for this project. The Polaroid materials worked as I’d hoped — they motivated me to see more deeply and differently than any other work I’d done before then. I was surprised how consistently my first composition was surpassed after reviewing the Polaroid positive in a small “field mat” I had with me. In every case, my second, third, or fourth compositions were much better than my first. Even in the printing of the Polaroid negatives, I found a new palette and a new way of matting and presenting the prints that I’d never thought of before. This was the first time I’d challenged myself to edit and sequence a body of work from a large number of individual prints. I learned that some of my favorite individual images just didn’t work in the sequence, so they were left out in favor of the whole. After the project was complete, I learned even more as I observed how people look at bodies of work and how they responded to the text elements of the portfolio.

But, of all the lessons I learned from The Valley Spirit project, the most interesting one was uncovering a myth: A project does not need to take a long time. There is nothing wrong with a project that develops slowly, and there may even be some virtues. But, more “spontaneous” projects, conceived and completed quickly, have their place in creative photography, too. I had always been influenced by the observation of my photographic god (Ansel Adams) that a hard-working photographer might, in a good year, produce ten photographs worthy of being called Art. In my youth, I had always accepted this as a photographic truth — conveniently forgetting about such photographers as W. Eugene Smith, Wright Morris, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Paul Strand, all of whom have demonstrated conclusively that work done quickly does not necessarily mean done with inferiority. With this project, I supplemented Adams’ “advice” with a maxim that I personally find more motivating — “Even a modest, completed project is better than the grandest good intention.” It seems that things like goals, plans, and commitments have an important place in artmaking right beside inspiration, hard work, and luck.

But what about spontaneity?

As I’ve thought about this over the years since The Valley Spirit, I’ve come to realize that there was another self-imposed limit that was holding me back. My use of the camera has always been quite methodical, even orderly. Said simply, I think — too much. I’ve never, for reasons I cannot explain, allowed myself to be loose and reactive to an environment. “Going with the flow” has never been my photographic style. And, to complicate matters, I’ve never been able to fully resolve the apparent conflict between goals and plans, on one hand, and “going with the flow” on the other. These have always seemed like structural opposites to me. But are they?

And then I watched Iron Chef. (You knew there’d be food analogy in this story somewhere, didn’t you?) If you’ve never seen this television show on cooking, I should explain. Two competing chefs are challenged to create a multi-course meal, within 60 minutes, using a main ingredient that is not known beforehand. And there it was, right before me, in “Kitchen Stadium” — the solution to my search for spontaneous photography that I’d been searching for. You see, the creations each chef chooses to execute (recipes, composition, presentation) is open to them to decide on-the-fly, a sort of epicurean improvisation, possible because it is grounded in their years of experience and wealth of talent. The structure (main ingredient, number of variations, time constraint) is dictated by the program. They have goals and commitments defined by the structure, but within that framework their creativity is unrestrained. Spontaneity within a framework. Jazz improvisation within the constraints of melody, time signature, and ensemble. Here was an idea I could use to search for photographic improvisation.

Maureen and I had been on vacation last year on the spectacular and picturesque Oregon Coast — territory with which I was very familiar. I’d tried photographing the coast over many years, but never with much success. As we wound our way down Highway 101, I thought about all my failed attempts with my large-format equipment. This trip, I’d left my serious camera gear at home, so I only had a digital camera with me. I flirted with the possibility of working this grand landscape with this small camera. As I thought about this, I realized that a digital camera might be an ideal tool in this difficult landscape: It was less of a sail in the ever-present coastal wind than is my view camera; I could make lots of exposures of fast-moving waves in search of the best photographic moment; the variable reach of the zoom lens might make composition more successful within the constraints of physical access limitations — it just might be worth playing around with a bit.

I decided to return to the coast for the specific purpose of conducting an experiment in framework and improvisation — just to see what I could do. I committed to the following experimental structure: I would see if I could photograph a portfolio of work in one (long) weekend; I would try to make images spontaneously, reacting to whatever my eye saw, regardless of whether or not my thinking-brain thought it a worthy photographic subject; I would focus my efforts on one easily accessible 50-mile stretch of rugged coastline, working the various scenic areas as the light changed throughout the day; I would try to end up with a tight little portfolio of ten or twelve prints representing this weekend’s efforts; I would make prints that were about 8x10 or smaller for hand-held viewing, probably a folio similar to the ones we’ve done as LensWork Special Editions; I would finish the project as a folio of inkjet prints as quickly as I could, within weeks if possible. Would I be able to do it? Would it be any good? How would it compare to other projects I’d done in the past over longer periods of time? I had a lot of questions, curiosity, and even a few expectations, but I kept my enthusiasm in check just in case the project imploded.

The weekend came and I met a few friends on the coast for the three-day shoot. True to season and geography, it rained — hard — every day. But, also true to the season, there were breaks in the rain when the sun would come out for a few minutes, the clouds would part, the fog would thin, and the glorious coastal light would grace us. The wind would “grace us,” too — at about 40 miles-per-hour, relentlessly. It was not, shall I say, “ideal” photographic weather, but I was not going to allow that to defeat my experiment. Years ago I had learned from a workshop instructor, that even in high winds, there will be a pause in the gusts that can be used by a patient photographer. He was right. By careful timing and a fast shutter speed, I was able to photograph most everywhere I wanted to. We were also blessed by huge seas with 25 to 35 foot swells and spectacular crashing waves.

For three days, I abandoned myself to the project, photographing quickly, loosely, intuitively — photographing every composition my eye saw. I tried as best I could to avoid analyzing or judging the images — I just photographed. I set aside my years of training in previsualization and control and instead photographed by going with the flow, trying to be responsive to what was in front of me instead of manipulating what was in front of me.

When the weekend was over, I had made 308 exposures (whew!) and hoped against hope for a dozen really interesting images. I didn’t really trust the “improvisation” aspect of my process because I knew I was trying to make images I’d never made before, images that I wasn’t sure I knew how to make. I did a lot of “guessing” and when facing a subject I was unsure of, I found myself repeating the phrase, “Oh, what the heck” and just continued to fire away. But that was the purpose of the experiment — to push myself beyond my previous limits and to try something new — in short, to improvise, to make it up as I went along. There would be plenty of time to judge my efforts back home. In the field, I just shot and reacted without thinking any more than I could help. It was slightly disorienting, but at the same time liberating and even fun.

Back home, I knew I was facing quite a task to distill the work from the field into a dozen or so prints for the final folio. Why not work the same way I did in the field — with spontaneity and constraint?

I limited myself to one hour to go through the entire set of images and make the first selections. I tried not to think about the image, or how I would change it in printing. I just reacted, emotionally, and flagged the ones I responded to most intuitively. I found twenty images that seemed to have something the others lacked.

I then set aside one weekend to take each of these images to the next stage — a proof print that approached a finished print, but without that last final effort typical of a finished print. Again, I tried not to think about it too much, instead just manipulating the print along the lines it seemed to want me to. Some of the images simply didn’t work and it was easy to narrow the final selection to twelve prints that became the final portfolio.

Now that I had the twelve final images, I next wrote the text, designed the title page and colophon, refined each of the twelve proof prints into finished images, and printed the final folio — ten copies of the folio I now called October Seas. Four of these I mailed off to my friends as a “thank-you” for the time spent together during the weekend of photographing.

It was 87 days from the first day of photographing to the completion of the folios.

What did I learn? I learned that it is possible to make a portfolio in a weekend.

It helped that this was a familiar landscape; it helped that I’ve been photographing for 35 years and have developed my “photographic eye” a bit so I could react intuitively with some confidence; it helped that the light and weather were spectacular. I would not advocate this approach for every body of work, but I can see where it has a place. I know I’ll do it again when the right project comes along.

But, here is the most important point of this entire experiment, at least to me: By setting the framework of the project beforehand, I had unconsciously set in motion a sequence of events that contained its own sense of momentum. My photography in the field was loose and reactive, but purposeful within the framework. Back at home, because the framework defined a specific product and deadline, it helped motivate me to do the creative work quickly and to finish it without delay. The structure didn’t squelch my creativity anymore than the beat or melody do in jazz. Just as the beat and melody provide a framework for the musician to explore, so the framework of my project encouraged creative exploration. The two go hand in hand. In an odd way I am not sure I can explain, the confines of the structure encourage and enhance the freedom of the creative process within it.

Fine, I finished the project. But, is it any good? How does it compare with my other work? First — and I can state this unequivocally — it is far better than any project I’ve done that remains unfinished. Second, like any group of images, some are better than others — but the “better” ones seem to be different for each person who looks at the portfolio — personal opinions reign. Would the project be better had I been less spontaneous and more carefully contemplative? I doubt it. It would have been different, for sure. But, better? Probably not. As a working method, does this approach work? For me, for some projects, clearly the answer is, and I suspect will be, yes.

Since, I guess, confession is good for the soul, I should be honest — about my laziness. I seriously doubt I would have completed the portfolio by now if I hadn’t set the structure and the limits before I started. I am sure I would have some good excuse why. This would not be very “spontaneous” of me, but it would be typical, if my history is any indication. Said more bluntly, in my past when a project was contemplated without a structure, my freewheeling approach to the project most often left it unresolved — i.e., unfinished. (Two of my friends have confessed to me they are yet to develop their film.) When there is no framework for completion, there is less pressure to move it along.

I would not have guessed this linkage between real-time improvisation and completion, but it makes sense. When you commit to the structure (song) and your turn to solo comes around (improvisation), you’d better jump in and hang on or you’ll miss it altogether. Improvisation requires a musician to be fearless in their commitment. If you hesitate for a measure, that time is lost forever. Seems the same is true in the visual arts, too.

In the end, what I learned in this project is that spontaneity and improvisation are not what I originally thought. They are not mere willy-nilly freewheeling, despite the fact that it might sound like that in the hands of a great improviser like Miles Davis. Improvisation is more like a tension between structure and total abandon. Spontaneity is not structurelessness; indeed it is best comprehended when seen in contrast to regularity — beat and measure against riff and phrase. In music, it is choosing a song, a beat, and then letting go within that framework. In photography — or at least in the photographing process — it is allowing yourself to play while holding to the definitions and limits of the project. It seems framework is a necessary prerequisite to improvisation and improvisation is only possible within such a framework. It seems obvious to me now, but when I think of all those years wandering around the countryside looking for photographs, I realize my lack of framework worked against my creativity. Who’d have thought?

At least, that’s one idea about improvisation that was shown to me last October in three days on the Oregon coast thanks to Miles Davis and the Iron Chef.

LOOK AT THIS

What is art? A thorny question, indeed, but sometimes a straightforward answer seems adequate. A novel is a story, a tale, an unfolding of a plot. A painting is an artifact, a single expression in color and texture that attempts to show what it felt like to look at something. A song is a performance in tones and chords, sometimes with a verbal form of poetry we call lyrics.

But what is an art photograph? It has elements of all of these, but is not precisely any of them. What about a portfolio or a body of photographic work? What is its purpose, its strengths, its best and highest calling? What is this thing called fine art photography? It is… well, that’s what this essay will try to explore — not as an intellectual exercise in semantics, but as a practical matter for those of us who make photographic art.

First, you would think that after spending four decades as a fine art photographer — and also a publisher — I would have a handle on precisely what this thing called fine art photography is, and does. In truth, it’s a slippery endeavor to try to define something as flexible and adaptable as photography. But, the exercise is worth it for the questions it exposes as much as it is for the answers it struggles to find. As I say, after four decades I would have assumed that the answers would be obvious, but the more I’m involved in photography the more I find it’s not what I think it is.

Art, Photography, and the Wall

During my first two decades as a fine art photographer I assumed that what I was doing was something called “making art.” My heroes, like so many others, were the great art photography masters — Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, etc. As such, I did what they did; that is to say I made art for the walls, for frames, for exhibition, for — I vainly hoped — galleries and even museums. This was a handy premise during my formative years because it motivated me to pursue an excellence in craft that was a prerequisite for this destiny of my photographs.

It didn’t take long to bump up against the limitations in thinking that my photographs were art for the wall. I quickly discovered that the kinds of things I was interested in photographing were not what most people would call décor. My first major project — Made of Steel, photographs of greasy garages and machine shop guys — was anything but wall art. One rarely sees mural-sized prints of a machine shop workbench hanging above the fireplace because it complements the couch and curtains.

Also, art — at least in the traditional sense of the term — has always been indistinguishably linked to the artifact; there is no such thing as “painting” without some sort of pigment on canvas or dye on paper. Although photography can and does manifest itself in those wonderful artifacts we photographers refer to as “original prints,” it’s increasingly clear that photography need not be tied to such molecular limitations. Digital means of reproducing images have exploded in our lifetime and the evolution of the non-physical image continues to be one of the most exciting — and threatening — implications of the evolving technology. Photography may not be completely divorced from molecular media, but it is clearly not limited to it. There are far too many examples of ways in which photographs are communicating and touching people deeply without the use of prints.

So, although we use the terms photographic art, fine art photography, and other semantic combinations, there is a difference between the classical visual arts and its unyielding link to the physical artifact. With this narrow definition — and only for the purposes of discussion in this article — let me then say that photography is not art. Shocking, but read on…

I struggled with this for a long time. What I was compelled to create was so out of harmony with the premise of “art” that I simply could not reconcile the conflict. Eventually it was the premise — not the artwork — that had to go. I realized that as a photographer I was not a wall-art kind of guy nor even was I willing to limit my work to the physical print. My images needed a new premise and perhaps a new destination off the wall.

Photography and the Printed Page

Well, if one’s photographs don’t belong on the wall, then where else could they go that makes sense? The logical answer — that is to say, the knee-jerk reaction answer — was that my photographs belonged in books. I love photography books; I own and collect them; I treasure them. It made perfect sense to me that perhaps my work, too, could be valued in this form of presentation.

Here again, experience showed this, too, was off the mark.

What I failed to recognize in my early thinking was that there is a premise associated with books that also didn’t quite fit the work that I was interested in producing. To explain this I need to differentiate between two important ideas both encapsulated in a single term book. In everyday language, we use the term book to refer to two completely different ideas — a medium, and a type of content.

As a medium, a book is a collection of molecules — pages and binding, covers and ink — that create a thing that can be manufactured, distributed, handled, and owned. Beyond that, a book is also a vehicle for a certain type and style of communication. Most typically, a book is the medium of choice for the long narrative — a form of content that is ideally suited to the linear and sequential presentation that is encapsulated in the structure and physicality of a book. And this is precisely where an obscure but powerful stumbling block exists for us photographers.

With few exceptions, the content of a book is a story. Think here of novels, biographies, or histories. All of these consist of a narrative; a telling of a tale. As such, a story is, almost by definition, something with a beginning, a middle, and an end — structural advice that has been handed down to writers since time immemorial. In contrast, a collection of photographs like we see in a typical photographic portfolio, body of work, or even a book does not have such a structure — indeed almost by definition cannot have such a structure. If it does, it’s less of a portfolio and more akin to photojournalism.

But, photography is not storytelling, at least not in the sense of the traditional definition of storytelling with its beginning, middle, and end. One doesn’t look at a photographic book to see a presentation of sequential events like one does in a history, a biography, or a novel. A photographic book is not a string of linked cause-and-effect actions whose purpose is to relate a tale that plays out over time. I’ve often thought that photography could be that — and there have been a few photographers who’ve played around with this idea — Lou Stoumen and Wright Morris come to mind. But, such experiments have always been abandoned for the simple reason that photography is not a particularly talented medium for narrative storytelling — at least not in the same way that written language is so ideally suited.

Performance Arts

And there is one more example in the art world that is worth examining before we try to define what photography is. What about music — and for the purposes of this discussion, I’ll lump in poetry, lyrics without melody. Like traditional storytelling, music has the ability to tell a tale, but without much detail. The tale in music tends to be told by the lyrics, but they are almost always about a feeling rather than a plot. What about music’s notes and melody? Music without lyrics has always seemed to me a form of dance — a dance with tones and sound.

Then there is the obvious component of performance in all music that is absent from the so-called visual arts. Of course, anyone observing a painter — or even a photographer doing complex dodging and burning in the darkroom — would admit that the dance is encapsulated in the visual form. But, unlike music or dance itself, visual arts do not require the presence of the performer to be seen. Photography, like painting or sculpture, is clearly not in the same quadrant as the classic performance arts.

A Way of Seeing

Which takes me back to the very nature of photography and the pressing question, What is it? Well, it’s not art because it doesn’t require the artifact; it’s not storytelling because it doesn’t involve a self-contained tale with a plot that unfolds over time; it’s not a performance like music or dance. And in spite of the fact that we can stretch our imagination and visualize all of these things as a part of fine art photography, it is precisely none of these and therein resides our challenge. What is it that photography does — and does exceeding well, better than any other media — that is not artifact, storytelling, nor performance?

Such a question seems to me to be a part of the creative path for fine art photographers. If we don’t know what photography is and can do, how can we master it and use its strengths to create what no other medium can do as well? For me anyway, this is not a theoretical discussion but an infinitely pragmatic one because it influences so strongly what I produce and how I produce it.

When I first encountered these questions some twenty years ago, I scanned across the spectrum of human experience to find something that was like photography. A lot of my comments in the preceding paragraphs are the result of that long thought process. Eventually, however, I did find something that seemed to me very similar to that at which photography excels. Photography, of all the arts, is the one that best captures the fleeting reality of now. It is more intimately involved with the present moment than any other form of art. A photograph is a 1/60th of a second slice of reality, incomplete as it is, but nonetheless a form of human expression makes it slightly easier to see a moment that was, a particular “now” that no longer exists.

A photograph is closer to a fact than it is to a tale. In looking at the portfolios we’ve published in LensWork as well as similar presentations elsewhere, I am struck by the way they seem to say, “This exists” rather than, “This event happened and these consequences ensued.” Where a story is a thing that takes place over time, a photograph is a thing that takes place in an instant. It is not like a story, but rather like a moment in a story. More, a gathering of photographs — a portfolio, if you will — is less of a sequence of events than an intense way of looking and seeing — even more intense than can be experienced with mere human eyes. A camera lens is a type of stare that captures more than we humans are capable of without photography.

Figuratively and scientifically, a photograph is a slice of time, frozen for us to look at and see more intently than is possible at the speed of life. It is a “now” that is removed from the flow of time. Such language brings to mind what the Buddhist meditators call the “eternal now” — but in photography we have the ability to capture that eternal now and freeze its image — at least for a while, at least as long as the medium remains coherent. Indeed, no other media does this as well as photography.

This was first made clear to me through the work and writings of Minor White. White was famous in photographic circles for blending image-making with his personalized form of Zen practice. He understood better than most — or perhaps simply verbalized it better than most — the relationship between photography and its ability to capture the current moment. He emphasized in this teaching the art of seeing even more than the technological challenges of print-making.

It’s not my intent to digress too far down the path of Zen and spiritual disciplines, so suffice it to say that White did provide, I think, a context in which fine art photography can be understood. Photography may not be an artifact, a tale, or a performance, but it can be an ideal means to simply look at the world and to see more clearly what passes before us. Photography doesn’t say, “Admire this artifact”; it does not say, “Listen to this story”; nor does it say, “Watch me do this.” Instead, photography’s great invitation — with unparalleled persuasion —says, “Look at this.”

Here is the key for us fine art photographers. Our cameras are devices that allow us to point at things and to bring to attention that which otherwise might remain unnoticed or invisible. I prefer to think of photographers not as mere documentarians, but rather as seers — including the complex double meaning included in that term.

Choosing the Medium

Turning from the philosophical to the practical, this line of thinking explains in part my interest in the folio concept I developed in the 1980s. If the role of photography is to show, then it seemed obvious to me that using multiple images had the advantage of showing more. By separating the images from the confining linear format of the book, a folio allowed me to show multiple images, but not an overwhelming number; show more completely, but without burdening the reader with the commitment required of them by the novel or even the feature film. Folios became my primary form of physical media.

With the introduction of digital publishing, I found the PDF publication also allowed me to show the world in ways I could not when limited to physical prints. Its greater flexibility — again with multiple images — and the addition of audio or video, multiple images on a single screen, non-linear sequencing, or even timed, author-controlled slide shows are an ideal way to present a more intense examination of some aspect of the world.

And, of course, both folios and PDFs allow the introduction of text and the use of language beyond mere supplemental descriptions or titles.

This also explains why I have chosen not to emphasize wall art nor book publication as the media for my personal work. Quite simply, neither of these are the best media for the invitation to simply look and see. Wall art tends, in the real world, to be clouded by the concerns of the art world — collectability, money, presentation, décor. Books tend to be sequential and even somewhat overwhelming. It is not practical to open a book of some 80 or so photographs and “read” it cover to cover in a single sitting. A smaller number of images in a venue designed for enjoyment in a single sitting seems to me to be a sweet spot in the pantheon of viewing options. A half a dozen to two dozen images allow enough of an invitation to look deeply without diluting the impact in a watery slosh.

The Audience

Photography can be an artifact — as the photographs hanging in innumerable galleries are a testament to that fact. Photography can tell a story — and the work of W. Eugene Smith and countless photojournalists prove that beyond any doubt. But I would contend that photography — fine art photography — is at its best when it simply says, “Look at this,” and in doing so the viewer is rewarded with meaning, understanding, insight, or revelation.

There is an implied responsibility that is worth considering if this definition of fine art photography makes sense. Once the photographer says, Look at this, then there had better be some reason, some payoff, why the viewer ought to do so. Obviously, it is theoretically possible to say Look at this and point our cameras toward anything. But, if looking at what the photographer presents does not provide the viewer anything of interest or value, then the commandment Look at this will be deemed to have been ill-advised. In fact, photographers themselves will be judged on the reliability of their judgment to discriminate what is worthy of attention and what is not. After we’ve looked at a number of projects only to find the photographer’s work to be meaningless, inconsequential, uninsightful, uninspiring — in short, valueless — we’ll easily ignore their further invitations.

So, the responsibility we photographers have is to ensure that our invitation to Look at this is worthy of the viewer’s time and attention. In fact, a great deal of my criticism of much of contemporary photography is based on this simple observation: The things that photographers seduce me to look at have such limited value, such banal insight, such insipid inspiration, or such poorly executed revelation that I become frustrated with the piffle they (or their galleries) have thrust upon the world.

This way of viewing photography has also changed the way I tend to look at photographs. For the longest time, I would pick up photography books expecting to have an experience that was sequential and that would somehow lead me down a path from entry point A to exit point Z. Such experiences rarely happened and I would often find myself disappointed at the end of my experience with a book. But, once I realized that was not at all the best use of photography, and furthermore learned that most accomplished photographers understood this as well, I realized that their books are more often an invitation to simply look and to see in the meditative sense of here and now. Once I began to accept that the highest goal of a photograph is to simply say with clarity, This is or This was then its purpose — and my purpose — became more clear.

THE PRAGMATICS

OF CREATIVITY

I cringe a bit when I think how many words I’ve written over the years about the theory of creativity in these Editor’s Comments. In all honesty, I suppose I’ll write more in future issues. But, in this issue, I have the opportunity to share a pragmatic, non-theoretical example that may be one of the most interesting I’ve ever witnessed. But first, I need to fully disclose both my agenda for this issue of LensWork and my personal connection to it — or I should say to him.

I’ve known Joe Lipka for 26 years. We are friends, compatriots, peers, buds, fellow-photographers, and undoubtedly the world’s largest collectors of each other’s work — outside our respective family members. We’ve been photographing together more times than I can remember. Literally — we are both a lot older now and our memories are as banged-up as our tripods. I’ve mentioned our friendship before (LensWork #59), published Joe’s writings on photography from time to time (LensWork issues 4, 6, 10, 51 and 65), and his images in LensWork Extended #57 and #64. To be candidly frank, we’ve also rejected several of his submissions, so I can honestly say there is no bias in including his work in this issue. It is fair to say I have a biased eye when it comes to my friendship with Joe. End of disclosure. With all of this said, let me proceed to the agenda for this issue, and the compelling reason for including his Labyrinth portfolio in this issue of LensWork.

LensWork is a publication about photography, true enough, but it is even more a publication about creativity. When we choose portfolios or articles for publication, the single common thread that runs through each and every selection is that they are, in our opinions, a shining example of creativity in action. We try to make each issue of LensWork add to the discussion and understanding of creativity in photography — primarily through examples — hoping they provide inspiration and motivation. In this issue — with Lipka’s portfolio — there are three distinct and incredibly practical lessons about creativity in action.

The Art of Seeing

The camera is, at its root, a complex recording device. It is a mirror to the world — and a reasonably efficient machine for making imaged copies of the world it reflects. The camera is not a creative being, but the human who wields it is. We see. In fact, everyone sees, hence photography’s universality. The role of the artist, however, is to see what others do not see — or cannot see — and to make the invisible visible. The creative photographer is a seer, in both senses of that word. In short, the art of seeing is what defines the creative photographer as compared to the merely competent one.

My story of the pragmatics of creativity begins, sort of, in 2005 when Joe Lipka and I went to photograph Fort Worden — an old WWI military artillery battery now a recreational state park — on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. We photographed there for a week; we saw each other in passing during “working hours”; we talked shop over dinner at the end of each day. We photographed the next day and talked shop again over dinner. Seven days, the same routine. We then returned to our respective homes and our daily lives. Two years passed. He worked on his photographs. I worked on mine.

And here is where the story starts to get really interesting.

In one of those mysterious occurrences of cosmic synchronicity, within a very short period of time we both finished our portfolios and shared them with each other. You saw my work, which was included in the last issue of LensWork, issue #70, in the portfolio I call Wakarimasen. Joe’s work we include here in this issue entitled Labyrinth. I hope everyone reading this does exactly what Joe and I did upon first seeing each others’ finished photographs — sit down with them side by side and compare. We could hardly believe our eyes! How could two such widely different bodies of work have been made at the same place, at the same time, with essentially the same equipment, by photographers whose training and experience were so parallel? The answer is both obvious and simple — the art of seeing.

Far too often I hear photographers repeat the old saw that there is no reason to go to Yosemite, or Antelope Canyon, or Point Lobos to photograph. “It’s all been done,” they’ll say. The oft-repeated joke is that today’s photographs of Half Dome require an extra stop of exposure because the amount of light reflecting off it has been reduced by the absorption of so many negatives throughout history. I love this joke and always chuckle at it, but the sentiment that all the possible photographs have already been made could not be further from the truth. The essence of creative photography is in us — not in the camera, not in the subject, not in the technology, not in the photographic artifact. And, by extension, because each one of us is a different and unique person, our response to a place — i.e., a photographic subject — is (or can be) unique, too. That’s the bumper-sticker theory. But there’s more to it in the pragmatic realities.

The Art of Not Seeing

But, both Joe and I arrived at Fort Worden in 2005 already having seen this place before — or at least photographs of this or similar places. In fact, we’d published some in LensWork #41. Seattle photographer J. Mark Griffith contributed a wonderful portfolio of these structures in his work entitled Coastal Defense. Joe and I were so impressed with Mark’s photographs that we’d gone there a couple of times to photograph and see it for ourselves. On those early trips, neither of us made photographs that were interesting. In truth, they weren’t ours. We saw the place as Mark had seen it and our photographs of it looked just like his — only his were better.

Seeing through others’ eyes is an easy, natural, and instinctive act — and doing so is probably what draws most people to photography in the first place. When someone shows us what photography can be, the fire is lit. For me it was Wynn Bullock. For many it was Ansel Adams, or Edward Weston, or Alfred Stieglitz, or even a creative contemporary like Michael Kenna. The entry-points vary, but there is common path that eventually leads all would-be creative photographers to a barrier beyond seeing. One of the great challenges of being an artist is letting go so we can find the creative muse in ourselves. It is a barrier that is unavoidable; it’s a challenge that is not easy; worse, it is complicated because our attraction to photography was probably fueled by an overwhelming emotional experience — one so powerful that it motivated our passion for photography. When the attraction is so powerfully seductive, how does one let go? This is the essential koan at the gate of the creativity.

Joe and I found ourselves stuck, perhaps unconsciously so, but stuck nonetheless. Our initial photographs were uninteresting and repetitive. On the surface, this would seem to be a failure. I don’t think so. In the process of looking — even if at first we did so through Mark’s eyes — we were working our way through his creative vision. It’s a process that must be engaged, no matter how mundane or frustrating it seems. A budding mathematician cannot create new and innovative theories until he has mastered those of Pythagorus, Euclid, and Leibniz. Similarly, a photographer must sometimes first work through the vision of those who have preceded him in order to let go of their way of seeing. Seeing is the first step; letting go the next. In my way of thinking, it is the essential challenge of the creative photographic life, and one with which many photographers seem to struggle.

Let me state this in a more pedestrian example: How do we go to Yosemite and photograph it differently than Ansel Adams? Or, how do we photograph Point Lobos differently than Edward Weston? These are not at all theoretical questions when one is standing there with the camera on the tripod and all one can see is the other guy’s images. This was the exact experience Joe and I faced when standing in the coastal defense structures. Everywhere we turned, we saw Mark Griffith photographs! So, how to proceed?

It is said that the best way to dispel a ghost is to walk straight toward it. The same can be said for the ghost of an overpowering vision. First, we allowed ourselves to photograph things as we saw them — I should say, as Mark saw them. Joe and I made many photographs that you will never see, precisely because you’ve already seen them in Griffith’s portfolio. The process of making those images propelled us to work through our preconceptions and the “training” we’d subconsciously received by looking at Mark’s images. Eventually, we emerged from the spell. In our own ways, as we worked we began to hear and listen to that creative muse inside us, and to what the place itself was saying specifically to us. This may sound like a lot of woo-woo, but I don’t have any other words to describe the process. I’m reminded of a meditation example I once heard: Imagine a glass of muddy water, stirred up and swirling — a sediment slurry. Set the glass down and allow it to become still. With time, the sediment calmly sinks — exposing the unseen stone in the glass of now-clear liquid. Creatively letting go of what others have photographed is something like this. By working through Mark’s vision, Joe and I were letting the sediment clear itself and we started to see glimpses of how we felt about this place. Joe found his vision and, through it, the Labyrinth portfolio. I found mine in Wakarimasen.

It’s important to note that all three of us photographed in our way. This art of seeing is demonstrated in the differences in our images and portfolios. Mark’s interpretation of these structures is literal. Joe’s is allegorical. My interpretation was symbolic. No doubt there are many other interpretations.

The Art of Seeing — Again

But this is just the beginning of the story. Joe was happy with the finished work. We were delighted to publish it as the Labyrinth portfolio in LensWork Extended #57. However, an odd thing happened in the process — but perhaps I should let Joe tell his own story. So, with this in mind, I’ll pass the narrative to him and let him complete the tale in my interview with him that starts on page 35 of this issue.*

*See LensWork #71

TOOL AS DOOR

We all know that a change of camera can be the precursor to a change in artistic vision. Said another way, the tools we choose change the way we see the world. Nowhere does this become more visible for photographers than a radical change in tools — like the change from 35mm to a view camera, or from a view camera to a digital one.

By way of background, I skeptically purchased a low-end digital camera just to experiment and keep in touch with this emerging technology. As long time readers of LensWork know, I could care less about equipment, but I do care a great deal about the photographs and the artistic flexibility that our tools can provide us. For me, what counts is not the tool but how the tool allows me to be more creative. Am I more productive? More inventive? More purposeful? More communicative? Truer to my inner vision? More responsive to the environment? Needless to say I’ve never been a camera collector. In fact, the digital camera I bought was only the third camera I’ve owned in thirty years of photography. Even if it wasn’t impressive, I thought it might be interesting.

I went out photographing, partly to see what the camera could do, but mostly to see what I would do differently — that is to say, how the camera would change me. As such, my comments here are not really about digital photography or the boring debate pro or con, but rather about my creative response to a new tool as I began playing around with it.

Playing Around More

In the last ten years I’ve become a lot more conservative about exposing film. I know, inherently, that with every exposure I’ve committed myself to considerable necessary work — film processing, contact proofing, proof printing, and eventually printing final images, and I’ve said nothing about negative storage and management, database maintenance, or filing. Knowing that each exposure generates a commitment to such efforts, I’ve found myself becoming more selective in what I choose to photograph. In some regards, this may be good; I’m not wasting so much time with trivial subjects or frequently trodden compositions. On the other hand, I also find myself less willing to be playful or to experiment with totally new ideas. I’m not lazy — I prefer to think I’m practical. I know that I only have a finite amount of time to spend in the darkroom and I’d rather spend that time producing “serious work” than playing around with ideas, most of which will prove to be totally fruitless.

Playing with my digital camera, though, is different. Where there is no film and no developing, no contact proofing and no proof printing, I found myself freed, psychologically, to experiment and play and try new images and new ways of seeing. True, most of these are still fruitless experiments. But the point is, where my commitment to experiment is as simple as looking at an image on my computer screen — without any film processing, without any film expense, without any proof printing — I’m more willing and more able to be playful, even more creative. In fact, almost immediately I found some interesting trends and possibilities in these images that I know I would likely never have discovered without allowing myself to simply play.

Sheer Volume

Ah, but you say, it’s the quality of the final picture, not the quantity of exposures that counts. This is certainly true when it comes to the final presentation in the gallery or a book — as it were, finishing photographs. But, I don’t think it’s true in the process of making pictures. In fact, I suspect it’s exactly the opposite. People who make lots and lots of exposures are more likely to come up with really good ones than people who make just a few. Creatively and psychologically I resist this notion — I’d like to think that genius is available upon command. But mathematically I know the statistics cannot be denied. Anyone who brackets their exposures or exposes a backup sheet of film knows the advantages of statistical quantity.

When I shoot sheet film, a good week will usually result in about 100 exposed sheets of film. When I shoot roll film, a good week of photography will result in, maybe, 40 rolls — 320 images with my 6x9. Recently, in five days of photography in North Dakota, I returned with 1800 exposures. My friend who was with me on this trip, photographing with his 4x5 view camera, exposed 120 sheets of film. His may be better than mine or vice versa — who knows? The one thing I do know with certainty is that the digital camera changed the way I worked — substantially.

Spontaneous Fluidity

With the view camera I tend to work slowly, methodically, carefully. This is great and a technique I both enjoy and have been successful with. With the digital camera I noticed almost immediately that I tended to work quickly, spontaneously, reactively. With the view camera when something caught my eye, I’d study it, walk around it, visualize, crop, mull it over. With the digital camera when something catches my eye I photograph it, repeatedly, responding intuitively without any intellectualizing whatsoever — other than the obvious technical questions that have to be resolved. These approaches make different pictures, neither better than the other, but clearly different. The tool changes the way I see.

Field Proofs

In 1990, I acquired a Polaroid back for my view camera. I was anxious to try an experiment in the field that I’d seen commercial photographers use with consistency — Polaroid proofs that provide immediate and instantaneous feedback while photographing. Until then, my only ability to create a proof was back in the darkroom after the film was developed and long after the photographing session had concluded. Using Polaroid materials in the field gave me the ability to have instantaneous feedback about what I had my camera pointed at, at a time when I could still make a change in the image. I find the process facilitating and productive from a creative point of view. It’s also messy and expensive from a logistical point of view. Dealing with Polaroid waste materials in the field (a friend of mine calls them “Polarinds”) is a mess. Dealing with sulfate clearing baths to preserve my Polaroid negatives was goopy and impractical.

And now, with a digital camera I find I have that in-the-field feedback, but without the mess nor the expense. The ability to make a photograph and then instantly see it in two-dimensions, albeit on a tiny screen, has an influence on the way I see. I suppose I could even take a laptop computer with me into the field, but I haven’t tried that yet.

“Weather” Or Not To Photograph

Earlier this fall I went out photographing with a group of friends to the rainforest on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. My friends, all with 4x5 cameras and backpacks full of equipment, film holders and spot meters, found photographing in the wind and the rain a difficult and cumbersome process. It takes time to set up a view camera, a process that is exacerbated in wind and rain. In contrast, between rain showers I was able to hop out of the car with my digital camera, set it on the tripod and make a dozen photographs before the next squall blew through. Working quickly, I was able to create in weather conditions that were less than ideal.

That night as we sat around the fireplace at the lodge comparing notes from the day’s photographic work, the inevitable question popped up: How many sheets did you expose today? One fellow had made nine exposures, another six, a third twelve. And then someone asked me how many exposures I had made. When I responded that I’d made 283 exposures one fellow commented “Yes, but with that toy camera you won’t be able to make any decent prints.” Before the trip, I’d made some digital negatives with images from this camera and brought a few gelatin silver prints with me to share my early test results. I showed him my 8x10” contact prints and an interesting discussion followed. After critical examination of these 8x10” photographs we all concluded that they looked, for all practical reasons, as good as a contact print made from an 8x10” view camera negative! They were tack sharp, full of detail, with very smooth tones and absolutely no digital artifact. I’ve known, intellectually, that digital photography might someday have the potential to challenge film-based photography when it comes to image results, but, quite honestly, I had no idea we had come this far this quickly.

I still have more experimenting to do and different subjects to test to be able to jump on board with complete enthusiasm — but, I will say that my early tests are encouraging and that I might just be able to make some gallery-quality, albeit small prints with this camera.

Real-time creativity in the digital darkroom

I’ve spent years developing my craft and learning the nuances of the Zone System. I can develop an N+4 negative with the best of them and occasionally, when pressed, even succeed at an N-5. I can print well and am equally comfortable with graded papers and divided developers. I know how to do contrast masks, print with a tilted enlarger head, employ high acutance film developers and own enough Kodak gelatin wratten filters to make my own rainbows. I know how to bleach with a Q-tip and use red creosene dye on my negatives. In short, I’ve been around the workshop circuit for twenty-five years.

And then there’s Adobe Photoshop. Where Ansel Adams taught us the nine-zone system, Photoshop gives us the 256-step grayscale. I’m awfully good with spot tone; but I’m infinitely better with the healing brush. This list could go on. Most importantly, I find that I am enjoying the printing process (that is to say, the “image finessing process”) in Photoshop far more than the “test and guess” method in a traditional wet darkroom. Again, to focus on my creative process rather than on the technology, I find working with an image in visual real-time on the computer is a completely different experience than the bifurcated “print/process then analyze” sequence in the darkroom. On the computer I dodge or burn, change contrast or crop and have immediate, emotional and sensory reactions to the image on the screen. I find this more intuitive and reactive instead of the more intellectual process I experience in the darkroom.

There’s no question that many people prefer the darkroom and that’s perfectly justifiable. I know that many people prefer the computer and that also is justifiable. Some just hate the computer and that’s more than justifiable! Analog or digital tools are a matter of creative choice. Fine prints can and will continue to be made with analog equipment. I am now comfortable saying that fine prints can and will be made with digital tools, too. This is not a debate about right or wrong. But, as I’m beginning to learn, there are powerful reasons for me to not be prejudiced against the digital camera and the digital darkroom’s creative possibilities. Hammers are great for nails and wrenches great for bolts. But as the old maxim reminds us, “When your only tool is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail.”

Conclusions — at least tentative ones

Before there was the wheel it would have been difficult to imagine the wagon. Before there was language it would have been impossible to conceive of poetry. Similarly, I cannot imagine what possibilities lie through the door of making digital images, but I do now recognize it as a door beyond which lie possibilities that are as unthinkable to us as was the 16x20” gelatin silver print might have been to the daguerreotypist of the 19th Century. Like all doors, there is the choice as to whether or not one chooses to pass through them. Having glimpsed how playing with a digital camera has given me new ways to relate to the world photographically, I recognize this as a door that I will have to think about a great deal more critically, more carefully as this technology evolves. I say this not because the technology is so interesting, but because of the way the technology is influencing the way I see and think and react to images as I work on them that is so challenging and intriguing. Just as the 35mm camera allows us to see and photograph differently than a view camera, so a digital camera allows me to see and photograph differently than my monorail. It will be fun to see what develops — no pun intended!

PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE MEANING OF LIFE

Editor’s Note: I should warn you that I am in a sour and cynical mood. This often happens when I visit the photography book section of the big bookstores during the holiday shopping season. (I am writing this on Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday.) You have been warned.

I’ve formulated a tentative strategy based on a shaky conclusion — now, there’s a rousing way to start! — all influenced by the plethora of images and books I saw this last weekend. A startling revelation came crashing through to consciousness: Too much of photography is about photographers. That is to say, the creative act in photography is supposedly the photographer’s skill in seeing what others do not, but this is simply not sufficient — and can lead to a lot of trite photography.

Here are two interrelated observations.

First, photography is not about what we see; photography is about we make. A person who sees, but can’t paint, is not a painter; a painter is someone who creates a painting. A person who hears, but can’t write music, is not a composer; a composer is one who creates music. Even so, painting is not about the manipulation of paints; composing is not about the manipulation of notes. In all arts — including photography — what counts is what a person makes, and — most importantly — expresses. It’s not seeing, it’s expressing that makes photography art.

Worse, photography is so mechanical that it can seduce us into thinking that mere production is a creative act. Photographers too often think that the most important decisions they make are where to position the tripod and when to trip the shutter. What else is there? After all, once these decisions are made, everything else is a fairly minor adjustment — tonal shift here, a color balance there, a crop, a dodge, a bleach, a flash. These acts of adjustment in the final image are relatively minor, usually (but not always) quite subtle and fundamentally do not radically alter the image. (There are, of course, exceptions — Uelsmann, for example.)

By and large, this leads photographers to a habit of accepting or rejecting — be it during the capture process or the printing process. We accept this composition, or we reject it. We chose this moment to release the shutter, or we reject it. We accept this print variation, or we reject it. The radical (and probably controversial) idea I’m proposing is that this is not creative act. It is an editorial one.

I can hear all of you darkroom mavens protesting already. But, look at our “creative process” from the point of view of the general public — who is not trained to see photography with the discriminating eyes that we have. I was once told by a gallery owner that one of the greatest challenges he faced when showing platinum work is that most non-photographers cannot see different between a black-and-white gelatin silver print and a brown-and-white platinum one. If “civilians” — i.e., folks not trained with a photographer’s eye — can’t see the difference between a platinum and gelatin silver print then why, pray tell, are we darkroom mavens sweating bullets over the subtle difference between Zone III and Zone III½? Well, we do so for those individuals who can see the difference — for our peers, for collectors, for mavens, you might say. I suppose there is some solace in that; at least there is someone who appreciates the subtleties in our work. But, what about the general public? Are we to ignore that 99.999% of the population who are not fine art photographers? At what level of elitism have we crossed a line that makes our work meaningless?

So, if the public doesn’t appreciate the visual subtleties and the fine finesse we work so hard to produce in our creative process, what is photography to them? Consider the unsuspecting public walking up to the photography book section. What do they find? What is creative in photography? Or, more accurately, what are they led to believe is creative photography based on the books they see representing the medium? Is it bilaterally symmetric gravityless trees floating in the sky? Psychedelic colors? Clever camera positions? Cross processing, fuzzy images, photographed constructions, angst on parade, nakedness, kinky nakedness, nakedness where one is not typically naked, or bilaterally symmetric floating nakedness? This would be the logical conclusion if looking at photography books was the evidence you examined. No wonder I was the only one in the photography section and the rest of the store was jammed with holiday shoppers.

Thinking of the reactions of the public to fine art photography can depress me like no other mental exercise. But, what the heck, as long as I’m piling on, here is another example: Years ago, we published a book of pressed and dried flower still lifes by Huntington Witherill called Botanical Dances. It is wonderful work that visually explores the tenuousness of beauty and life. The photographs are lovely, exquisite, and unique. I’ve never seen anything quite like them and we were delighted to publish this work. We exhibited the work in our gallery, and received many compliments. But, a few comments from the pubic included:

“It’s too bad these aren’t in color.” “I don’t like flower pictures.” “Why are they all dead?” “Do you have any pictures of cats?”

It’s enough to make one sell the cameras and take up golf.

So, what is going on here? Why is there such a disconnect between photographers and the public? What can we do about it?

Scouring the bookstores this weekend I was led to this conclusion: The way photography is mostly practiced today, with few exceptions, results in images that occupy one of two camps.

Here is a significant event and I happened to be available to witness it (documentary, photojournalism) and here is the best shot of it (editorial process).

All of you insensitive plebes might think this subject is not significant, but as a sensitive artíste I can attest that it is, and therefore I’m going to show you its significance via my photography and if you are anything but a dolt you’ll recognize my genius in observing it. (I told you I was in a cynical mood.)

This second category is dominant in today’s fine art photography. Worse, if examined closely, the true subject is — well, the photographer. We’ve succumbed to the cult of celebrity. Make weird, obtuse, bizarre artwork and become famous — for being weird, obtuse, or bizarre. I suspect that far too many non-artists wonder what the fuss is all about and think we artists are the weird ones — fine art photographers included. The emperor’s new clothes may, in fact, look a lot like a photo vest.

As I stood in front of the shelves and shelves of photography books this weekend, I found myself wondering Why? — a lot. Why was this work photographed? Why were these images selected above all others in the editing process? Why should I care about this work? Why was this book published? Why does anybody think anybody else is going to buy this? Why do they think this work/book is worth $75?

Which led to even more questions: Why is there a section in the bookstore called “Art” and a separate section called “Photography”? Are retailers acknowledging that photographers are one group of buyers and the public a different group? Why are most photography books purchased by other photographers? Why is it that photography as an art form has failed so dismally to capture the excitement of the general public — compared, say, to music, painting, theater, or the novel? Whew. Fortunately, I could recover my calm at the latte counter.

As to that last question, I think art — the best art — tends to be about lofty things. Perhaps I should use the term meaningful things. I fear that too much photography is about mundane things. The best art is about life and death, spirit and matter, suffering and pain, the natural world and the cosmic prisons in it, love or love denied, the eternal quest for the meaning of life, our relationship to the the world and beyond. It is about connections of people with people, or people with God. Too much of art photography tends to be about stuff. And, if it’s not about stuff, it’s about the photographer and their angst about stuff. Or sex. Or sex stuff. Or angst about sex and stuff. If you don’t believe me, do a search on eBay for “photography books” and see what titles come up. (A moment ago as I checked, at the top of the list of photography books was The History of Pantyhose. I am not kidding.)

Mundane stuff and angst about sex do not compete well against the meaning of life.

So, what to do? Well, what do you want to say? Is it important to you? What feelings and emotions are significant? If you had five minutes on global television, what would you say to the world for their benefit? If you knew you had only one day left to live, what would you want to leave behind? What would you tell someone 200 years from now about life or these times in which we live? What have you learned in your four score and seven years that is worth sharing with humanity? Granted an audience of five minutes with God, what questions would you ask? Beyond what you see, what do you think, feel, wonder, question, ponder, seek? Seems to me, these are the types of fine art pursuits that might just help us break out of the ruts of trite fine art photography and give it life that would be much more on par with the other media of art — and offer meaning to the wider audience beyond our photographic peers.

Fine, in theory, but what about in practice? There are plenty of photographers who use their craft to explore beyond the camera, beyond the photographic. As examples of this, consider the work in this issue of LensWork: explorations of place (Hoflehner) and culture (Mitchell); the fragility of life (Stockdale); universal emotions beyond even the human (Wolf). For years, I’ve said that photography is not “about light,” as is so often proposed, but rather about life. These four portfolios are shining examples of what I mean by this.

Come to think of it, I guess I’m not as cynical as I thought. In fact, I may just be a bit motivated.

AMBITION, AGE, & ART

Part 1: What The Work Is About

Oftentimes the role of critic is that of critical thinker. The task is sometimes to attach meaning to words and to decipher implications that are hidden by the artist or writer, not purposely, but hidden nonetheless.

I recently had an opportunity to review Bruce Barnbaum’s book, Visual Symphony, in greater detail. I have always been an admirer of Bruce Barnbaum’s work and always look forward to seeing his exquisite prints. In reviewing his book again, I took particular time to read the introduction written by photographic critic, historian, and teacher Bill Jay. Jay is a fine writer and keen thinker about photography, but his statements here require a more careful look.

Jay writes:

Bruce Barnbaum’s views are self-contained, complete and utterly themselves. Attaching descriptions, justifications, or explanations to his photographs would be like trying to recreate the experience of love by detailing the color, cut and texture of the loved one’s clothing.

One of the best criteria of fine photography might be the self-containment of the image, its lack of peripheral blur. If a mark of a complete human being might be ‘he is who he says he is,’ then the mark of a fine photograph might be ‘it is what it proclaims to be.’

Jay suggests that “the mark of a fine photograph might be that it is what it proclaims to be.” It’s an appropriate question, then, to ask what these works, what this body of work, proclaims to be.

On the surface it might look as if this book is about the four areas of subject matter presented in the book: the natural landscape, the cathedrals, urbanscapes, and the bizarre world of the slit canyons of Arizona. However, when looked at as presented in the book, there is a subtle overtone — some of which is beyond Barnbaum’s control — which influences that perception in a crucial way. Consider the following.

Go to the bookstore. Find the book and note the section in which it is found. You will not likely find it in the section on California or Nature or Natural Science as the landscapes might suggest. You will not find it in the Travel section, England, or the Religion or Architecture sections as the cathedrals portion of his book might dictate. The same can be said of the other subjects he photographs. Instead, you will find the book in the Photography section, and that, to me, is a more accurate description of what this book is “about.”

Visual Symphony, as Bill Jay suggests, is self-contained in the images. It is a book about photography for photographers and for those who are “in the photographic know.” It is about Bruce Barnbaum, his career, his genius and talent — and his ability to create silver tones and stunning visual compositions.

It might be said that this book is a retrospective. If so, at least in my opinion, it is misplaced too early in Barnbaum’s career. I’m led to wonder if he feared that this might be his only published book and felt a pressure to “get it all in” while he could. This has become a common approach in photographic books and one I dislike.

For all the virtues this approach might contain, doesn’t it also separate the accessibility of these books and these works from those who are less photographically literate? If you are not a photographer or aficionado, is it likely you’d be browsing in the Photography section of a bookstore?

What Jay holds up as a virtue of self-containment may actually be one of the great problems of photography today, that is to say, its inbred appeal and audience. Everyone has heard of Ansel Adams. He is probably the one exception that proves the rule. Who, outside of photographic circles, has heard of Brett Weston, Emmit Gowin, Frederick Sommers, Paul Caponigro, Linda Connor or Barbara Crane?

I also found it disturbingly inconsistent that Bill Jay derides the concept of “attaching descriptions, justifications, or explanations to [Barnbaums’] photographs.” I found this statement particularly inconsistent as I approached the end of the book. At the end of Barnbaum’s photographs there is a sixteen page rambling essay in which Bruce explains how he visualized the photographs and the techniques he used to make them. In one sense, this provides the very explanation that Jay says should not be necessary! True, his explanations are technical rather than aesthetic, but quite possibly this is a truer reflection of the content of the book than any aesthetic discussion could be. In Bruce’s defense, this essay was insisted upon by the publisher — which says a great deal about the marketing of photography these days. As I say, photography books are often made for other photographers.

The proof of this is too easy. The essay even goes so far as to list every f/stop and shutter speed combination used in the creation of these works. Who else but another photographer would care about such details? What difference does it make what f/stop he used, what paper the photographs were printed on, what camera, what lens, what filters, or what tripod was employed? These are unimportant decisions outside the discipline. Picasso did not feel compelled to name his pigments and brand of canvas. Obviously Barnbaum’s publisher knew this book would particularly appeal to other photographers and designed it to do so. In photography, far too many photographers have succumbed to the myth that the media is the message.

Photography is not, nor should not be, about photography or photographers. It should be about communication and connection, about description and relation, about ideas and emotions, about feelings, facts, our world, lives, lands, visions and dreams. It is a human expression and a human virtue. Writing is not about words. Painting is not about pigments. Music is not about tones. As long as photographers insist that photography is about photographs, the art is limited and self-containing.

It seems to me that one of the primary purposes of art is to relate — to relate the experiences of one individual (the artist) to another (the viewer), to relate the existence of one thing to the existence of another. Not only is relationship important, it is the meaning of the work.

I once heard a photographer propose what he called the “So what?” test which he used in judging his photographs. After photographing, developing, printing, finishing and matting, he would step back, take a careful look and ask himself what the work communicated. If his response to this communication (be it graphic, ideational, emotional or otherwise) was “So what?” he would toss it in the garbage. This strikes at the essence of its ability to relate.

Jay extols the virtues of “self-containment of the image, its lack of peripheral blur.” But couldn’t it be said that a focus of exacting intensity and narrow perspective decreases the accessibility of the work to those “not in the know?” It’s possible to become so specialized that one is communicating more and more deeply to a narrower and narrower audience.

Visual Symphony does Barnbaum’s work an injustice to focus the attention so much on his prints and his technique. As Bruce himself teaches in his darkroom workshops, when the technique is seen, the message is lost — or at least obscured. In Barnbaum’s defense, let me say that he tries to focus our attention to the feelings and statements he believes are made with his images. His text is filled with such encouragement. The theme of the “four movements” is a call to the emotional content of his work. Unfortunately, the book design and choice of presentation undermine his intent. Perhaps this would have made four splendid independent books, even at the risk of losing some of the virtues of the flow and connectedness of these four movements in combination.

Better examples of work that both excel in technique and vision but focus on other than the photographer or his craft is the work of George Tice, the work of Keith Carter, the work of Fay Godwin or the work of Paul Strand. Look at Hometowns, From Uncertain to Blue, Land and Un Paese (recently published in English for the first time by Aperture) respectively. Each of these works are clearly produced by a photographer at the top of his/her form, as is Barnbaum. But, they each focus our attention so clearly on the subject matter and the ideas the photographer chooses to express that the photographer and the prints are almost invisible.

Take a look at Paul Caponigro’s book, Megaliths. Personally, I think this is an abominable collection of boring photographs. Nonetheless, I highly applaud and support his approach — focused, project-oriented photography attempting to communicate something of importance about, and to, the human condition. He treats his subject matter with detail and sensitivity. He  explores and then re-explores the area, the graphics, the emotions and the themes he found in these places and his responses to them. He then makes the artistic commitment to let us into his emotions and visions. He takes a risk, and for this he must be supported.

I may not like this body of work, but this is only to say that whatever Caponigro stated or intended to state with this work didn’t connect with me. It obviously did for many others — not all of them photographers. The fact that it did is a testimonial to his work and his understanding that content and context are more important than craft. Note that his text is about the rocks and legends, peoples and lives, and he never mentions an f/stop or a paper grade in the entire book.

Great art always works on multiple levels. It appeals to the sophisticated aficionado, the superbly trained and appreciative peer, and at the same time to the masses who have less appreciation of the intricacies, but nonetheless respond at a level appropriate to their training. I am reminded of the portrayal of Mozart in the fictionalized movie Amadeus. His work was appreciated (well, actually despised) for its fine subtleties of genius by his peer Salieri, and at the same time enjoyed by the masses for its sheer enjoyability and accessibility.

Jay also relates the story of Edward Weston, who was sent page proofs from a magazine story about himself. The article was entitled, Edward Weston: Artist. Weston crossed out the word “Artist” and substituted the word “Photographer” adding “of which title I am very proud.” Jay then intends to pay Barnbaum a compliment by adding, “I suspect that Bruce Barnbaum would echo these sentiments.”

To the photographer for whom this book was intended, this statement may sound like a positive reinforcement of photographic craft and the life of the photographer. It is credo and craft as banner. I think photography must outgrow such a pedestrian view of itself before it will be fully developed as an art form. What if the sub-sect of painters who use watercolor referred to themselves as “watercolorists” and demanded separate gallery spaces and had separate shelves in the bookstore? What if they offered their works essentially only to those who were watercolor literate? Would Shakespeare have referred to himself as an “iambic pentameterist?”

To be self-contained is to be isolated and artificial. After all, it is true that “nothing exists in a vacuum.” To be blind to the periphery is to deny the environment. How ironic it is that Barnbaum is an environmentalist whose text is all about relationships with the planet and our connectedness with all there is.

I am afraid that my theme might be misinterpreted as a critical comment about Barnbaum’s work or, worse yet, a critical comment about Barnbaum’s intent. Neither of these are my intent. I would like to think that his choices in layout and production were intended to make a statement about subject material but are overshadowed by his (or his book designer’s) unconscious self-aggrandizement combined with the practical considerations of marketing. I’d like to pick up that theme and explore it a bit more.

Part 2: How Old is Too Old?

It is not a very significant and insightful statement to say that we live in a culture that values youth almost above all other virtues. A thirty-five year old athlete is washed up. Baseball pitcher Nolan Ryan is a once-in-a-century anomaly whose professional athletic career extended well into his aged forties. The media sells youth and popularity as a linked pair and suggests that we are at our best when we are at our peak of youthfulness. As I stated above, perhaps this not-so-subtle cultural pressure is partly at the root of the tone of such books as Barnbaum’s Visual Symphony.

A friend of mine, Washington photographer David Grant Best, turned forty years old a few years ago. He had embarked on his serious photographic career at the age of 35 by quitting his “day job” and taking up the camera full-time. He was then in the flush of youth, but edging ever-so-closely to middle age.

When he turned forty, he told me he was feeling pressure. In the five years he had been a full-time artist, he felt he hadn’t produced anything of significance, nor done anything to further his career other than photograph and produce lots of negatives. He had not published a book. He had not exhibited a major show. He was, in short, distressed that his career appeared to be stalled and that now that he was getting older he might have lost some of his opportunity.

He restated this lament when he turned forty-one and again when he turned forty-two (in spite of the fact that he had just released his first book of photographs, Portrait of a Race Track, a few days before his birthday.)

In essence, David posed a fascinating question. If an athlete is washed up at 35, when is a photographer “washed up?” (No pun intended.) I began an informal survey to see if I could possibly answer that very question.

The survey took the form of the question: “At what age did the well-known photographers produce their well-known works?” In the data I gathered, I included the dates they made the negatives of their great works, the publication of portfolios, major exhibitions and book publication dates. My survey was both enlightening and encouraging.

Ansel Adams at 42

When Ansel Adams was 42, the same age as my friend, he was just photographing Clearing Winter Storm. He was four years away from photographing Oak Tree, Snowstorm, and Tenaya Creek, Dogwood, Rain as well as four years away from producing his Portfolio No. 1. At age 42, he had just photographed Moonrise, Hernandez two years earlier. Portfolio No. 2 was six years into his future. Both versions of his famous aspen photographs were 14 years into his future. Moon and Halfdome was 16 years into his future as well as Portfolio No. 3. He wouldn’t do Portfolio No. 4 until he was 61, No.5 until he was 68, No. 6 until he was 72 and Portfolio No. 7 until he was 74!

Paul Strand at 42

At age 42 Paul Strand would publish the Mexican Portfolio in eight years. He wouldn’t even begin photographing for his classic book, Time in New England for 12 years. He wouldn’t publish Un Paese for 23 years, and Tir ‘a Mhurain was 30 years away!

Edward Weston at 42

At age 42 Edward Weston had just completed the shell pictures, was two years away from doing Pepper No. 30, nine years away from photographing the Surf at Orick and 12 years away from receiving his Guggenheim Grant and doing the photography for his classic book, California and the West.

In fact, look closely at the notable lack of images these people made in their twenties. The single exception to the rule is Adams’ Monolith, Face of Half Dome. For that matter, there are relatively few images made in their thirties. The decades of their forties and fifties seem to be universally the decades of fruition for most photographic artists and images.

It’s also fascinating to note in the biographies of these famous photographers that, almost without exception, they started their careers early in their twenties. A quick bit of math shows conclusive evidence that each of these individuals spent 15 years or so just developing their craft, their eye, their sensitivity, and their maturity. In most cases they didn’t produce their greatest work until they’d been “at it” regularly — one suspects almost daily — for twenty, thirty, or forty years.

Why is it that our generation insists that success must come so early in life? Is it impatience, the desire for instant gratification, the lack of long-term discipline or the speed at which our world is now changing? I have often felt that many of the young photographers whose work I have seen exhibited would have been better served if they had waited to exhibit and continued to work. This is not to say that their work was bad, only that perhaps their best work was still in their future. Why try to establish a reputation and career on work that is not fully developed, not one’s best, and quite possibly “student work,” derivative work, or an immature vision?

Fame is seductive. And, of course, dollars follow and even chase fame. More dollars make travel and photography more possible. It’s no wonder that, with this paradigm, photographers are in a race to establish their careers in youth.

But, it goes deeper than that. Rather than let the work speak for itself, artists often find they need to use their work to build their career, as though their career is more important than their work. It’s as though their core creation is their career, not the works of art that compose it.

My friend’s lament that his career was going nowhere was understandable, but highly inaccurate. During his thirties, he may not have been publishing, exhibiting or famous, but he was working hard, working daily, working with diligence at the true task of an artist — seeing, learning, feeling, responding. He was producing work, in the case of photographers, producing negatives. Perhaps, if the lives of the masters of the craft are a good model, he was accurately focused for his age and stage in a photographic career.

There is no other substitute for the virtues of experience and the production of thousands of negatives. It is almost a rule without exception that young photographers who exhibit too early (in their twenties or thirties), burn-out producing financially unrewarding, derivative or even clone images just about the time their own vision comes into its own. I have seen this so often in the last 30 years.

I think it is also important to note that Ansel Adams’ great fame — certainly the greatest of all photographers — didn’t skyrocket until the late ‘60s and early ‘70s when he was in his late sixties. In 1974 when Ansel was 72-years-old, the vast majority of his work could still be purchased for a few hundred dollars.

Perhaps Bruce Barnbaum felt pressure to make a statement with his book that would enhance his fame and promote his career. Perhaps he felt it was best to brag just a bit. He need not have worried about it. We all know his work is wonderful. It’s obvious by looking at the prints. It’s obvious by looking at the book.

Barnbaum is at the top of his form in this book and in his career. He has a wonderful eye. It’s unfortunate, I feel, that his book draws too much attention to the photographer, the techniques, the prints and the tones — and not enough attention to the human expression he so carefully crafted for us in his photographs. No doubt Barnbaum will continue to produce more work. I, for one, look forward to his next efforts.

COMMITMENT

They say hindsight is 20-20. With that in mind, I’ve spent a little time reviewing the last year of LensWork, asking the question, What did the photographers have to give of themselves in order to build their body of work? The answer was unequivocal: commitment to the subject.

What does it take to produce a portfolio with depth? The short answer appears to be commitment that has either intensity or longevity. It’s important to understand that intensity and longevity do not just happen; they are behaviors born from any number of motivations — curiosity, compassion, fun, concern — to name just a few. These become the fuel that propel us to pick up our cameras — to have a relationship with a subject that takes us down the path of commitment.

The Concept of “Dating vs Commitment”

The word commitment often evokes the same reaction as the “L” word in a relationship. It’s as though the Creative Muse requires an element of sacrifice: prove to me that you love me and I’ll give you what you want. What did the photographer have to give in order to get their pictures? The relationship between photographer and subject is no different than that between people; if you’re not willing to give, chances are you can’t expect too much in return.

I’d like to ask a simple question: Would you call your relationship with your subject matter a casual date? An intense romance? Or a satisfying marriage? It may be a bit of an assumption, but I trust that any photographer who is investing serious time and money has crossed the threshold of technical abilities. Once you can make a decent exposure and a reasonably good print, the question becomes, What do you love? Or better yet, what do you love to photograph?

In the portfolios we’ve reviewed at LensWork, we’ve seen that longevity or intensity brings depth, as compared to much of photography which appears to be produced in a sort of wam-bam relationship with the subject matter. There is an immaturity, a not-yet-done feel, the failure to tell a story, a surface-y communication that amounts to photographic small-talk. In fact, if the person had to write about their subject rather than photograph it, chances are they would have very little to say. Searching for and accumulating random images is not all bad; like the casual date, sometimes it leads to a much more meaningful relationship. Dabbling here-n-there with no commitment, however, results in random hodge-podge. Some photographers don’t seem to know the difference.

Hindsight

To answer my own question (and to prove/disprove my own theory) I took a look at the last six issues of LensWork (including this issue). In all honesty I wasn’t sure what I would find, but the portfolios divide themselves fairly evenly between two groups: longevity (more than five years) and intensity (less than five years).

Longevity

- • #58: Don Normark, Chavez Ravine (50 years to fruition)

- • #58: Jeff Curto, Bella Luce (to Italy 12 times in 15 years)

- • #59: Carol Golemboski, Psychometry (8 years)

- • #60: Radek Skrivanek, The Aral Sea (numerous trips over years)

- • #60: Helen M. Stummer, Anecdote about her urban project (30 years)

- • #61: Roman Loranc, Central Valley California (13 years)

- • #62: Richard Snodgrass, AfterImage (26 years to fruition)

- • #62: Huntington Witherill, hariots of Desire (16 years)

While some of these projects have been completed, others are still being worked on. Two portfolios were recovered from early work made decades earlier (Chavez Ravine and Mill Town) — and completed many years after they were photographed. The good news is that not every successful project will require 10 years (or more) of your life. I’m reminded of the statement Bonnie Raitt made when she accepted her fourth Grammy in 1989 (at age 40): “It only took me 20 years to become an overnight success!”

Intensity

An almost equal number of photographers exercised focused intensity to complete their projects. The work is often consuming in that it is completed in fairly short timeframe (for various reasons). Nonetheless, there is a methodical approach to the subject yet it is not dispassionate; in fact, it is extremely intense and focused.

- • #57: Arthur Tress, Wheels on Waves (1 year)

- • #57: George Barr, City Forms (As time allowed)

- • #60: Robb Kendrick, Texas Tintypes (9 months)

- • #61: Nick Brandt, Photographs of East Africa (5 years)

- • #61: Robert Swiderski, Inside Religion (1 year)

- • #62: Fritz Liedtke, Welcome to Wonderland (several years)

Time is clearly not the common denominator to interesting photographic work — but rather time well spent. Whether short- or long-term projects, clearly these individuals knew what they were doing, what their interest was in, and focused their photographic energies.

Try Writing

If you’ve been flitting from here to there photographically, it might be a worthwhile exercise to put down your camera and pick up a pen and paper. Before you make any more photographs, be sure you can tell your intended audience about your subject. Have you researched it at the library or on the Internet? If it’s a subject you love, you should want to know as much about it as you can.

If you find yourself looking at a mish-mash of photographs (disjointed subjects printed in various sizes on whatever paper was available) chances are you haven’t really begun your committed photographic journey yet. If you aren’t digging-in to the subject with some level of desire to know it more intimately — your relationship hasn’t started. Either dig-in or move on to something you can connect with and define in some way. Don’t be afraid of the C or L words.

Making the grade

With only 18 portfolio slots to fill in LensWork each year, most submissions are returned unpublished. Hopefully this won’t discourage those of you who are considering submitting work; this is to acknowledge those who have their work selected! The three deciding factors are: Do they have an interesting eye? Is it cohesive subject matter? And are there enough images (after editing)?

Photographers can get their work published in almost any other photo magazine with 4 to 6 solid images. LensWork, however, requires a rock-bottom of 11 images (after editing). We typically publish between 13 to 19 images per portfolio — usually edited from 30 or more images to begin with. It’s not uncommon for us to reject work that has a handful of really great images — but doesn’t “make count.” So close yet so far; we must pass on the work. We’ll often see the same handful of images appearing in other publications. This is not to disparage the work (or other publications) — it’s to put in perspective the demand we place on photographers, and the depth of their work, to be selected for LensWork. We not only want good work, we want a lot of it.

Beyond just enough; being prolific

It seems that when a photographer is on-fire with a subject they are insanely prolific. We’ve looked at CDs filled with solid imagery with well over 100 images that take us, layer after layer, into the subject. The depth is amazing: the level of relationship; the feeling of connectedness; the obvious affection or curiosity; the desire to know more. The muse is clearly rewarding their commitment with inspired imagery and good storytelling.

Sometimes it’s just a matter of getting started. If you’ve never committed to a photographic subject, choose one for a day, a weekend, or a week. Start and finish the project within a designated timeframe (a week or a month are manageable). Produce at least 10 finished images. Share your work with others and listen. I guarantee you’ll find satisfaction in the commitment and the accomplishment. For others who have been “at it” for some time, it can be fruitful to revisit old projects. Sometimes the problems that shelved a project in the past can be addressed today with new technologies. Not all work in boxes is boring or bad; sometimes it gives us fits for some technical reason. Times have changed. You may find that going back to take a look is like finding that old flame after years of separation. What’s to lose? You may find the muse waiting for you, and recommit to finish the work.

So, if you’re dabbling for fun — commit to having a ball! — but if you’re ready to create a meaningful body of work there has never been a better time. Work is being produced in all manner of methods, and this reinvigoration is creating a surge in productivity. Once you choose a subject, then all you have to do is commit.

THE MATTER WITH

SUBJECT MATTER

I was recently doing a bit of research by scanning through and taking some measurements in each of the 200 or so photography books that I own. The purpose of this project was to compile some information about book design. I examined each book without paying much attention to the images or the subject matter, but rather looking at page layouts and other such non-photographic aspects of these publications.

I was about three-quarters through my library of books when it suddenly occurred to me that I kept seeing the same subject matter over and over and over again. I got bugged by this idea, so I began the scan of my bookshelves a second time, looking this time at subject matters only. I was amazed to see how frequently I saw the same subject matter photographed in similar but slightly different variations. It was a fascinating revelation.

Why do we see certain subjects so frequently photographed? Certainly we must be quickly approaching some form of critical mass of photographs of:

- • sand dunes

- • nudes in sand dunes, Yosemite National Park, crashing waves at the ocean, contorted naked women, scenics with a mountain in the background and a lake in the foreground

- • scenics with a mountain in the background and a river in the foreground

- • scenics with a mountain in the background and a pond in the foreground

- • each of the above without the mountain

- • the church at Taos, New Mexico

- • barns, cowboys, vegetables

- • flower blossoms

- • bizarre rock formations in Utah and Arizona

- • and antisocial lifestyles

(There are more themes that are universally common, but I think you get the point.) Certainly there must be more things than this that could be interesting to photograph!

I happened to casually mention this observation to a friend who suggested that my observation was influenced too heavily by my own personal library of photography books. He suggested that I extend my research to other items from the world of photographic publishing than those I’ve purchased based on my own likes and dislikes.

I took his advice and spent an entire day looking intensely through books at several of my local bookstores and at the Portland Public Library Main Branch. I was right to a certain degree. There were a few categories that I had missed in the survey of my own bookshelves. But the important point was — I didn’t miss that many categories! It was fairly easy to add such classic subject matters as:

- • inner city ghettoscapes

- • tattooed people (which I actually think is covered in the category of antisocial lifestyles)

- • rural nostalgia

- • sexual fetish lifestyles

… and a whole subject category of really trite photography (including kittens with yarn, sunsets at the beach, smiling baby on a shag rug, back-lit sailboats on a glinting sea, and miscellaneous seagulls on pilings! Aaarg!)

I ask again, why do photographers limit themselves to such restricted areas of subject matter? I protest this trend. And frequently my protest takes the form of fascination and obsessive appreciation with the truly unique and different vision.

I’m spellbound by Wright Morris’ photograph of silverware in a kitchen drawer. Did anyone do this before he did, and if so did he or she do it nearly so well? Paul Caponigro’s Running White Deer is a marvelous photograph. So was Edward Weston’s Pepper No. 30 until everybody else started photographing vegetables, assuming that was Weston’s genius. I’m fascinated by Ray McSavaney’s photographs of the abandoned Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company manufacturing plant in Los Angeles. Look at Bruce Barnbaum’s photographs of Antelope Canyon. I am also captivated by Ruth Bernhard’s Nude in a Box, Atget’s pictures of the storefronts of Paris, and the wonderful photographs of mundane streetscapes by Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand, and Robert Adams.

What makes these photographers’ work so wonderful is their ability to see. Let me ask your indulgence for a lengthy quotation from the 1960’s Beat/Zen philosopher Alan Watts, who made the following observations about the function and role of an artist’s unique vision in relationship to society.

In painting, you cannot see a figure without a background. When you paint you have to put in some kind of a background. As time went on, painters began to put landscape into the background and in due course, Western painters began to be fascinated with the background. They said to the figure, Move over. Then there were landscapes. Of course, there were people who looked at them and weren’t used to that kind of thing and said, Well, that’s not what I call a painting! But, in time they got used to it. So used to it, in fact, that in every national park you will find a place called Inspiration Point! Nowadays everybody wants a room with a view. And when all the tourists from Kansas and Iowa get there they say, Oh, it’s just like a picture.

Copying nature was just the first phase of evolution. There was a further evolution beyond copying when the artists asked why they were limited to copying nature. They asked, Why don’t we just create works of nature without copying anything? And abstract artists like Jackson Pollack would just drip paint on canvas.

Now a lot of people thought, Any child could do that, and they made abstract paintings that nobody was interested in. They were just terrible! And some people took old typewriters and hit them with a sledge hammer a few times and mounted it on a cubic block of walnut and called it, you know, Opus 14 or something. But this was completely phony.

Pollack discovered that you had to be in a certain state of mind to achieve success with this work. He saw that there was something fundamentally different between a fine abstract painting and mere mess. Well, there is a distinct difference between fine work and a mess. No one knows how they do it! Genius cannot be taught, but the difference does exist.

So what is a mess to us or when made by us can be made into something significant in the right hands. Because the artist, you see, has the function of teaching one to see. Landscapes were just background until artists taught us to see them. Those monks who crossed the Alps in medieval times didn’t look to the hills as beautiful examples of nature. They thought those mountains were a burden and would have liked to flatten them out into nice rolling plains that would be easier to traverse. Now we look at the Alps and say they are beautiful precisely because the artists have taught us to see them as beautiful.

So, when spontaneous painting has become really understood by the great masses and people are walking down city streets, there will be a filthy old brick wall somewhere just covered with scraps of torn off posters and bird droppings and scratches and they’ll stop and look and say, Oh, it’s just like a picture!

Well, if Watts is right, the challenge he proposes is substantial. Not only is he suggesting that our role as artists is to see what other people don’t see, but also to develop the means to teach that vision by making our vision so manifest and so accessible that our audience can see just as we do.

I began to appreciate the nature of this challenge when I started photographing my Made of Steel series of garages, machine shops, tool benches, and the old, greasy guys who call these places home. For years I struggled photographing such places with considerable lack of success. But every once in a while, a single image would stand out and at least point the direction I needed to visually explore. Eventually, the ideas clicked, the project blossomed, and the vision became manifest in my work.

I knew that I’d accomplished something significant when a friend of mine, who also happens to be a photographer and therefore has, let us say, refined visualization skills, told me that he’d had a recent experience involving a flat tire on his car. As the mechanic in the local garage fixed his tire, my friend found himself wandering around looking at the tools, the workbenches, the grease pits, and the mechanic with a new appreciation. I had influenced the way he perceives the world. Needless to say, I was thrilled when he related his experience to me and when he concluded his story with the comment, “In all the times I’ve been in garages and machine shops, I’d never really seen them until your photographs showed me what to look for.”

One of my favorite quotes is from Nobel Prize winner Albert Szent-Gyorgyi: “Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.”

So why is it that still life photographs always have flower blossoms and fruit in them? Why hasn’t anyone done a still life of shoes with cereal boxes? How come I never see photographs of children’s toys? Why not photograph American living rooms, the inside of the refrigerator, junk mail, the oil stains in the driveway, the pile of dead flies and spider webs in the window corners, or the ashes from the fireplace? Do we not photograph such trivialities around home because they are insignificant? Or is it possible that these potential subject matters seem insignificant because no one has taught us yet how to see them significantly?

If you’re not familiar with his work, next time you’re at the bookstore, take a peek at one of several books of photographs by Joseph Sudek. (Not to be confused with contemporary photographer Jan Sudek!) Joseph Sudek was a Czechoslovakian photographer working in the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s. He lived a very simple, even impoverished life. In spite of his Spartan life, he made wonderful photographs of the things in his everyday life — his cluttered desk, a slice of cheese, an egg shell and some crumpled paper. Surely, Sudek’s eggs and crumpled paper are insignificant subject matter, but his photographs of them are not.

One example is particularly worthy of note. Sudek did an entire series of extraordinary photographs of an insignificant and homely tree in his yard from inside his kitchen window. This is such an amazing series of photographs! The subtle changes of light and weather and season make each photograph unique. But the magic of this series is even more apparent when seen as a series with the passage of time and the deepening sensitivity of the photographer himself.

There is a story told of a master Japanese poet lecturing to a group of American college students on the nature of haiku poetry. In the course of his lecture he was attempting to define certain technical terms. He said, “The term yugen is a very important term in Japanese poetry. Yugen is that feeling one gets when one sees a flock of geese fly off into the fog, and one can hear their honking still, but cannot see them as they disappear into the distance. The next term is furyu. Furyu is like when a man in a boat shouts to a man on the shore and even though they cannot see each other they can have a conversation while they drift past one another.”

This sort of defining of terms proceeded for some time. After a while one of the frustrated students raised his hand and said, “Please, I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t understand. Can’t you just give us straightforward definitions for these terms?” The Japanese master stood up, red-faced, pounded on the table with some violence, and shouted at the top of his voice, “What’s the matter with you Americans? Can’t you feel!?”

Great photography is never about photography, it is about life. Ansel Adams’ life was in Yosemite, and his photographs of Yosemite shine because of that. Edward Weston’s life was so entwined with the California coast, and his photographs beautifully reflect that life. Wright Morris photographed his life on his boyhood home on the farm in Nebraska. Weegee photographed his life in New York City, Atgét his shops and parks in the streets and countryside of Paris, Sudek his eggs and cheese.

Could it be that the great photographers make their great images because they spring from their life, whereas the majority of “amateurs” fail to make great photographs because they are too busy trying to photograph someone else’s life, someone else’s landscape, someone else’s experience? Perhaps instead of going out looking for subject matter, we should simply try to clearly see our life as it is and find the images of significance that surround us.

IMAGINATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY

Just as with our written and spoken languages, photography can be described as a “rich” endeavor because it offers so many possibilities. In written language, we have the narrative, the worlds of poetry, journalism, advertising copy, lyrics, etc. It’s the fact that language has so many ways to allow us to be expressive that makes it such an ideal medium for human communication.

Similarly, photography is equally rich. I’ve often found it useful to think in terms of a linear spectrum: at one end of the photographic spectrum is documentary; at its polar opposite is the world of imaginative photography. The personal narrative is somewhere in the middle.

You would think that it would be of paramount importance to know which end of the scale your work occupies before you proceed, but I often find this is not the case when I talk with photographers at review events. Imagine the challenges that would be faced by the writer who was not sure if he was writing a novel, a news report, a poem, or an advertisement. Similarly, a photographer engaging a project can be helped by knowing, right at the beginning, whether the project is documentary, personal narrative, or imaginative.

It’s that far end of the spectrum — the imaginative realm — that I would like to address in these comments. But before doing so it might be handy to have the spectrum fully in mind. Fully aware that I’m venturing into dangerous turf, let me offer some preliminary definitions.

I think of documentary work as the kind of endeavor where a photographer tells someone else’s story. Think of Country Doctor by W. Eugene Smith, Tir a’Mhurain by Paul Strand, or the work of the FSA photographers. Better, let us look to the pages of LensWork*: Think of Appalachian Portraits by Shelby Lee Adams, Campo Adentro by Susan S. Bank, or Bethlehem Steel by Shaun O’Boyle. These photographers succeed because they tell us a story about the world. They do so in a powerfully evocative way that educates and informs us. They show us an objectified world, at least as far as one can be truly objective. The photographer remains as invisible as possible, directing from the wings while the subject takes center stage.

Somewhere in the middle of the spectrum we find what I characterize as the personal narrative where a photographer tells their own story. Here I think of (again from previous issues of LensWork) Martha Casanave’s Beware of Dog, Doug Ethridge’s 27 Mornings in Winter, or Vladimir Kabelik’s Remembering Prague. There is an imaginative component to this work, but it still purports to tell us of something real, albeit personal. These, too, can be incredibly powerful and evocative. For these projects to succeed as artwork, they must go beyond the personal and provide us with something that touches on the universal. Pure personal biography can be boring and distant. As audience, we need to empathize and even internalize their work.

At the far end of the spectrum is imaginative photography. What is imaginative photography? In short, I find it useful to think of this kind of work as a photographer creating an entirely new world in the viewer’s imagination. The world that is created is pulled from the imagination. It is, in this sense, not real. I further group the imaginative photographs in one of four basic types: the hyper-real, the symbolic, the new physical universe, and the new psychological universe.

The Hyper-real

By saying that imaginative photography is “unreal” I don’t mean to imply that all imaginative photography is an Alice in Wonderland, or M.C. Escher-like fiction. A so-called “straight landscape” can be unreal. It may depict the real, but do so in an exaggerated, hyperbolic, idealized sense — as we see in the poetic, fanciful landscapes of Ansel Adams, the haiku-like images of Edward Weston, or the subatomic forces Bruce Barnbaum talks about and claims to portray in his work from the slit canyons. Most viewers, at first blush, would think of these photographers as presenting realistic depictions. I tend not to think this for the simple reason that I’ve been to Yosemite, I’ve eaten peppers, and I’ve traveled in the desert. The Yosemite most tourists encounter does not look like an Ansel Adams photograph. The peppers in my refrigerator do not glow like those famous Weston peppers. Even in the midst of the slit canyons it becomes obvious how creative Barnbaum’s photographs are. Each of these photographers made something fanciful, something hyper-real, something wonderful, but at the same time unquestionably an expression of their imagination. We viewers may remain content to think the photograph is truthful, but any attempt to duplicate them with an unmanipulated photographic effort will demonstrate our folly — as many a tourist at Wawona Point in Yosemite has discovered for themselves.

The Symbolic

Pushing further into the fanciful, there is work I would characterize as symbolic. In this group I place such work as LensWork alumni David Bookbinder’s Mandala Flowers, Peter Tonningson’s Descent, and the work of Jerry Uelsmann. The things photographed are real, but presented in a way that the photograph points beyond the real, toward something that we are encouraged to bring forth from our imagination. Viewing symbolic photographs requires a leap into the imagination or we miss the point of the photograph.

A New Physical Universe

Some photographers go even further and create for us an entirely new physical universe. These flights of fancy easily suspend the laws of physics, change the scale of existence, or show us a place and time that is of the photographer’s own making. Examples of this kind of work from the pages of LensWork include David L. Smith’s Gradations & Geometries, Andrew Ilachinski’s Microworlds, and Kim Kaufmann’s Illumitones. What is always captivating about this kind of work is not its fanciful nature, but rather it’s seduction into believability. We know the worlds are imaginary, but we want to occupy them; we’re fascinated by them; we are compelled to enter them through our imagination, and happily join the photographer in a romp through their new visual world, abandoning our physical selves as we float through the micro or macrocosms we see.

A New Psychological Universe

The fourth kind of imaginative photography creates a new psychological universe. Think here of Remembering Then: A Family Story by Brigitte Carnochan, Psychometry by Carol Golemboski, or Haunted by a Painter’s Ghost by Dominic Rouse. These are internal worlds where memories, fears, joys, dreams, and the raw emotions of humanity take center stage in the photograph. With this work, we have no idea whether or not the images are biographical or strictly fiction, but in some regards we don’t care. What counts in this work is the insight into humanity, of the human condition that we can see and learn from while viewing this work.

I’ve often thought the imaginative photographer shares a great deal with the novelist. Both are challenged with creating a believable world that the viewer/reader finds engaging, entertaining, instructive, and worth the visit. Like the novelist, the imaginative photographer hopes the world they have created is compelling enough to cause the reader/viewer to tarry, to believe, to engage. Every novelist knows this is the challenge in the first pages of their story — to get the reader to care enough to be enthralled, at least enough to keep reading.

The measure of the success of imaginative photography is how well the photographer creates that world, how believable it is, and how well the viewer can bring forth that world in their imagination. From time to time, I read some photographer pondering the definition of that slippery term “fine art photography.” I wouldn’t dare propose a definition, but I would suggest that fine art photography is closer to the imaginative end of the scale than it is to the documentary end.

The term art, from the Latin artem, implies the skillful making of something. We use artifact and artifice to mean things made. Although not from the same Latin root, this brings to mind the word articulate — a word curiously imbued with the dual meaning to say clearly and to cause to move. Combing these thoughts, I often think of artmaking as the craft of so clearly communicating as to create movement in the viewer’s imagination. Minor White is often quoted as having advised us to photograph “not only what it is, but what else it is.” I’m sure he referred in this advice specifically to the mystical, but I would contend that it equally means to photograph the metaphorical. To photograph what else it is means to photograph in such a way that, like flint on steel, the photographic image strikes the imagination and sparks fly.

Turning to the pragmatic, let me offer three specific examples of imaginative photography, two from my own work and one from a LensWork alumnus.

Changing the visual context

In my latest folio, Worlds Within Worlds, the images themselves are rather straightforward, but it’s the similarity to images in our mind that move the project into the imaginative. Looking at the flow of detritus in the tidal flat, I was struck by the galactic appearance before my eyes. A simple shift in visual tonalities while making the prints converted the pond into a galactic view. Nothing more was required to bring forth a heightened state of imagination. Photographically speaking, these are not too distant from straight photographs. Very basic and traditional techniques were used to merely alter printing tonalities to achieve the results. I added a simple expansion to the project by including a bit of text about the similarities between the micro world and the macro world, text I felt was important to the project but was not strictly necessary in order to appreciate the photographs.

Changing the intellectual context

In LensWork Extended #70, I described my project titled Wakarimasen (Japanese for I don’t understand). For this body of work, I found random splashes of paint covering graffiti that I could (and actually did) photograph as mere abstracts of splashes of paint. But, a number of the compositions sparked my imagination in a different direction: they reminded me of Chinese calligraphy. Pursuing that thought, the project developed into a statement about illiteracy and the challenges of recognizing unknown writing as communication but having no clue as to the content. With this project, I changed the intellectual context against which the random splashes of paint were seen. By simply providing a title, a short introductory text, and a carefully edited sequence of images, the things actually photographed (splashes of paint) took on an entirely new imaginative context that encouraged viewers to look beyond the images to the concepts conveyed in the project. With this project, unlike the previous example, the text is incredibly important and, in fact, the foundation of the project. Without the intellectual context the images might too easily be seen as mere splashes of paint.

Changing both the intellectual and the visual context

This final example stretches even beyond the strictly photographic. In Photo Synthesis, photographer Huntington Witherill has created a new world for us that is a fanciful blend of the camera, the computer, and his imagination. These images are unmistakably imagination-based, but part of their appeal is that the world they create looks as though it could, in some distant, parallel universe, be real. The very title of the project itself references all three critical elements — the mechanical, the imaginative, and the biological. Unlike so much Photoshop trickery we see these days, this is not mere doodling but rather the creation of an entire universe with internal consistency that helps make this world — his world — a pleasure to behold.

In all of these examples, there are a few key elements that are consistent in the production of imaginative photography.

1.) It’s not about photography, but rather about life. Photography is (I hesitate to use the word merely) the medium. As I began, photography’s flexibility creates such a rich, creative environment that even the most fanciful of imaginations can find room in which to play. But — and this is an important caution — it is not photographic trickery that makes imaginative work interesting. Photographic trickery without imaginative content is merely technical showing off. When the craft of photography serves the imagination then it truly rises to the status of a meaningful art medium.

2.) Imaginative photography is about translating what you see into what you say. And, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, it may not be about what you say but rather about what the creative Muse says through you. In all these cases, from Adams to Witherill, their imaginative statement is less about the thing that was in front of their camera than it was about the thing that was in the front of their mind. Adams incessantly referred to “previsualization” — the image he saw in his mind. Countless photographers have interpreted that as technical advice, but to me it was always an admission — an encouragement, a compass pointing the way — to photography as an imaginative tool.

3.) I am yet to have a conversation with a photographer of imaginative work in which I do not hear the same kind of statement so often repeated by the novelist: At some point in the creative process, the work takes over and the artist recedes to follow with a gentle hand. Writers talk about their characters “coming to life.” In a similar way, imaginative photographers talk about that point in the project when the work begins to speak through its own voice. Don’t all such statements remind us of imagination?

Unknowingly, in my youth I flitted, butterfly-like, from genre to genre of photography. I have work I would characterize as strictly documentary; I have other work that is unquestionably personal narrative; and I have produced a great deal of work that is purely imaginative. Like many photographers, I’ve produced this work without thoroughly understanding the differences between them, at least not consciously, especially not at the beginning of each project. I simply followed the Muse and created work that I was mysteriously motivated to do.

But now, beginning my fifth decade in photography, I’ve come to recognize that each project has its own underlying foundation: documentary, personal narrative, or imaginative. With this way of thinking about my work, I’ve learned how to more easily recognize how a project is developing — and how to shift gears so that I’m more in tune with the project at an earlier phase of its development. Knowing how to think about the project doesn’t make it easier, nor does it ensure a better result. But it does help me eliminate a considerable amount of fumbling around — especially at the beginning phases of the project.

References

Adams, Shelby Lee; Appalachian Portraits; Two Families; LensWork #27, Nov-Dec 1999

Bank, Susan S.; Campo Adentro; LensWork and LensWork Extended #82, May-Jun 2009

O’Boyle, Shaun; Bethlehem Steel; LensWork and LensWork Extended #77, Jul-Aug 2008

Casanave, Martha; Beware of Dog; LensWork #44, Dec 2003-Jan 2004

Ethridge, Doug; 27 Mornings in Winter; LensWork and LensWork Extended #96, Sep-Oct 2011

Kabelik, Vladimir; Remembering Prague; LensWork and LensWork Extended #59, Jul-Aug 2005

Bookbinder, David; Mandala Flowers; LensWork Extended #69, Mar-Apr 2007

Tonningsen, Peter; Descent; LensWork Extended #85, Nov-Dec 2009

Smith, David L.; Gradations & Geometries; LensWork #39, Feb-Mar 2002

Ilachinski, Andrew; Micro Worlds; LensWork and LensWork Extended #76, May-Jun 2008

Kauffman, Kim; Illumitones; LensWork and LensWork Extended #84, Sep-Oct 2009

Carnochan, Brigitte; Remembering Then: A Family Story; LensWork and LensWork Extended #80, Jan-Feb 2009

Golemboski, Carol; Psychometry; LensWork and LensWork Extended #59, Jul-Aug 2005

Rouse, Dominic; Haunted by a Painter’s Ghost; LensWork #36, Jul-Aug 2001 and LensWork

and LensWork Extended #69, Mar-Apr 2007

Witherill, Huntington; Photo Synthesis; LensWork Extended #92, Jan-Feb 2011

TEN MOTIVATIONS

This is my 82nd Editor’s Comment in LensWork, and I’ve postponed long enough, ahem, discussing three of the great deadly sins of the creative life: procrastination, creative avoidance, and sloth. Trust me, I speak about these issues with first-hand knowledge and experience. Since, therefore, this is a sort of confession, I shall commit myself to three Hail Stieglitzs and a solemn oath to clean up the darkroom. Amen.

Unfortunately, I’m not the only guilty party when it comes to commiting the three deadly sins that lead to the failure to finish work. In fact, I would propose that this is the elephant in the living room for the vast majority of photographers whose relationship to photography is non-commercial — that is to say, an avocation, a hobby, a passion. But if photography is a passion, why do so many photographers struggle with completing a project? Would it be logical that a passion would provide enough motivation on its own to compel the work necessary to the completion of a photographic project? You would think so, but I cannot recount the number of workshop critique sessions in which I’ve participated where the photographers’ opening comments are, “This is still a work in progress…” which communicates far more than they probably intend. Passion does indeed promote work, but there are other forces at play that inhibit completion.

About 30 years ago, I bought a book on procrastination which, predictably, I finally got around to reading about 20 years ago. The authors proposed a very simple formula — that procrastination is not the root cause of delay, but rather the reflexive defense mechanism for a deeper underlying problem, perfectionism. As an artist, this struck a chord. My artwork is practically the only thing I do in life in which considerations of quality trump every other characteristic, including expense, time, comfort, space, travel, leisure, and even health. Virtually everything we do in life involves a compromise between the result and the available assets we have to achieve that result — except in our artwork. As artists, we are willing to push beyond the reasonable in our pursuit of perfection.

In fact, creating artwork is an activity whose deepest purpose and meaning are tied directly to the pursuit of excellence. All those hours calibrating developing times, analyzing equipment, making print after print in the darkroom, discarding imperfect mats — in short, every single aspect of photography — is a matter of pushing ourselves to achieve perfection, or at least a photographic artifact that is as close to perfection as we can possibly make. And here is the rub: how good is good enough?

We dance on the sword’s edge between this pursuit of perfection that motivates us and a slavish devotion to perfectionism which de-motivates us. As the authors of the book on procrastination so effectively proved, the practical outcome of compulsive perfectionism is procrastination for the following reason: things left incomplete can still be improved, and therefore their lack of perfection is acceptable. Said another way, if it’s never finished, it can never be criticized for not being perfect. This neat and tidy double-bind is, in itself, perfect: is a perfect circle in which procrastination prevents completion; completion prevents progress, which prevents learning, which hinders our pursuit of perfection. Procrastination is not the problem. The deeper challenge is distinguishing between the theoretically perfect and the practically superb. The inability to separate these two is the block that inhibits creativity.

But perfectionism is only the first barrier to finishing work.

Related to perfectionism is discouragement, an emotion that is incredibly efficient in preventing the creative artist from completing a project. Discouragement can be internal or external, our own critical comments or the comments of others. We can become discouraged because our work is not good enough — but perhaps our work is not good enough because we need more practice, more refinement, more experience. Discouragement is a self-defeating cycle in which our inability to produce prevents us from developing greater abilities to produce.

Discouragement’s twin is rejection. Nothing squelches enthusiasm like rejection, as anyone knows who has courted a gallery, submitted work for publication in a magazine, entered a contest, or sat through the long weekend in the booth at a street fair in which 99.999% of people who walk by the booth do not buy anything. Ouch. (There is nothing quite like rejection that includes fleeting eye contact.)

Whether we suffer from procrastination, perfectionism, discouragement, rejection, or any other emotion that prevents us from completing our work, from time to time we all need motivation — even if only as an emergency tool to help us during those times when we are not motivated by natural inclination. So I’ll recommend the following ten motivations as tools that work. At one point or another, I’ve used each of these as a means to get me off my, well, let us say tripod.

Structure

In discussing this issue over the years with various photographers, I’ve learned that each of us has our own quirks and that one person’s hot answer is another person’s lukewarm tip. For me, structure is the hot answer. If I ever find myself struggling for motivation, the first thing I try is to erect a structure in which to work. My New 100 Prints Project is an example. Last October, I conceived a project around the idea of posting a new image on my website every third day. I designed a structure to do this — the type of images I would use, a website design, a reasonable frequency I knew I could manage, a purpose for the project. I decided early on that I would include an audio commentary with each image as a way to make it more interesting (hopefully!), make an audience want to check back regularly and view the new images. It was this structure and definition of a project that has motivated me to do a new image every third day and build, week by week, toward the completed 100 images. The key to making such a structure work is, of course, …

Commitment

Once the structure of the New 100 Prints Project was established, nothing was accomplished except a plan. The next step was to commit to the plan, and without commitment, a plan is just jawboning.

Here is another example: my annual Winter Trees folio. Last December we had one of those freak snowstorms that hits Anacortes about once a decade. A record snow fell within 24 hours! If that doesn’t scream a perfect opportunity for a winter trees folio, I don’t know what would. However, that morning I woke up stiff and sore, grumpy, it was cold outside, because of my failing left knee I was hobbling around, I had to put chains on the car, I had a lot of things to do that day, we’d run out of coffee — in short, I was in no mood to go out photographing nature’s wonders and joyfully create artwork. But I had a commitment to create the annual Winter Trees folio, and that commitment was just the motivation I needed to overcome the inertia of staying in bed. I rose, dressed, grumbled my way through chaining up the car, and headed out to look for photographs. It didn’t take long for me to find subjects that were magical and for my mood to soar. Once my tripod was positioned and the camera in place, I found all resistance, procrastination, and sloth evaporated in the joy of a wonderful photographic opportunity and experience. Without commitment, those photographs would never have been made.

Peer Pressure

It is said that one of the things that motivates soldiers in war to face the enemy with courage is the bond with their peers and the brotherhood that motivates them to protect and fight for one another. In a similar way, but with obviously less intensity, a project engaged in with a group of photographic peers can be motivational, too. Arrange to go photographing with a group of friends, and you’re much less likely to cancel if the weather gets drippy or the conditions are not perfect. Participate in a group exhibition, a group portfolio, a group publication, or even a group website, and your motivation will improve to the extent you value your relationship with your peers. Even a group of two — you and a friend — can be enough motivation to provide the necessary movement to overcome slothful inertia.

Projects

Random photography is fun, liberating, useful in its own way, but far less motivational than photography that is engaged in for a defined project. Simply said, wandering around the landscape looking for “greatest hits” photographs does not have the potential for success as trying to do a specific project about a specific landscape or a particular kind of landscape image. For example, for me, the concept of producing folios has been useful because it tends to focus my attention on project-oriented photography. If I conceive and commit to a project — be it a folio, a PDF publication, a website, an exhibition, or any other form of media that involves a group of images in a unified statement — I find myself with a heightened level of motivation.

Sometimes I design the project and then photograph. Other times I discover a project in reviewing my random efforts which then, in turn, motivates me to find and photograph the missing pieces that allow me to complete the newly realized project.

Visualization

One of the best self-motivators is visualization — not in the photographic sense, but visualization as used by Gestalt psychology. Gestalt psychology teaches us that the more clearly we see a proposed result in our mind’s eye, the more motivated we are to move toward that result. Ergo, the more completely and with greater detail we can visualize a finished project in our mind’s eye, the more we will find ourselves motivated to complete it. Visualize the finished project in as much detail as you can. I do this literally, by closing my eyes and seeing the finished product in my imagination. Specify the size, the number of images, the type of prints, the text components, the framing, the lighting, the title — every detail you can envisage. Don’t worry that these details might change as the project develops; accuracy of final outcome is not important in this exercise of visualizing the proposed details. You can always change the plans later. The purpose is to see it in your mind’s eye so as to ramp-up your motivations. It’s a first step to starting and building initial momentum. You’ll be amazed how strong the compulsion is to complete the work when you can see it clearly in your mind’s eye but not in physical reality. The urge to build it so you can hold it in your hands or see it in the physical world is powerful!

Deadlines

This one’s a no-brainer. Few things are as motivational as a deadline. Commit to attend a workshop, participate in a review like Fotofest or Photolucida, apply for a grant, or submit to a contest — all of which include deadlines — and you’ll find yourself motivated to do what is necessary in order to meet the deadline. Speaking as a publisher, I can assure you that we would not have produced 82 individual 96-page books called LensWork if it weren’t for that pesky deadline that descends upon us every 60 days. Commit to a deadline — the motivation will follow.

A variation on this is to commit to an exhibition. Exhibitions typically take place at a specific time and, therefore, like the activities mentioned above, involve a deadline. If you have a body of work you would like to finish — but that is not yet finished — then arrange for an exhibition about six months from now; you will be amazed how motivating this is to the completion of the project.

Publication

We used to think of publication as something that came at the end of the project. But now, with the publication possibilities presented to us through blurb.com, website publication, and PDFs, publication commitments can come before the work is completed. Announcing your publication to the world before you’ve completed it becomes a powerful form of deadline that can provide motivation even greater than an exhibition. With an exhibition, failure to meet the deadline might embarrass you within your community; failure to meet publication deadline could potentially embarrass you worldwide. Yikes. In either case, I suppose we should admit that fear of embarrassment is a form of motivation in itself.

Starvation

This one may sound like I’m joking, but I’m not, at least not entirely. There is a reason why commercial photographers are more productive than fine art hobbyists — without commercial work, they don’t eat, and can’t pay the rent. We hobbyists and amateurs, on the other hand, have the luxury of having our day job provide us with such necessities of life, and therefore our art can happen — or not — without consequence. Quit your day job and start relying on the sale of your artwork for room and board, and your motivation will skyrocket. Well, okay, that may be an extreme and tongue-in-cheek recommendation, but the principle is valid.

Using this principle with less dire consequences, I’ve employed a strategy that motivates, but reduces the stakes to a more reasonable level: I force my photography to pay for itself. If I want to buy cameras or film or paper or chemistry, I do so only from the proceeds of the sale of my work — which necessarily implies that I’ve completed something. No completion, no sale, no new equipment, no travel. Perhaps starvation is too strong a word, but we could substitute the concept of a photographic diet in its place.

Mortality

Quite simply, now, at age 55, I have more motivation than I had when I was 25. My aging knees, my bifocals, my early bedtime, and my prescriptions constantly remind me that I won’t have the ability to do photography forever. Carpe diem. As they say, “Ye be mortal, lads, ye be mortal indeed.” According to my actuarial table, I may have 10 or 15 years of photography left — which is a tremendous motivator when compared to the 38 years of photography behind me.

Magazine Submission

And finally, as a publisher, I’m compelled to say that magazine submissions are a wonderful way to motivate you to finish a project. Nothing would please me more than to wave a magic wand and motivate every one of you reading this to submit a portfolio to LensWork. We are always looking for good work to publish, always hopeful to bring new photographers to the larger audience they deserve, always anxious to discover and bring to the world a new creative vision. Perhaps this is you. We’ll never know unless you let us take a look at your work by submitting it.

Well, consider yourself a bit prodded and hopefully motivated. Now it’s up to you.

YOUR INNER PRAGMATIST

The idealized world is such a lovely idea — perhaps especially so for artists. For most of us, artmaking occupies a very unique place in our lives. Unlike a typical job or other business pursuit where “good enough” is sufficient quality and more than that is waste, in artmaking we pursue excellence at all costs. We don’t care how long it takes us, nor how much it costs, nor how much sacrifice we must endure in pursuit of this excellence. It is part of the artist’s life and we accept it. Indeed, some even revel in it with a touch of perversion: If we don’t suffer for it, our art must be somehow inferior. With such a single-minded focus on quality above all else, the road to bliss and happiness would appear to only require sufficient talent and a fearless dedication to the necessary work. How lovely it would be if this were true.

Of course, those of us who actually live in the art life know this is mostly hogwash. The art life is, in reality, a compromise between flashes of creative inspiration followed by snatches of time spent productively working, and chores like washing the dishes, doing the laundry, and mowing the lawn. The art life is not devoid of the practical things in life. It exists in spite of and, at best, in harmony with the tasks of everyday life.

Said another way, the art life is best conducted as an exercise in pragmatism. It’s necessary to find a balance between what could be done in a perfect world and what can be done in the world in which we live. And here we meet the pincer that squeezes the art life right out of us. We are left with a feeling of frustration, a lack of accomplishment, and a longing for that idealized life in which, without any of the necessities of mundane existence, we would be able to unleash the creative genius we trust that lives within us. Perhaps the worst vocabulary that infects the artist is the lament, “if only …”

Of course, it does you no good to read about the problem unless there are a few solutions (or at least suggestions) — so that is my objective. Here are eight examples where pragmatism about what was practical and possible triumphed over the unrealized ideal — and in doing so, art was made and procrastination foiled.

A website alternative

A friend of mine who is a very accomplished photographer has no website. He has no interest whatsoever in learning HTML coding or even a simplified software program that would allow him to create a website. He would love to share his work via the Internet, but has been hoping for years to find the time and the skill to become his own webmaster, all the while knowing it will never happen. He thought about hiring someone to build his website for him, but that can be an expensive proposition. Enter the twin plagues of delay and procrastination.

We got to talking about this the other day and it occurred to me that a pragmatic solution might be to simply have a blog dedicated to his work. He could post to the blog site by simply e-mailing content. E-mail he can do, both easily and with regularity. No HTML coding, no web domain maintenance, no new skills required. Using simple domain mapping, he could even have his personalized URL redirected to his blog posts.

There’s no doubt this would make a less-than-ideal website with limitations that might, eventually, compromise the content he’d like to post. However, between now and then simply e-mailing an occasional post to a blog site would at least give him a web presence — a pragmatic solution halfway between waiting for the ideal and having no web presence whatsoever. Here was a practical solution that he could and would do that would not require him to commit to a plan of action that was beyond his capabilities. Pragmatism on parade.

In the course of our conversation, I suddenly realized that this kind of pragmatic thought process has been a part of my artmaking life since I first picked up a camera. I guess I’ve always lived by the old maxim “Strive for perfection, but be willing to accept excellence today in lieu of a perfection that never arrives.” As I’ve said before in this column, the most common outcome of perfectionsim is procrastination — a plague that seems to pop up with frequency in the lives of artists.

The counter to perfectionsim is pragmatism. It is the application of creativity into the sphere of the possible. In our art lives, it is the habit of reshaping our perfection fantasies into cretive visions we actually can and will accomplish.

It’s important to note that it isn’t the quality of the work that is modified in the pursuit of a pragmatic solution. In everything we do, quality and the pursuit of perfection is still an overriding concern and way of life. In searching for the pragmatic solution, don’t throw out quality, but instead simply change the nature of the question. Rather than sacrifice quality by producing a cheap, poorly printed book, I’m simply suggesting that we apply some of our native creativity to the definitions of what and how we do our artwork.

For me, this always begins by defining the barriers that are preventing me from my own success. More often than not, I find those barriers exist because of the way I’ve framed the question or the goal, not because they are imposed on me from the inflexible will of the Photo Gods.

Here are a few additional examples:

Time is an issue

I would love to make every one of my projects some sort of magnum opus — a definitive and complete statement about some grand photographic idea or subject. The problem is, I just don’t have the time to do projects that contain hundreds of photographs — or hundreds of pages in a book. Instead I’ve learned to cultivate the small project — a project of a dozen prints, some as few as five, occasionally as many as fifty. Smaller projects I can do, that is, that I have time for — not just to work on them, but to finish them.

And with that in mind, I’ve also learned to cultivate the project that I can photograph in a small amount of time. My October Seas folio of a dozen prints were all photographed in the course of one long weekend on the Oregon coast. My Winter Trees III folio, consisting of five prints, were all made in one glorious day after a heavy snowfall. True, these may be small projects with small objectives and even small prints, but I finished them and was able to do so in a reasonable amount of time. Finishing something that’s modest in scope — yet still maintains the highest quality you can manifest — is a far better strategy than a large project that collapses under its own over-burdensome weight. I’m all for dreaming big, but there is more virtue in finishing a humble project than there is in perpetual fantasizing about an unreachable one.

The ideal camera

In my youth — wanting to make landscapes like Ansel Adams — I knew that the equipment of choice needed to be at least a 4x5 view camera (and lenses, enlargers, enlarging lens, etc.) — even better would have been an 8x10. Unfortunately I had no money and no ability to procure, beg, or borrow such equipment. Instead I compromised for an affordable medium-format monorail view camera. This camera allowed me to create the kinds of images I wanted to make, albeit on a smaller film than I would have preferred. Large-scale over-the-mantle wall art was out of reach. The pragmatic question became, What can I create with this camera that I own? Rather than postpone my work until I could afford the equipment of my dreams, I simply found work that I could do with the equipment I owned. This led me to small prints, and even different subject material than I would have normally pursued. Rather than be disappointed in such compromises. I found it incredibly useful in my career to simply be productive, make the prints I could make, finish the projects I could finish, and explore those things that allowed me to be productive in the available here and now rather than in some “if only …” future.

Book publishing

I’m yet to meet the photographer who doesn’t lust after publishing their work in a fine art, museum-quality book. The problem, of course, is that books are expensive to produce and difficult to market successfully. As a pragmatist, what other alternatives might exist to get our work in print? Well, rather than print a few hundred or a couple thousand books — which we then have to sell with our initial investment at risk — why not actively and aggressively solicit magazine publication? There’s LensWork, of course, but there are thousands of other magazines around the world. A magazine is not a book, and it is the kind of publication over which you may not have ultimate artistic control. It is, however, a way to get your work seen by a large audience at no cost to yourself. Isn’t it obvious that such publication is better than no publication at all? So, rather than waiting until you can do a book, why not see if you can get your work in print now with this more pragmatic alternative?

Non-book publishing

And speaking of books, until you can afford to do a book of your work why not consider publishing in PDF format and making them available for free on the Internet? What have you got to lose? Again, it’s obvious that a PDF is not a book and lacks some of the idealized characteristics and caché of museum-quality book printing. Of that there is no doubt. But, I can tell you I am thrilled that without a single published book to my name, I have nevertheless developed a substantial audience for my work through the 25,000 PDF e-books that have been downloaded from my website! How would I be happier and more satisfied if I insisted on the bipolar paradim of a printed book or nothing?

Travel and the exotic location

It’s a popular thing in photography to visit exotic locations and make pictures far from our home in someone else’s neighborhood, or even someone else’s country. It’s fun to travel, and the photography is equally fun to do. But, travel can be expensive, difficult, cumbersome, time-consuming, and not very practical. Instead, why not find the exotic community that exists where you live? Sure, it would be fun to visit Norway and photograph the culture and people, but rather than wait for that opportunity to arrive is there anything you could do at the local Sons of Norway Lodge that’s probably within a short drive of where you live? In the town where I live, there is a sizable Croatian population which celebrates their culture with various events throughout the year — dances, food, and Croatian arts and crafts. Someday I might go to Croatia. Pending that fantasized trip, I do have the opportunity to photograph right here in Anacortes the Croatian people and customs, and tell their interesting stories without having to wait for the travel.

The grand landscape

A lot of us enjoy photographing the grand landscape. But the grand landscape is usually out there somewhere, a long way from our front yard. Again, travel becomes a challenge. As a pragmatic alternative we could try to bring that same aesthetic and composition to the world of abstracts, constructions, or even still lifes that we can do in our own home, our own yard, or even in our own imagination. Consider Carl Chiarenza’s work from LensWork #79 — constructions made with paper and aluminum foil created in his basement. He then photographs these in such a way that presents us with a world of abstract images that have a touch of the landscape in them — horizon lines, moons, and even mountains, all in his thoroughly abstract compositions made to be photographed.

Gallery representation

Photographers complain more often about their lack of gallery representation than anything else. Why wait for it? Instead, consider a pragmatic compromise. Have your own open house! Invite people to come by and see your work. Who? Well, if you don’t have a substantial mailing list, perhaps you can combine efforts with other artists to create a “studio crawl” type of event. Each member of the group has an open house on the same Saturday, amortizing your cost of promotion and mailing lists in a group effort to promote simultaneous open house events on a given weekend. A photographer friend of mine did this for several years by working with other non-photographic artists — jewelers, furniture makers, painters, etc. He sold incredible amounts of work, had a lot of fun, built his mailing list, and exhibited his work to lots of people — all without gallery representation.

So, what is it that is preventing you from doing your work? What idealized conditions are denied to you for one reason or another? Is it possible that with a little creative effort and a dose of thinking outside the box that perhaps you could find an acceptable compromise — a pragmatic solution — that would further your work, further your artistic growth, further your circle of influence, connect with a larger audience, and change you from a photographer in name to a photographer in deed?

KEYS TO PRODUCTIVITY

Without equal, the question I am asked more often than any other is: How do you get so much stuff done? You would be amazed how frequently I am asked this question. My Scandinavian humility inhibits my discussing such an issue and I’ve postponed doing so for a long time. I suppose it’s a reasonable question when people see the magazine, the four different editions of LensWork Extended, the podcasts, the various blogs, the articles and books, the folios, the interviews, the videos, and my own personal photography — I do appear to produce a lot of material. I anticipate even more questions now with the launch of LensWork Online, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to share some ideas about productivity and the simple challenge of getting things done.

I could list a series of tools. Perhaps I should in another article. I could brag with eloquence about our superb LensWork staff and how they amplify my productivity with their expertise and hard work. God knows I should. I could simply claim that I work hard and long hours — which is true — but that’s not the key to being productive. I know this from my youth when I worked hard for long hours and accomplished very little.

Instead, allow me to share eight — what should I call these, I’m not sure there’s a single word that covers it, how about … concepts that, quite honestly, make my productivity possible.

Templates, repurposing

Anyone who uses software like InDesign or Photoshop understands the concept of templates. The idea behind this is to simply repurpose something you’ve done once. Doing it the second time is easier, faster, and more efficient. I find the idea of templates so powerful that I use it in almost every aspect of my life, far beyond merely software. Some might refer to them also as habits or, less complimentary, obsessive-compulsive behaviors. I stack the dishes in the dishwasher the same way every time, the method I know efficiently maximizes the number of dishes I can wash. Essentially, I have a template for the placement of the dishes. I know, this seems absurdly silly, but applied in every aspect of one’s life it magnifies across all aspects of daily activities as well as creative ones, essentially creating time. More conventionally, I make extensive use of software templates, InDesign snippets, keyboard macros, Photoshop actions, production jigs and mandibles, and other repeatable tricks of the trade. In the digital world this is particularly easy because digital files, configurations, presets, etc., are all so infinitely reproducible. For example, it took me an hour to figure out how to export our InDesign files to the right kind of PDF for our commercial printer. Having done it once successfully, I’ve been able to create these files now for 95 issues without having to repeat that learning curve. Repurposing is magic.

Structure

I discussed this in greater length relative to The New 100 Prints Project in LensWork #84, so I won’t delve into details here. Suffice it to say that spending time and energy to construct a structure inside which one can work with creative abandon helps keep the project on track. Structures can be: decisions about how to make prints; a defined workflow; a time frame and schedule; the definition of which tools will be used; or even when, in the course of normal week, time will be allocated for working on a project. Structure is the foundation that allows us to let go of logistical decision making and instead focus on creative decision making.

Organization

I could probably recover a full year of my life if I could simply take back the time I’ve spent searching for lost negatives. I won’t even mention printing notes, darkroom formulary, or other such tidbits that are so necessary and that bring production to a grinding halt when lost. I’ve learned the value of organization. I’m fastidious now about filing — be it negatives or digital files. My photography books are alphabetized by photographer; my audio equipment is in one cabinet, my photography equipment in another. Everything has a place and there’s a place for everything. At first, I must admit, such discipline felt restrictive and confining. With time, I discovered that such discipline is actually freeing and liberating. Again, when you don’t have to spend time looking for a negative you can use that time in ways that actually help you accomplish something.

Chip-away philosophy

I was powerfully impressed in my youth with the story of the tortoise and the hare. By disposition I’m a hare, but by training I have become the tortoise — and it serves the artist in me well. It is said that a steady drip of water wears away the hardest stone. Likewise, working a little bit with frequency accomplishes far more than great creative, productive bursts. The first 20 years of my photographic life I worked only in bursts and have almost nothing to show for it. Now, comfortably in middle age, I’ve become a tortoise by disposition (reinforced by years of training), and my productivity has skyrocketed.

Multi-Tasking

I listen to podcasts while I wash the dishes. I do Lightroom keywording while videos are rendering in the background. I think about my next Editor’s Comments while I’m in the shower. You think I’m kidding about that, but I actually have a slate (the kind used by scuba divers) in the shower so I can jot down notes while thoroughly soapy.

I try not to have idle moments while I’m being productive because I’d much rather have idle moments when I’m wanting to be idle. By being productive when I need to be productive, I can then afford to sit and watch the universe go by when that’s the appropriate thing to do.

What can I do with this?

With everything new — be it technology, procedures, concepts, paradigms, tools, ideas, technologies — I’ve developed the consistent game of asking: What can I do with this? That, by the way, is a far more interesting question to me than What can this do? Products, software, tools, are always designed to do something specific. Often, that may not be the thing that I need done. I’ve found it incredibly useful over the years to simply ignore what a product was designed to do and instead ask how I can use it to do something that I want to do.

For example, when Adobe introduced Acrobat they promoted it as an office document solution. They later promoted it as a prepress and graphics industry solution. To me it’s always been an ideal publication platform for still photography — the fine art photography book of our generation. Adobe still doesn’t perceive it as this, but in my opinion they’re missing the boat.

Handle it once

Early in my business career I learned the problem of the plague of paper. In our modern life, stuff comes at us with incredible rapidity — not just paper. There are e-mails, notes, tidbits of information, news items, junk mail, phone calls — the list could go on. My old business mentor advised — that’s not quite right he preached with relentless, um, kindness — “Handle every piece of paper only once.” Read it and toss it; read it and then send it back; read it and file it. Be done with it. Whatever you do, don’t pick it up and move it to your inbox, then over to your to-do box, then into your urgent box, etc. Why handle it six times when once will do the job? Think of all those seconds lost to fussing with paper.

I apply that same principle in every aspect of my life. When done with a glass in the kitchen, don’t set it on the counter. Put it in the dishwasher. Handle it once. Developing this habit may be one of the most important things one can do to liberate time for making art. I know this may sound silly, but multiply these small moments of wasted time over the course of a year — or your life — and there is enough time to engage the creative life with more vigor.

Pragmatism

Let’s talk philosophy. Idealism is lovely, but not very productive. Romanticism is fun, but not always practical. Hedonism is easy, but ultimately unfulfilling. The philosophy that has served me well as an artist — more than any other philosophy I’m aware of — is pragmatism: If it works it works, if it doesn’t it doesn’t.

Here is an extreme example: The way one gets one’s photographs out into the world is through galleries, right? Except for 25 years it didn’t work for me. It wasn’t until I let go of wanting to distribute my work via galleries that I started looking for ways that worked. If it works it works, if it doesn’t it doesn’t; the gallery system doesn’t work for 99% of photographers. So, find a different way. Find a way that works. Find a way that works in spite of the fact that everybody tells you it won’t work. If it works, it works. Don’t look back and don’t let the “rules” determine your actions. As the bumper sticker advises, “Question authority.” I’ve been quietly amused for years how the supposedly creative art world is so stuck on a method of distribution that serves so few (and not all that well) and treats the rest of us so poorly. Is there no room for creativity in the distribution of our art photographs? The pragmatist in me can assure you there is. More than you would possibly guess.

How do I get so much stuff done? We start each issue of LensWork with templates; we publish to a structure of deadlines; we are rigorous and disciplined in our organization of all the tidbits that go into each issue; 700 podcasts accumulate when you do them one at a time with regularity; we keep things moving by multi-tasking; we explore new possibilities by asking how we can use a new idea or product in a new or different way; we consciously limit our involvement with unnecessary movements; we pay attention to what works in the real world instead of fumbling along because someone said it should work.

That’s a rather perfunctory list. Each one of these keys to productivity could be considerably expanded. But, because my objective here was simply to share a few core concepts and hopefully get you thinking, perhaps this is enough to start that process.

BLOCKS TO CREATIVITY

Few things are as frustrating for creative photographers — for creative artists of any kind, I suspect — than being stuck. Blocks to creativity come from many sources and directions. Having a strategy to overcome them is one of the core skills that keep our motivations flowing and productivity high. Like many of you, I’ve struggled with this over the years. In fact, I’ve made a study out of it and would like to share what I’ve learned about some of the practical aspects of being an artist.

Stuck at the Beginning: What to photograph next?

When you don’t know what to photograph, how do you get unstuck? There are probably lots of methods, but here are three reliable techniques that have repeatedly worked for me over the years.

First, I’ve found with regularity that there are lots and lots of seeds for potential projects and new directions in my contact sheets — or more recently, in my Lightroom database. Whenever I’m at a loss on what to work on next, I simply look back at what I’ve photographed in the past. It’s counterintuitive, but what I’ve experienced is that by looking backwards I always find a way forward. I find odd photographs here and there that don’t fit any of my previous projects. In fact, the best seeds often come from the images I don’t remember making at all.

Photographs that are unlike anything you’ve previously made are often images that come from deep within our subconscious. Occasionally, when I am tired and photographing at the end of the day or the end of a long trip, I find my conscious brain sort of steps out of the way and allows for imagemaking without the overlay from my busy, thinking mind. Surprises occur. By looking at my images and searching for these oddballs in my Lightroom database or contact sheet, I invariably find some there. Simply paying attention to these misfits will often be a gateway to some very interesting photographic ideas that I didn’t have in my primary consciousness.

I’ll go even further. I would propose that we never make an image that doesn’t come from our subconscious mind — well, unless it’s the accidental tripping of the shutter, but even then, who knows! Of course, not every image is a good one, but that’s not the criteria for breaking out of a creative slump with this exercise. Don’t look for great images; look for different ones. If you find one but it doesn’t cause a spark of motivation, move on. If it does, you are already off and running with something new that might just become a new idea. Don’t worry if it doesn’t.

If you’ve already looked through your contact sheets once and found a few seed items, don’t assume you’ve mined it completely. If you find yourself stuck six months from now — or six years from now — go back and look at the exact same contact sheets again. You will probably see something new. There is good explanation for this in Gestalt psychology. The easiest way to illustrate it is with that old business about buying a new car and then suddenly that same model car is everywhere you look! Of course, they’ve been there all the time, you just didn’t see them until that model car had been raised in your consciousness to a degree that perception of them breaks through the mundane. Said another way, we see because we are prepared to see.

The same thing happens with your contact sheets and those great seed images. They are there all the time, but we don’t see them until we are prepared to see them. By reviewing your contact sheets, these seed images will pop out at you when you are ready to see them. Change is constant — and that applies to us and our creative life just as much as it does to everything else. A year from now when I look at my contact sheets, I won’t be the same person as the one who looks today. I’ll see things differently because I will be different — it’s just that simple.

A similar idea is to use Lightroom collections. I’ll often make automatic collections based on keyword searches and am often surprised how many times I photograph the same subject matter. Sometimes these related images are only identifiable as a project when I see them in the Lightroom collection, gathered together. I’m not at all conscious that these have been a thread running through years of photography. True, frequently my photographic projects are shot in clusters — an entire project photographed in a day or a week of intense work. But, not everything is done at once. Sometimes I collect one image here, one image there, separated by months or years. In fact, the separations can be so large in time that I lose track of them. I simply don’t remember photographing that subject six months or six years ago. The only way these subconscious themes become conscious is when we gather images together and see them as a group. Lightroom collections created through keywords are an easy way to assemble unconscious themes together for the first time.

Another technique that often gets me unstuck is to consider what it is that I’m interested in outside of photography. I often find it useful to consider how I might turn some passion in my life into a photographic project. If you like gardening, maybe you could point your camera toward your garden or maybe your garden implements, other people’s gardens, etc. Find something that you are really passionate about that seems to have nothing to do with photography — then photograph it. Another way of thinking of this is that sometimes we become so compartmentalized in our life that we separate photography from the rest of our passions. When we are doing photography, we do photography; when we’re playing soccer or golf or cooking or whatever; we do that, but not photography. Maybe there’s a way to integrate our interests. I’ll have more to say about this later in this article.

Stuck in the Middle: How should the work be finished?

It’s easy to find ourselves midway through a project when the dreaded question arises: What are you going to do with it, and what will it be when it’s finished? Here again, I have some suggestions that have successfully guided me out of the woods in my photographic life.

First, I’ve come to rely heavily on the idea of having a structure for my work. I’ve written at length about the importance of structure in other articles, particularly in LensWork #34 and #84, so I’ll only present the key ideas here.

It’s best if I know the structure beforehand. The key idea is simply this: with a predetermined structure for the work, that structure makes it relatively easy to know how you’re going to finish it even before you begin. For example, in my Sketches series of handmade chapbooks, I have a defined structure for finished work into which I can plug almost any project. The scale and scope of any project is determined by the structure I’ve set up for these chapbooks: the size of the books, the number of pages, the number of photographs, the amount of text, the methods of integrating them into my website, the parallel PDF publications — all are defined, at least within a reasonable amount of wiggle room, but within the structure. I don’t have to spend much time thinking about how I’m going to finish a project or what it’s going to look like. I just do the work and finish it.

Another example is my work in the form of folios. I know I’m going to need roughly a dozen images — not less than five nor more than 20 — because I’ve defined folios this way. In my case, I know they will be 8x10½”, probably include a small text introduction of 3-500 words, and possibly print titles. I work within those guidelines to create any given folio. These guidelines liberate me.

Obviously, you can build a structure any way you want; it could be a book of 80 images, a PDF of 3 images with voiceover, or 150 prints in a framed show — if that’s a structure you’re comfortable with. What the structure you use for your work is up to you, of course; it’s the fact that you have a structure for your finished work that will help propel you forward.

A defined structure provides a mental image of how the project is going to be completed. The power of such a mental image should not be underestimated. Once you have a mental image of the finished project, you will be drawn magnetically towards it. It’s a fundamental part of human psychology: when we can see a goal clearly in our mind’s eye, we are powerfully attracted to it.

The challenge of getting unstuck when we don’t know how to finish something is usually because we can’t see the finished artwork in our mind’s eye. We don’t know how to proceed because we don’t know the direction we should aim. As the old story says: Anyone can shoot an arrow more accurately than an Olympic archer — provided you blindfold the archer and spin them around a few times. Seeing the target is the first step to aiming.

Structure provides the solution to another key element in knowing how to finish a project: the structure of a project defines the audience who you hope will see your work. If you don’t know who the audience is, it’s difficult to know how to finish your project. For example, if your audience needs to be “everybody in the world via the Internet,” then finishing the project as a PDF or a website makes sense. On the other hand, if you know your audience is defined as someone who collects prints, then printing is the best (and obvious) way to finish the work.

The key idea here, of course, is that you are essentially doing a bit of reverse engineering. With this in mind, it’s less useful to worry about how you’re going to finish the work than it is to define the audience you want to appreciate it. Determine who you want to see the work and that will tell you how you need to finish it.

This next idea about finishing projects has been, for me, one of the most useful and powerful ideas of all: there may be more than one completion for any given project. Early in my photographic career, finishing an image meant making a large print — perhaps an 11x14, maybe even a 16x20 — and then mounting it in an oversized mat board. As I started thinking beyond that traditional presentation for wall display and started thinking about alternatives, I realized the power of thinking in terms of multiple finished forms. Now, I rarely have a project that is finished in only one way. This is partly the result of thinking about more than one audience for any given project. I might need a PDF, a folio, a chapbook, a series of wall prints — possibly even a commercially printed book. Each finished format has its own needs, its own audience and its own creative process.

Essentially, I’ve come to think of a project as independent of the medium (or media) I use to finish it. The connection between project and medium has dissolved and become a connection between audience and medium. In addition, with each new medium and form for finishing I develop, I have a variety of tools at my disposal that I can use for any given project. That is to say, I’ve learned how to create in a number of different media; each one of those can be a different way to finish a body of work. Now, when I’m at the midpoint process of some project and I’m not quite sure where it’s going to go, I can “scan the toolbox” and visualize a variety of ways of finishing it. I simply pick and choose, rather than invent something new with each and every new project. This is an entirely different kind of challenge (and a much easier one) than trying to figure out how to finish something when you have no idea what direction to take.

There is another implication to multiple completions, however, that I’ve found equally useful. If an image or a project has one and only one completion, the pressure to make it perfect can be daunting. No, it can be downright overwhelming, intimidating, with a deer-in-the-headlights sort of block to our creativity. Perfectionism waltzes in with its ever-present twin, procrastination.

By allowing myself the freedom of completion in more than one media, I’ve also realized that this also applies to more than one edition. Borrowing from the book paradigm, we can have a first edition, a second edition, a revised second edition, a third edition, etc. I find this incredibly liberating! What I do today is a reflection of who I am today. At some point down the road, when I am a different (and hopefully more mature) artist, I might issue a second edition that will reflect who I am as an artist at that point in time. There might be a third edition, etc. Producing the very best I can today is a far better promoter of productivity than the pursuit of perfection. There is no doubt that in five years I will be a better photographer, a better printer, a better artist, so why not wait until then to produce that masterpiece? No use making something today that will be better if I wait to produce it next year. Yikes.

Stuck in Life: The problem of time

There is probably no bigger block to creativity than the ubiquitous plague for all of us in this busy age in which we live: the problem of not having enough time. Life’s demands on our spare time are seemingly endless: there are house responsibilities, family responsibilities, various kinds of leisure activities that pull us away from our artmaking. Time is our most precious commodity. So how do we get around that? How do we manage time in a way that allows us to create artwork?

I struggled with this for years until I reached the conclusion of a long train of thought. I was in my late twenties in the midst of a very fallow period. I hadn’t produced anything for months. I decided what I needed was more discipline. If I only had willpower and control, I could get my artwork done! I decided the way to handle the problem of discipline was to set up a strict schedule. Filled with steely determination, I started by thinking that I would discipline myself to get into the darkroom a couple of nights a week — Tuesday and Thursday nights, plus every other weekend. But, the more I thought pragmatically about this schedule, the more I realized that it wasn’t going to work. I simply had too many other obligations and responsibilities.

Being realistic yet still determined, I modified that initial, aggressive schedule by abandoning my plans for Tuesdays and Thursdays. I’d just work with greater intensity every other weekend. But, I quickly discovered that there was the grass to mow, the kids’ soccer games, the house needed to be painted, and family obligations overran my good intentions. I again modified my schedule to work only once a month — the entire weekend in the darkroom or out photographing. When that fell apart under the pressures of reality, I committed myself to one inflexible day in the darkroom every month. Then it hit me: my art career — this thing that is so important to me — was going to receive a scant 12 days of attention a year! Clearly, to be an accomplished photographer I knew I had to think differently. The problem was not discipline and my slothfulness, but something else.

For me, the solution came slowly, but thankfully it did arrive. I realized I had to stop trying to separate my art life from my everyday life. I was too busy trying to compartmentalize and separate my family life, my work life, and — way over there, in this little corner of time that’s left — my art life. That was the flaw in my thinking. By compartmentalizing my life, the reality was that there just wasn’t much time left for my artwork because the other demands were so pressing.

The only successful way for me to make room for my artwork was to integrate it with the rest of my life. That took the form of some rather simple things, the least of which was carrying the camera in the car with me everywhere I went. Every day while I commuted to work, I would have the ability to stop and make a photograph when the light and some subject were beckoning. I quickly realized that if I left the house at the same time I normally would, I wouldn’t have time to make a photograph. A small change in habit was needed; I started my commute an hour earlier so that I would have time to stop and make a photograph when inspiration struck. With this hour available to me, I was amazed how many images I found myself making in that gorgeous morning light.

If I wasn’t making pictures or working in the darkroom, I was looking for pictures or thinking about pictures. I began carrying a photo book with me everywhere I went so in odd moments I could look at the work of published masters and study their images. I carried a notebook with me so that I could jot down sketch ideas, concepts, words, potential print titles, project ideas — things that I would run across in everyday life that might be usable in my creative times. Then, when I did have time to dedicate to my artwork, I began with momentum that carried me forward. I could start being productive immediately instead of having to start from a dead stop.

Essentially, I developed a habit of working instead of waiting for the time to work. Sometimes that meant I could work in the darkroom for an hour after I put the kids to bed. Perhaps all I could do that night would be to mix fresh chemistry, or wash the darkroom trays, or organize my negative files, or prepare a selection of negatives to print the next time I was in the darkroom, or clean the enlarging lens — something, anything to keep momentum. I developed a habit of working in little blocks of time — doing something that I could complete within the time that was available to me.

That habit of working propelled my artwork. We all know that “Success begets success.” The most interesting thing happened: the more regular became my habit of working, the more I found I was accomplishing; the more I was accomplishing, the more I had the understanding of my family and my friends when I needed to take a little time to finish a project. They saw that I wasn’t just goofing off. I was producing something interesting and important — and they became supportive of the time that I needed when I had to take time away from the family or other obligations. That allowed me to make commitments towards somewhat larger projects than ever before.

I still have that working methodology to this day. I work within the time that I have. To be honest, it’s a little easier now because of today’s digital workflow. I can now be productive in Photoshop or in Lightroom even if I have only 15 minutes. I’m constantly writing something, editing a series, sequencing images, keywording, looking at yesterday’s post-processing work to see how I feel about it today, looking at images on the Internet for inspiration, reading blogs, or watching the light wherever I happen to be standing. Life and photography are not two different things. I cannot now imagine a day without photography, so integrated has it become in my routine.

One of my long-time photo friends likes to say that the word “photographer” is a verb. One cannot be a photographer without action. By eliminating the compartmentalization of my art life from the rest of my life, I do have the feeling that photography is my life.

We all know that old bit of wisdom that says if you want to be an accomplished violinist you have to practice the violin every single day. If you want to be an accomplished photographer, photography needs be present with you every single day. Do photography in the time that you have. It’s not a matter of having more hours in the day, but rather a matter of using the ones you have so you can get something done.

Stuck After It’s Done: The post-project blues

Cue the B.B. King blues parade. Admit it, we’ve all been there. The great project we’ve been working on for months (or years!) is at long last completed, and the flurry of finishing is over. The exhibition opening gala is behind you and the only thing on the horizon is a Great Big Blank. Ennui reigns supreme here in the Horse Latitudes and the wind will never return to your sails. Life is a stale ash tray, and then you die. (Too far? Okay, but you get the point.)

Projects have a life-cycle. The end of a project looks nothing like the beginning. The process of moving a project from one phase to the next often carries its own momentum and rhythm. But, when a project ends, the abrupt change of pace can be one of the most jarring in the creative life. The down-shift from autobahn to the driveway can leave you idling.

I used to I find myself in these doldrums wasting time while I’d wait for the next project to emerge from … well, from somewhere. I’d wait and I’d wait, and the days ticked by. I used to think this was a problem unique to me, but I’ve talked to lots of other photographers and artists only to discover it’s a fairly universal experience.

The best advice I received to overcome this lack of inertia came from a painter who struggled with this problem for years. His simple solution was to clean. He’d clean his brushes, clean his workspace, clean his studio, clean his plein-air kit, clean his desk, clean his kitchen, clean the floor. “Cleaning is cathartic,” he advised — and I’ve learned he was right.

I’m convinced this is tied to the idea of creative momentum. If I have no creative ideas to work on, if I can at least keep moving the chances of something happening seem to increase dramatically. As my father used to say; it’s much easier to steer a car that’s slightly moving than it is to move a car that’s stopped still!

When I find myself nearing the end of a project and can see the predictable slack tide in the creative process approaching, I schedule cleaning days. I plan time for going through all the drawers and cabinets and tossing out the old stuff; I do my computer backups and update my off-site storage discs; I sort and archive the recently concluded project’s master files and delete the no longer needed temporary files; I recalibrate my computer monitor; I clean all my camera lenses; I reformat my SD cards, charge my camera batteries, and vacuum my camera bag; I re-file all the books I’ve pulled off the shelves; I empty the trash, damp mop the counter tops and floors, and dust every surface I can find.

Does it always work to bring me back to a creative state? Not always, but it does give me a clean start and make me feel better about my workspace. Surprisingly, it often does work for some very simple reasons. Somewhere in the process, I stumble across something — maybe in cleaning out a drawer, for example — that gets me thinking. Maybe that’s all it takes to start a spark of momentum.

But, perhaps it’s even simpler than that. Maybe it’s because during all that cleaning I stop trying so hard to be an artist. By sidetracking my mind with cleaning, the creative muse has a chance to percolate when my mind is otherwise consumed with thoughts of 409 and the Swiffer Duster. The key is to keep moving, keep momentum — be a verb — even if it seems a bit mundane. Have faith and remember that roots are still growing even in winter.

PHOTOGRAPHY AS A VERB

12 Examples of The Virtues of Inertia

A friend of mine once mused, “Have you ever noticed how the photographers with the best images are the ones who spend the most time photographing?” You know, he was right. In my own case, I didn’t start producing any photographs that were worth a damn until I was producing photographs that wasn’t worth a damn.

His idea is more subtle than it might look at first blush.

I began my photographic career like most people do: I bought a camera, then I rushed out to make great artwork with my first roll of film. Fifteen or twenty rolls later I again did what most budding photographers do — I gave up photography and went back to looking at picture books and fantasizing what it might be like to be a successful photographer.

Time eases all wounds. I picked up the camera again with the assumption that my lack of early success was because of a lack of knowledge. I turned to how-to books, workshops, seminars, photography clubs, and anyone who knew a bit more than I did. When additional knowledge failed me, I remembered the photographic maxim that superior technique is always found in superior equipment! This naturally led me to years of buying, testing, selling and then buying again various kinds of cameras, lenses, enlargers, tripods, films, filters, lighting equipment, and books on Zen in the art of photography.

The long learning curve had begun. This spiraling cycle describes my first ten or twelve years in photography — and many of yours, too, I suspect. During that time it is not an exaggeration to say that I did not produce one single decent photograph — either aesthetically or technically. I didn’t even produce a single decent negative. In spite of all these failures I did, however, become talented in several crucial areas — guilt, creative avoidance, procrastination, rationalization, theoretical criticism, technique theory, equipment-oriented-blame-fixing, and debt management. Unfortunately, the production of a quality photograph eluded me — until, that is, I learned that the best tool in the bag is persistence and the use of that most rare commodity — the mind.

For me, the turnaround came from Ted Orland and David Bayles in their great little book, Art & Fear. They asked a simple question: Instead of photography, what if you wanted to be a competent or even accomplished violinist? Wouldn’t you intuitively know that you’d need to practice every day? Every day! I took their words of wisdom to heart and started to work consistently on my craft. I can now make a good print and have developed an admittedly brazen confidence about my printing techniques. Today my attention is less diverted to technical frustrations and problem-solving and I can spend most of my limited “creative time” making artwork — instead of reading directions in the Photo Lab Index.

This change took place because I learned the secret formula for success. Here it is: Make lots of photographs. True, mere volume won’t guarantee success, because — in spite of the old maxim — practice does not make perfect. But, practice of perfection does facilitate one’s progress. Practicing (or at least aiming for) perfection is, I propose, the quintessential core of an artist’s life.

To be an artist is a process, not a destination. It is a way of life, not a title for your business card. It is a grand experiment in challenge and discovery, not an accomplishment that earns you a passing grade on life’s report card.

If this advice were more esoteric I could probably make a fortune teaching it on the workshop circuit. Instead, let me offer a few simple and specific suggestions: First, making random artwork on a random schedule for random purposes ends in random results. Even in the world of creative art-making, working on a specific project with defined goals has its purpose.

Second, there is no substitute for a deadline. What percentage of your finished, matted work was completed in the two weeks before a workshop or exhibition? Perfection is an ideal, but finishing is a virtuous close second.

Third, building a house is more difficult than painting one which is more difficult than cleaning one — all of which are part of living. Little projects and big projects all have their place in life’s chores.

With this in mind, here are twelve examples and ideas that might be worth knowing. At various times in my career, I’ve found each of them useful. I continue to refine and revisit these ideas continuously. And, the more I do so, the more I realize that creating photographs — and art with and from them — is truly a way of life — a creative path that deepens and widens the more one travels it.

The 100 Prints Project

I’ve discussed the 100 Prints Project in depth in another article [See LensWork #21, May 1998] so I won’t tell the whole story here. For those of you who haven’t seen that article, here is the quick recap: I imposed on myself a task of printing 100 finished prints in 60 days — a task of Herculean proportions if my previous output was any guide.

After combing through my negative files, I selected 150 negatives, dove into the darkroom and swore not to come out until I had 100 finished prints. Sixty days later I emerged with a new skill level and 102 matted, finished prints ready for exhibition. In sixty intense days I learned so many lessons I was stunned: organizing your negative files is a virtue; if it ain’t on the negative, it won’t be in the print; film is cheap and bracketing is not cheating; find a presentation method you like and stick with it; print for a purpose; printing is the best way to learn seeing — just to highlight a few. Photographers tend to be most on fire about their most recent negatives. We can’t wait to get in there and print them!

In my experience, it’s a better, deeper, and ultimately more rewarding challenge to dedicate yourself to print for an exhibition, portfolio, or project. It is simply more satisfying to have a body of work that is finished and ready for presentation as a unified group.

The PDF Mini-Project

Having just extolled the virtues of project-oriented printing, I need to admit that sometimes expanding an idea or a whim into a full-blown project can be overwhelming and oppressive. Not all ideas are worth months or even weeks of your life. Small projects, with small budgets and small requirements, can sometimes make the most interesting work.

I’ve fallen in love with the idea of PDF mini-projects. By definition these are low-budget/no-budget quick production projects. The final format of these mini-projects are Acrobat® PDF files with the title, possibly some text, and, in my case, just nine images. The Acrobat® PDF format is an ideal way to finish these projects with little expense, no darkroom time, and limitless, no-cost distribution possibilities. I can send these to my friends, post them on my web site, or burn them to a CD and mail them inexpensively.

I restrict myself to nine related images and as a mini-project — no more, no less. (I chose nine because it makes a nice three-by-three grid on an index sheet.) By doing just nine images I can complete a project in a reasonable amount of time — often just an afternoon or an evening.

These are fun, loose, unrestricted projects. I can play with ideas, experiment with abandon, and have fun in ways that are impossible with more comprehensive, more substantial, more expensive projects.

I also find that exploring an idea quickly and without too much fuss is liberating.

It loosens me up. It primes my creative juices and sometimes leads to more important and more substantial ideas. I find it useful to listen carefully to my own thought process and take notes while I’m working so freely. Great little ideas have a way of speaking softly.

Your Circle of Friends as Audience

Speaking of CDs, a friend of mine reached a milestone — he turned fifty years old. He had been doing creative photography for thirty of those years and felt that he would like to share this milestone with some of his friends and photographic peers. Publishing a book was out of reach. Producing a portfolio of original platinum prints for everyone was impractical.

So, he came upon the idea of producing a retrospective CD of his favorite images. By definition, he limited his project to just fifty prints in celebration of his fiftieth birthday and called the project Fifty.

He scanned the images, had his computer-savvy daughter construct an Acrobat® PDF presentation which he copied fifty times onto CDs and mailed to each of fifty friends.

Interestingly enough, he shared with me that the process of going through his thirty years of negatives and prints was, in itself, a fascinating exercise. After gathering his favorites, and without a preliminary count, he was amazed to find that the editing process began with over 100 prints to choose from. In the course of selecting and sequencing these images he learned a great deal about his own history, his own tendencies and habits, and his way of seeing. Patterns emerged. Similarities in composition were seen across a wide variety of subject material. Looking back was a fascinating exercise that is now helping him to look ahead.

Even more interesting for him were the comments he received from people who had not seen all of his work. He found the simple act of sharing both rewarding and satisfying.

The Keepsake

Similar to the CD idea above, the keepsake is intended as a gift. I discussed this idea in detail in my Editor’s Comment Art As Gift in LensWork #44. The keepsake can be of an almost limitless design, but essentially is a single photograph or possibly two, usually small, often given as an announcement to the conclusion of a project or to mark some milestone. I’ve usually made keepsakes with contact prints in a French-fold text signature which can be mailed in an envelope. By producing them small, inexpensively, and with care, they can be both eloquent and affordable to produce and distribute — even on a modest budget. They are a great way to develop an audience for your images when sharing and distribution are more important than commerce or profit.

The Folio

Like the keepsake, folios are a way to create and distribute bodies of work that contain physical prints rather than computer media. The word folio comes from the Latin folium meaning “leaf,” and is often associated with the single, loose page from a manuscript. As adapted for photography, a folio is a small portfolio of unbound, unmatted photographic work which can be accompanied by title sheets, text signatures or other individual unbound pages.

Our LensWork Folios all contain archival gelatin silver prints, but there is no reason why a folio couldn’t be produced with inkjet prints or machine-made prints. The key idea in a folio is to use it as a way to distribute and appreciate a collection of images that are related. Unlike the individual photograph in a frame that serves as décor/wall art, the folio is intended to be held and viewed more like a book. As such, it is more intimate both in scale and in content.

Part of the fun in creating folios is the freedom of presenting photographs outside the traditional, beveled-window mats. A folio cover can be designed using art paper, natural materials, complex constructions, or simple, folded protective sheets. They can be any size, include any number of prints, and include any kind of ancillary materials — from objects (feathers, string, metal, you-name-it) to computer media. Because the design of a folio is so open to the creative process, they can be anything from low-budget promotional pieces to high-end collectible artwork.

Postcards from the Road

One of the most fascinating ideas I’ve seen in a long time was a series of postcards from the road that I received from a traveling photographer. While traveling around America with his digital camera, he uploaded, via his laptop computer, to an Internet-based photographic print service like Shutterfly.com or Ofoto.com. From the road he could create a visual travelogue which were mailed directly to selected individuals from the print service. Rather than purchase postcards with their boring or trite tourist photographs, his collection of images created a fascinating way for us to keep up with his travels through this visual diary.

Travels with Samantha by Philip Greenspun

A variation on the theme of a visual diary was created some time ago by the inventive photographer, Philip Greenspun.

If you’re not familiar with his 1993 project, Travels With Samantha, it is well worth seeing his creative use of storytelling and visual diary. This project can be found at www.photo.net/samantha/ and is one of the best, and possible the first, of its genre.

One of the ideas that intrigued me the most about Philip’s work was that he essentially published this sizable project outside the normal commercial publishing world. His work was a labor of love. Our viewing it requires no commitment to buy it. I cannot recall the number of photographers I’ve talked to over the years who have been frustrated by the hurdles of publishing a book of their photographs. Even those with the means to fund their own book printing are often left with a garage full of aging books in search of a marketing bonanza. Book publishing is, in a word, brutal. In two words, it is brutal and bloody. Very few books turn a profit for the publishers and even fewer photography books are successful. Philip’s project side-stepped this morass by finding a creative way around the book business. His compromise found an audience, albeit smaller and more technically savvy, with little or no out-of-pocket expense. Admittedly, publishing on the web (or any other computer media) may not be as satisfying as publishing on paper, but it is a better alternative to not publishing at all!

As an aside, Greenspun’s work eventually attracted a large enough audience to make publication of his work in paper not only possible but inevitable. His book was published in 2000 and is still available and selling well. I find it both fascinating and inspiring that this book started by doing something he could do. The website presentation led him, in turn, to something else that became possible only after the more modest beginnings. Doing something that can be done is better than doing nothing that can’t.

By the way, his project was published serially — as he completed each leg of his travels. A deadline in combination with an audience waiting in anticipation is a marvelous incentive to be productive!

I should also mention that there is a myth that computer media publishing is somehow inferior in quality to book publishing. Just because a project is computer published does not mean that it needs to be inferior in quality. Careful design and meticulous attention to detail are not excluded from computer media. Any form of publishing has the potential to be done badly — or done well. It is the creator of the work, not the medium itself, who ultimately determines the quality of the final product.

A Photo Blog

The term blog is a recent invention. Again, born out of the Internet experience, a blog is a running monologue usually in the form of a diary with regular entries on a variety of eclectic topics. Blogs are usually rants by political advocates or extended commentaries by critics — or simply people with too much time on their hands!

However, an interesting variation has started to crop up that I find interesting both as a viewer and as a photographer. A number of photographers have started their own “photo blogs” in which they post eclectic images or small bodies of work on a regular basis. Is this great artwork? Probably not! Is it a way to add some sense of regular and scheduled photography in your daily routine? Certainly, whether you create or simply view them.

An interesting cousin to this idea is the work of Pedro Meyer and his creative web site Zone Zero (www.zonezero.com). He has been a longtime advocate of digital photography — both Photoshop work and digital means of distribution. This impressive effort shows us a glimpse of the creative potential in an audience — and interesting photography — when the fine print and darkroom work are of secondary importance.

The Valley Spirit

Back in the world of physical prints, a number of years ago I did a small portfolio titled The Valley Spirit. This portfolio consisted of five prints of water — streams and creeks in the forest. The project was both fun and incredibly instructive.

I had just purchased a Polaroid back for a monorail camera and was searching for an excuse to use it. I decided to create a portfolio using Polaroid Type 55 Positive/Negative film. I used the positive for in-the-field proofing and used the negative to create silver contact prints back in the darkroom. The portfolio consists of small contact prints, float-mounted in beveled double-window mats. I had custom-made portfolio boxes produced for the edition. Each portfolio consists of five gelatin silver prints. This was decidedly a serious fine art photography project. As such, I took great care in making the photographs and in every step of the matting and finishing.

Never having used Polaroid materials before, I was amazed at how constructive it was to work in the natural environment with such immediate feedback. I instantly had in my hands the photographic print in both physical and tonal scale. Using this feedback to immediately recompose and re-expose all the compositions was a mind-opening experience. This experience was magnified because, for the first time in my life, I knew the finished format of the work before I was making the images. I had prepared a lifesize beveled double window mat to take with me into the field so I could see my image in the mat board at the same time I was photographing the subject in the field. Old hands with Polaroid materials will probably laugh at my beginner’s awe at this process, but to me it was a revelation how my learning curve was so compressed. Without this use of Polaroid materials I would have photographed, returned home, processed the film, made contact sheets, examined the proofs, returned to the field and re-photographed in order to repeat the process over and over until I was satisfied. With the Polaroid materials I was able to complete this project in two afternoons of photographing and a couple of sessions in the darkroom.

Tangerine Gifts

A friend and I went to Japan to photograph for three weeks. One can’t commit to such a major photographic trek without contemplating its purpose. We decided, before we left, that we would create some kind of joint project on our return. We had no idea what form it would take, but we knew the trip would likely help us define that form.

We were walking down the street in the small coastal region known as Matsushima. This area is known as one of Japan’s most scenic locations. We were headed toward the water when we were suddenly aware of a procession coming our way down the narrow street. With our heavy backpacks and cumbersome tripods there was nothing to do but scrunch out-of-the-way as much as we could so the procession could pass. This was a funeral complete with priests, grieving family, and near the back, distant friends and relations. As the end of the procession neared, an old man walked toward us, bowed, then reached into his pockets.

He pulled out a tangerine for each of us, handed them to us with a bow, and then jumped back in line. The procession disappeared around a corner and was gone. It was a magical moment — one we later came to recognize as a symbol of our trip. Every day after having photographed independently we would get together for dinner back in our Japanese minshuku, and discuss the day’s events. Our shorthand became the question, “What was your tangerine gift today?”

When we returned to America we told the story of the old man and the tangerines over and over. This story was the symbolic focal point of our entire experience in the countryside of Japan. We decided this story would be the focal point of our photographic project. Because of the text requirements needed to tell this story, we decided a handmade book would be the best form for the project.

We called it Tangerine Gifts. We employed a talented woman from the world of book arts to create a letterpress text signature with our story. She then mounted one photograph from each of us in the flyleaf position of these handmade books.

Here again, I found that wall art was not the only way I could make an expressive and creative artistic project with my photography. By combining my efforts with those of my photographer friend and our talented book arts craftsperson we were able to create a product that was both innovative and stretched each of our imaginations beyond our limitations.

The Roslyn Portfolio

The idea of doing a group portfolio is certainly not a new one. I participated in one in 1988 (and again in 1989) that had a fun twist. Four of us got together for a long weekend in the quaint little town of Roslyn, Washington (later to become famous as the home of the TV show Northern Exposure). We spent the weekend individually photographing the town and surrounding countryside. We chose subjects completely independently, not knowing what the others were photographing. After the weekend was over, we each selected four images from the exposures we’d made that weekend. I printed and matted five copies of my selections as my contribution to the final portfolios. Later, we got together with everyone’s prints and assembled the portfolios. In total, we created five identical copies of the portfolio, one for each of us and one to donate to a local photography fundraising auction.

Be Flexible in Your Seriousness

Art is a great experiment in living. As a fine art photographer, a blog or a PDF might seem like a trivial pursuit — but it will keep you loosened-up and shooting — and in the game with regularity! Besides, does everything have to be serious? Or is there just possibly a link between serious art-making, playing around, and goofing off? Creative, new ideas are just that — new and ideas. This is very different than old decisions. There is no magic to becoming an artist. The thirteenth century Zen mystic Dogen said, “If you conduct yourself as such a person for long time, you will become such a person.” In other words, there is no difference between doing it and being it.

LESSONS FROM LENSWORK

I was recently asked a simple question that gave me pause to think: As a photographer, what have you learned in your role as publisher that has helped you in making your own artwork? I’ve thought about this a great deal and would like to share at least some of my observations.

More Than a Pile of Prints

In my youth, I thought the great challenge of photography was to produce a pile of worthy prints. To some degree, this was true back then. But, like most photographers, I thought once I had that pile of matted, finished prints I would be ready for fame and fortune — or at least for exhibition and publication. Such thinking was naive and wrong back then. Now it is laughable. As a friend has recently put it in his blog, “The finished work of thirty years ago is now the starting point for today’s exhibit.” In order for that pile of prints to be ready for an audience, there are such things as the finished form of the work, titles, project statements, publications, web versions — the list goes on and on — that all need to be completed in order to prepare the artwork for public consumption. True, knowing how to photograph and make a good print is the core competency, but we need to be skilled in all these other things, too, if we want our work to be seen in the wider world.

The Chip-Away Philosophy

I used to work in bursts of creative energy. Sometimes I still do. But over the years I’ve discoverd that the tortoise really does win the race. Consistent effort — even if done in small bits — is far more important to getting work completed than the occasional burst of energy. For the longest time, I think I confused the rare and occasional “flash of insight” with the mechanics and grunt work of getting it done. A burst of creativity is a fine thing. It should not be confused with the labor required to execute a project and bring it to completion. For that, chipping away with steady effort is the best solution.

It Truly is Not About Equipment

Any one of us probably works with a fairly limited set of tools. Even the most gear-oriented among us have a limit to the number of different combinations we actually use in our photography. There are thousands of cameras, dozens of formats, scores of manufacturers and untold numbers of combinations of ways we can use all the stuff they make. I can tell you with some authority that every combination of equipment you can dream up has the potential to be used to make great photographs. I’ve seen great work made with all kinds of equipment. I’ve also seen really bad work made with the same equipment. In the pursuit of art, equipment is simply not the solution — however true it may be that it is a necessary tool.

Pursue Perfection, Accept Excellence

Artmaking is almost the one area of life where we are free to pursue perfection at all costs. We work hard to make the best photographs we can — absorbing the costs whatever they may be, spending the time it requires to squeeze that last bit of excellence out of a negative, sacrificing our evenings, our weekends, our vacation time to make a work of art that we hope is worthy of the ages. It is a corner of our life that is without compromise. This is an ideal breeding ground for perfectionists and a large number of people who are attracted to photography are seduced by the very concept of perfection. But, in practice, when every print can be improved, when every mat can be cut with greater precision, when every image can be tweaked ad infinitum, the practical result of such perfectionism can be a stagnation imposed by the possible. We can easily be seduced into procrastinating the completion of any project or image because we know there is something even better just around the next corner. Making artwork is not the same thing as working on artwork. Finishing is required, or we are just fooling around. The key is in that old maxim, “Pursue perfection, but be willing to accept excellence.”

The Future is Unpredictable

We started publishing LensWork in the time BI — before the Internet. Who knew? How could Edward Weston have predicted that his wonderful photographs would be seen by people around the world on a glowing screen of photons? Photography is a technology-based pursuit and is obviously affected by the changes in technology as they unfold. We cannot now predict how our images will be seen in the future. As blasphemous as it sounds, our work is far less tied to the materials of production than we might guess. If the magic in a photograph is solely a function of its use of silver molecules (or ink, or metal salts) alone, it is emasculated and very likely to suffer as the means of viewing it change in the unpredictable future. Weston’s Pepper #30 is a marvelous silver print. The reason it is a great photograph is that it is also a marvelous image outside of silver printing. We may not be able to predict how our images will be seen in the future, but we can predict that there will be ways to view photography that we cannot possibly imagine. Content, not media, is and always will be king.

The Value of Deadlines

We publish two very different kinds of photographers in LensWork. There are those whose “day job” is as a professional photographer — commercial, assignment, advertising, weddings — but who shoot personal work on the side, and those who are true amateurs whose pursuit of photography is more akin to a passionate hobby — something they do outside their day jobs or perhaps in retirement. Both groups produce wonderful work. There is no qualitative difference that I can discern. There is, however, a productive difference that is profound. With the hobbyist, I’ll often hear, “I’ve been working on this project for years,” followed by a series of unwitting excuses for not finishing it that promise nothing in the way of completion in any foreseeable future. With the professionals, it’s, well, different. They’ll say, “I did this project last year. I photographed for X weeks, returning several times to complete the project. Here are the images, the captions and titles, the artist’s statement/introduction, the press release, the bio information, the links to my website — oh, and I’ve thrown in two other projects I thought you might be interesting in for a future issue. Let me know if you need anything else.” I’m speechless, grateful for their having made my job as publisher so easy — and impressed. And don’t forget, these are the busy guys who are not retired. There is an old maxim that goes, “If you want something to get done, give it to a busy person.” It’s true. I believe the successful professional achieves success not only because they’re good photographers, but also because they are organized and disciplined individuals. We hobbyists can learn from them.

Nuggets of Wisdom are Everywhere

I have interviewed hundreds of photographers for LensWork and LensWork Extended. I am yet to talk with a single one from whom I did not learn as least a nugget or two of wisdom. Everyone, every situation, every experience, every scene, every book, every conversation, every website — every everything can teach us, show us, inspire us, motivate us, if we allow it and become aware. I used to think that only inspiring things or inspiring people could inspire art. I know attribute such thinking to my limited, youthful, untrained way of looking at and living in the world. Things/people are a mirror as well as a source.

One of my favorite stories (which I’m sure many of you have heard) goes something like this: A wise, old gatekeeper was sitting at the gate to the city. A person approached and said to him, “I’m thinking of moving here from my old home town. People there were so mean and spiteful, all gossips and cheats. What are the people like in this town?” The old man said, “You’ll find them just the same here, too.” After a while a different person approached the gates and paused to say to the gatekeeper, “I’m thinking of moving to this town, but I’m saddened to leave my home where all the people are so honest, hardworking, and so amiable. What are the people like in your city?” The gatekeeper replied, “You’ll find them just the same here, too.”

The Golden Age of Photography

There is a myth about photography with which I thoroughly disagree. Supposedly, the Golden Age of photography was in the photographically innocent and pioneering days of the 1940s or the 1950s, particularly in Carmel, California. The Weston/Adams (or perhaps the Cartier-Bresson, or pick your favorite master of yesteryear) era was the time when fine art photography reached its zenith. According to this myth, we live in the post-apocolyptic era when money invaded art, when electronics overwhelmed photography, when people are motivated by publicity rather than passion. In our day, the art is vapid, people are corrupt, and new opportunities are a thing of the past. Hogwash. As the publisher of LensWork, I’ve seen so many creative portfolios, talked with so many inventive and creative people, seen the momentum of photography accelerate beyond anything in the past! The audience for fine art photography has never been larger. The tools we have to make photographs have never been more diverse. The venues to exhibit, the methods to publish, the ease of finding new subjects, and the range of creative possibilities have never been greater. Never. Indeed, this is the Golden Age of photography. Right here, right now. You and I are living right in the middle of it. I say this not to slight those who have gone before us, but we would be foolish to think that ours is in any way a lesser world of potential than that in which the masters of photography lived and worked.

COLLABORATION

Penn and Teller, Lennon and McCartney, George and Ira Gershwin, Holmes and Watson, Abbott and Costello, Siegfried and Roy — and let’s not forget Reese’s Pieces. If collaboration is good enough for peanut butter and chocolate, why not photography? There are, of course, the Starn twins or Bernd and Hilla Becher, but beyond that, how many photographic collaborations (not including photographer/writer partnerships) can you bring to mind? Collaborations of photographers are rare — and that’s too bad, because these partnerships offer fertile ground for creativity.

Collaborations add creativity to a project. Ideas get brainstormed; possibilities are explored; one thought sparks another; disconnected ideas find soulmates that lead to better ideas. As my father used to say, “Two heads are better than one, even if one of them is a cabbage head.”

Beyond creative motivations, collaboration can also be an interesting way to join forces to meet the challenge of finding a broader audience for your work. Art is (or can be) a risky affair; a shared risk can be an easier burden to bear. Projects that are too expensive for one person might be within reach if the costs are shared. Indeed, working with a gallery or a publisher is a collaboration of sorts that is indispensable for connecting with an audience that exists beyond your own personal circle of friends and acquaintances.

I’ve had experience with collaboration in both senses — creative and distributive — and thought I’d take the opportunity here to share a few examples of photographic collaborations that might be productive to adapt for your use.

The Roslyn Portfolio

A collaboration can be a purposeful endeavor. Early in the 1980s, a few friends and I thought it would be a hoot to spend a weekend together sharing our prints with each other and doing some photography. In the course of our planning, it occurred to us that we could use the weekend as an opportunity to produce a joint portfolio. Each of us produced five photographs from the images made that weekend, which we contributed to each of five portfolios. The resulting portfolio was a great way to share work with each other, see how other photographers approached a common subject at the same time with the same light on the same weekend, and gave each of us a tangible memento of a fun photographic weekend and collaboration.

I’ve mentioned this portfolio in other issues of LensWork and recently received a similar project from a group of photographic friends who call themselves the Midwest Large Format Asylum. (You gotta love the name.) It’s a great way to challenge yourself to produce work on short notice and at the same time connect with some creative peers.

Print Exchanges

A somewhat simpler variation of the joint portfolio is a print exchange. These have become quite popular on various Internet forums. If you’ve never participated in one, I can highly recommend them. It’s a simple idea — a group of photographers all agree to create X number of copies of one of their images. Each photographer then sends their stack of prints to the print exchange coordinator, who gathers all of the work. The coordinator then divides the work so that each participant will receive a print from all the other participants, and then ships the collated sets back to the participants. It’s a great way to see what other photographers are doing with a thematic subject, a given technology, or even an exploration of a printing technique or materials. It’s a low-cost way to participate in something that can be quite educational and useful. It’s also a heck of a lot of fun.

Website Collaborations

Let me recommend for your review a collaborative website called shuttersisters.com. This is a group website hosted and managed by a collective of (not surprisingly) women photographers who use a photo blog format as a means to share their work with a wider audience. By combining their efforts, they not only amortize costs and labor, but provide a very interesting and varied aesthetic that is always entertaining, educational, and inspiring. By combining images and blog comments, they provide an experience that’s more akin to a good book than the typical website/brochure presentation seen so often in photo sites. By making this a group project, they are able to focus their participants to a small group of individuals who share a common aesthetic and outlook towards their photographic craft — an attribute that is a welcome contrast to the megasites like Flickr.

Tangerine Gifts

In 1990, long before LensWork was even a glint in my imagination, David Grant Best and I traveled to Japan on an extended photographic adventure. After three weeks of traveling through the remote northern region known as Tohoku, we felt compelled to commemorate our trip with some sort of collaborative project. After several false starts, we eventually produced an artist’s book that included one photograph from each of us and a letterpress text story from our travels. To accomplish this, we collaborated not only with each other as photographers, but also with bookbinding master Sandy Tilcock (www.lonegoosepress.com), who designed and constructed an exquisite piece for us.

In this case, unlike the Roslyn portfolio, we didn’t set out on our photographic adventures with a collaboration in mind. Our original intent was to simply travel together and photograph independently. The collaboration came as an afterthought, and that in itself demonstrates a possibility for collaboration. It might be worth reviewing your past to see if there are collaborative projects which you can excavate from your personal history. Sometimes the question is not “Did we work together?” but rather, “Can we work together?” in the production of a project that is conceived only in post-production.

The Tangerine Gifts collaboration offers yet another lesson I’m compelled to share. In the original production of the Tangerine Gifts artist’s book, we produced far more letterpress text signatures than we consumed. (I guess that’s a polite way of saying we sold fewer books than we had hoped!) And here is the lesson: don’t burn your creative bridges. Thankfully, we just couldn’t bear to throw out the beautiful but unused letterpress text signatures. We carefully packaged them and stored them neatly away — and then completely forgot about them. Now, nearly twenty years later, we recently rediscovered them and have repurposed these long-lost text signatures into yet another collaboration — this time as a Tangerine Gifts folio. This new folio includes nine images from each of us.

Beyond the Visual

Bruce Barnbaum has participated in a couple of collaborations that are worthy of attention. His two most recent books, Tone Poems and Tone Poems II, include a collaboration with pianist Judith Cohen. Together they selected pieces for classical piano that they felt harmonized and complemented Bruce’s black-and-white photographs. His books are accompanied by a CD of her piano performances.

Whether such a collaboration satisfies his audience for photography is almost of secondary consideration. The collaboration was of great importance to his creative process and his thinking about and production of the photographs. In itself, this is a value to the photographer even if the collaborative effort is never made public as a collaboration. I suppose another word for this might be inspiration, but it takes on a more immediate contribution when the collaborator is a real person with whom you engage your creative process “in the flesh,” as they say.

Keys to Collaboration

In all of these examples, the key to successful collaboration is to find an area of common ground. Collaborations are a delicate balance between the self-indulgent creative ego and the needs of the group. Pick your partners wisely, and be sure they (and you) all understand and can commit to the common good for the project.

Define the goals and the costs before beginning. Do so on paper — not as a contract, but rather as a means to be sure you are all “working from the same page,” literally. This will avoid any conflicts downstream as to what was agreed by the members in the initial stages.

Be realistic about the results you can and can’t control. Don’t, for example, define income as the measure of success; your group is not in control of whether or not the public will buy your artwork. Instead, define the finished production of the work and the marketing effort as the goal. You may hope for income, but keep the group collaboration in the group’s control.

Build in some flexibility. If your project requires ten people for success and nine people will imply a failure, plan your project with a few substitutes who can jump in should one or two of the original ten people need to withdraw. If you are targeting for a group book publication of 120 pages but find late in the process that the budget grows beyond your comfort levels, have a backup plan that allows you to succeed with a 96- or 112-page book. Plan for the unexpected as best you can. Ask as many “What if…” questions as you need to in order to insulate the project within reason.

Be aware of the “least common denomenator” syndrome. Have defined quality standards for the group that motivate the particpants to rise to the occassion, not the reverse.

Have an exit strategy. When will the collaboration be complete? Know how you are going to dissolve the group comfortably. If you don’t, you may find that entropy will grind things to a crawl and leave people feeling frustrated.

Finally, remember that one of your primary motivations for such collaborations is probably to have fun. So, have fun!

FINDING THE PROJECT

Of all the dilemmas that face us photographers perhaps the most common is the ubiquitous question: What should I photograph? In some instances, the answer pops up right before us and is easy to discover. More frequently, we find ourselves wandering through the world looking for something to photograph: wondering what we should point our camera toward. Too often I’ve found myself scanning the surroundings for anything that catches my eye, frustrated that the world can be such a boring place, grasping anything with my lens that I think might make an interesting photograph, longing for luck and a touch of photographic mojo. It rarely works.

Fortunately, in my photographic career, I’ve noticed a more useful pattern that leads to success that’s worth sharing, so here goes.

Wander around long enough and eventually you’ll find some place that is of interest. With excitement, we pull out the cameras and get down to business. This is exactly what happened to me on a recent photographic outing. I stumbled across the Cataldo Mission, a Catholic mission in northern Idaho built by Jesuits in 1840, now preserved as a state park. It is an impressive historic building and clearly offered photographic potential. But, what to photograph? How was this an interesting subject with which to make art? I did what I normally do: I position my tripod and start making images of the fairly obvious compositions. It seems that no matter the subject, whenever I do this I end up with boring photographs that are of a documentary nature. The first dozen exposures or more simply record what the place looked like, often in a way that is generic and static; as creative as a Xerox copy. Over the years, I’ve learned that such obvious compositions are an important part of the “loosening up” phase of my process, like limbering stiff joints after a long drive. I photograph with self-indulgent patience, but universally find these images of little use. They are too predictable. (In fact, after I had been working away at these initial images for a while in the Cataldo Mission, another photographer came into the church and started photographing. I observed him position his tripod in the exact same locations I had and make the exact same compositions of the exact same subjects that I’d photographed an hour earlier.)

The obvious ones may be a good place to start, but it is important to get them out of the way quickly so you can let go of them. It’s here where the test of making fine art photography gets interesting. Moving beyond the obvious is a creative act and one that often is both the challenge and the reward of the artist.

So, how does one do that? There are, no doubt, many ways to break beyond the obvious compositions, but for me there is one pattern that has been repeatedly successful throughout my career. I find some detail that is emotionally expressive and interesting — one that captures my imagination and allows me to examine the subject more closely. My attention migrates from the place — and images that merely present it to the viewer — to the details and the way those tidbits tell a story. To play off the old maxim, “The angel is in the details.”

In the Cataldo Mission, it was the hands. I suddenly became aware that everywhere I looked — in the statues, in the paintings, in so many aspects of this 170-year-old building — there were hands; the hands of God. The phrase “The Hands of God” suddenly popped into my brain as a title, as the definition, as a delineation of detail that could, possibly, create a theme around which a photographic project could develop. Such a moment of insight is, for me, the magic of the creative process. My work shifts from static documentary to something that invigorates me with a creative drive. Keep in mind that at that moment, I still don’t have any idea if the inspiration is an interesting or valuable photographic project, but at least the work is no longer mere documentary. My purpose takes on an interpretive tone in which I can use my creative mind and photography to say something a bit more interesting than “this place exists.”

As I say, with the Cataldo Mission, it was the hands. At Fort Worden a few years ago — an old World War I artillery battery I’ve discussed in other articles — I started by photographing walls and doors and windows because they were everywhere. When I started seeing the details in the graffiti on the walls, the project evolved from the physical structure of the battery to the calligraphic shapes painted by the park rangers to cover up the graffiti. This vision developed into my project Wakarimasen which, in its final form, had nothing whatsoever to do with Fort Worden. The project simply used the visual material at Fort Worden to create a completely different artistic statement. In my project Silva Lacrimosa (Tears of the Forest), I started by photographing the forest — specifically, the ponderosa forest of the Okanogan after a devastating fire. But, what began as simple landscape images evolved into something more artistically interesting when I started focusing on the details of the charred trees. The project fully came into focus when I photographed a bit of sap that had run down one charred trunk creating what to me looked like the tears of the forest.

Once I became aware of this pattern — moving from documenting-the-scene to focusing-on-the-details — I realized this was a pattern I’ve used in one way or another in almost every photographic project in my career. I suppose it goes without saying that once a pattern like this is recognized, it can then be specifically employed as a strategy to find the project in what would otherwise be a somewhat emotionless and factual collection of images.

The trick here, I think, is not so much to just photograph details but rather to focus our attention and in them find the emotional content that we want to express in the project. To be specific, search for the “emotional hook” in the project by searching in the details of what is before you.

One of the things I like about this idea is this: There are many creative paths available in any subject because there are so many ways to see details. That I chose the hands as my area of focus in the Cataldo Mission does not mean that that was the only choice. There were dozens of other details that could just as easily have been the cornerstone of a project. A dozen photographers all pointing their cameras at the same church could end up with a dozen different projects by focusing on a dozen different details, each project a personal expression, a personal collection of images that connects the photographer (and hopefully the viewer) to the creative point of view. It’s not merely that close-up photographs create the project, but rather that close-up photographs may help you identify a particular theme, a particular emotion, a particular point of view that can create a more interesting artistic statement than merely, “This is what this place looks like.”

Another part of the effectiveness of this strategy is quite simply that it propels us to pay closer attention and to look at the details we may otherwise miss. It’s far too easy to want to make images that “take it all in,” to compose the very large world into a very small photograph. Sometimes these images are necessary in the project; they’re called “establishing shots” in the movie business. Once the scene is set, it’s the creative eye that sees the details overlooked by the casual observer that make the intimate artistic statement that we artists strive to create.

Find a place you would like to explore photographically and plop yourself in the middle of it. Then, pay attention to the details. Pay particular attention to reoccurring elements, to your emotional responses to those details, to the visual possibilities that can be explored with your camera as you look more closely at the elements of the scene.

Even if this technique doesn’t help your project to evolve into a finished point of view, it can still be a wonderful way to identify photographically interesting tidbits that you may otherwise have missed if you focus your full attention on the grand view. If my experience is any indication, don’t be surprised if the grand view dissolves and disappears entirely from the project as you find the real photographic potential exists in the smaller specifics that most people would simply never see.

And isn’t that the role of the true artist? To bring to the viewer a fresh way of seeing? When finding your next project, you may discover that the angel is in the details.

PRINTING FOR A PURPOSE

My first efforts in photography were, not to put too fine a point on it, somewhat clunky. They were crude and unrefined. Okay, they were ineffectual, sloppy, ill-seen, badly printed, poorly cropped, badly lit, mostly gray, excessively grainy, and just plain ugly. Their only virtue was that they were insufficiently washed — which thankfully means that most of them have now faded or, even better, completely dissolved.

Looking back, however, their worst attribute was that they were entirely random. By that I mean that they were not merely random subjects, but they were totally random in their production, style, and finish. They were printed on random papers — Agfa Brovira 119, Brovira 111, Kodak Polycontrast F, Kodabromide F, Medalist N, Oriental Seagull, and a few others I’ve now forgotten; they were toned in one of my 15 favorite toners; matted in a variety of mat boards (which might have been white, ivory, arctic-white, matte black, and even a few in royal blue — I am not joking); using a variety of methods — flush mount, edge mount, single mount, edge trimmed, with a window overmat, signed, unsigned, stamped, signed with pencil, signed with pen, signed on the front, signed on the back (I’m sure I would have signed on the edge of the paper could I have written so small); and, in every size from 35mm contact prints to 20 x 24 inch prints from large format negatives. All of this experimenting was educational, I’m sure, but I didn’t think of it as educational back then. I thought I was producing serious work.

The consequence of such random efforts became clear when I was invited to exhibit my work for the very first time. I excitedly gathered my very best photographs and lined them up to organize the pending exhibition. The forty pieces of work I selected looked, once I had them gathered together as a group, entirely eclectic — as though they had been produced by forty different people. There was no consistency in their finish and presentation and, I was forced to conclude, no possibility of accepting the invitation to show my work. I realized that what I had been doing to that point was printing, but not producing.

This experience taught me one of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned in photography: Print for a purpose. Until then, my darkroom work was primarily motivated by curiosity and enthusiasm: I wonder what I can do with this (usually new) negative? By engaging in such random printing I was producing photographs, but I was not producing anything that had a purpose. I don’t mean a purpose as in “changing the world” or some such lofty goal; I mean producing work with a purposeful end in mind, a specific end in mind, a specific product in mind. It’s good, especially in the beginning of one’s career, to experiment with such a variety of production techniques. It’s even good to do so later in one’s career. But, there is a substantial difference between experimenting with techniques and selecting the best technique to use in a given project.

In short, I learned that the most meaningful work is found in those projects that are produced purposefully, in order to complete a specific artistic vision or statement.

The corollary I also learned is that projects produced in this way are most often produced within a structure that unifies the work. I discussed the idea of structure in an article in LensWork #21 entitled Getting Serious: The 100 Prints Project. In summary, I proposed that defining a project with a precise set of printing parameters focuses one’s creative energy more precisely on the images rather than on the myriad choices available in production alternatives. In the 100 Prints Project, I decided to make 100 photographs that were all the same size, on all the same variable-contrast paper, toned with the same toner, matted exactly the same, and signed and finished the same way. The result was a coherent body of work that, even to this day, feels like a thing. It is not 100 unconnected photographs, but rather a single, unified body of work. Structure was the key.

Nowhere is this easier to demonstrate than in considering the classic photographic portfolio. One of the elements that unifies a portfolio is the consistency of production choices. Each print is produced in a way that is defined by the overall project. Typically all the work in a portfolio is about the same size, matted the same way, and even matted in the same orientation. These are, of course, not hard and fast rules, but it is the typical way a portfolio of work is seen. The result focuses our attention on the images rather than on the supporting materials. Imagine how difficult it would be to read a novel if every letter was a random font — with that sort of “ransom note” visual chaos. Consistency ensures the best environmental background for the images.

This kind of organizational and presentational consistency is not a result of accidents. Obviously, it is the consequence of the photographer having made specific choices — specific decisions — that predefine the project before production has begun. So much of photography in the last 50 years has emphasized the concept of previsualization relative to the production of a single image. I’m simply suggesting that this idea of previsualization is equally valid for the production of a body of work. If we are printing for a purpose, that purpose has to be defined before the printing can begin — be it a book, a portfolio, a keepsake, an exhibition, a handmade artist’s book, a folio, or any other method of finishing a photograph that is intended to produce a unified body of work.

I almost never print randomly these days. Sure, I’ll experiment and test materials, but this work, in my way of thinking, is not printing; it is research and development. I tend now to think of “printing” as the same as “producing a finished project.” Printing is simply one step in the project’s total task list. A project includes defining the medium, size, finish, enclosure, text, and packaging. More than that, I’ve come to see defining a project as including a predefined audience, distribution, purpose, and intent. All of these together combine to create what I see as the completing of my “artistic vision.”

By the way, more and more I’ve come to see printing as a completely different activity than photographing. The two go hand-in-hand, and they certainly influence one another, but they are not dependent on one another. How and what I captured during exposure defines my available “raw material” for a project, but it does not define my vision of the final project itself. In fact, most often at the time I’m photographing, I have no idea what the finished product — or the finished print — will be. These are tasks that I relegate to the subsequent steps in a project.

One of the things I’ve been fascinated with of late is an idea that so many photographers are borrowing from other art forms: that a finished project might take form in a variety of media simultaneously. The same music, for example, can be a live performance, a recorded CD, and a movie soundtrack. Similarly, a given photographic project can be an exhibition, a book, a portfolio, a PDF, and a website. In each of these predefined independent finished productions, the photographer needs to “print for purpose.” The exhibition might need a certain physical size and a consistent style of matting, for example. Printing for a book needs a consistent tonal scale and resolution/scale defined by the needs of the printer. In each case, the success of the finished product depends on the skill and execution of the photographer to print for the intended purpose. This requires planning, research, visualization, commitment, and even a certain flexibility — after all, a project may evolve during the actual production in ways that are not perfectly predictable.

One of the most interesting aspects of printing for a purpose that I’ve observed in my process of doing so is how printing for a purpose steers me — cajoles me, forces me — to make artistic commitments. Commitment can be a difficult thing for artists because it implies a discriminating choice that rejects all other alternatives. One might be wrong, or foolish, or trite — a fear which artists dread. (Or, perhaps this confesses something more about me than it does about artists in general.) Printing randomly (like leaving work perpetually unfinished) provides the comfort (read excuse) that the work in its current state is not yet complete and that the “finished” work will be better. “These are just work prints, not for exhibition” is a handy way to dodge criticism. A career of such activity will result in a random pile of prints, but precious little that the artist can say represents their artistic vision.

Now that I am in the “second half of life” and can no longer reasonably employ the youthful mythology of immortality, I find myself more and more wanting to print for a purpose, for a finished product, for a definitive statement that expresses my artistic vision in unequivocal terms. I find it much more satisfying to look back at a series of defined conclusions rather than a random stack of potentialities. History may very well judge my projects harshly, but it least I will have produced projects — finished artistic statements — that it can judge. I cannot help but think that this will likely be a better conclusion of my artistic career than a bunch of mismatched prints that appear to be the results from a handful of artists.

I know that Ralph Waldo Emerson said “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Consistency can easily become a rut that limits creativity. On the other hand, consistency of structure appears to help the creative process. Shakespeare wrote histories, tragedies, and comedies all for the structure of the Elizabethan stage; he didn’t just randomly write. Hokusai and the great Japanese woodblock printers did series exploring a theme; they produced individual pieces that were to be seen as part of a group. As I think about the great photographers, the great painters, composers, and writers, they all have one thing in common: they produce their work within a structure as they explored — often for their entire life — all kinds of variations within the structure, and always with the finished purpose in mind. That is to say, they created specific things within a specific structure for a specific and predefined purpose. If this is a method that has worked so well throughout art history, maybe we could learn from history and use this idea in our photography today.

TWENTY-ONE WAYS TO

IMPROVE YOUR ARTWORK

He was young, naïve, just starting. As the saying goes, “Out of the mouths of babes …” He asked, “What are the most important things I should do to improve my photographs?” It was such a straightforward question — and I have been involved in photography so long — you’d think I would have had a simple and canned answer. I did not. I was nonplussed. I decided I’d better think about this seriously if I was to answer in a useful way. My answer was, “Let me get back to you.”

And how do you answer such a question? By looking back — at my negatives, my prints, my methods, successes, failures and, in short, my personal history in photography. From this scrutiny (a rich source of what not to do) I compiled a list, narrowed it down, found the common threads. At the risk of sounding somewhat undeservedly authoritarian, here they are …

1. 1. Shoot more than you do; print more than you do; and be a ruthless editor. I’m serious. There is a great deal to be gained in sheer volume — not that volume itself is any virtue, but practice is. Besides, relentless practice does have a twin sister known as luck. And in photography, unlike golf, a lucky shot when one is just practicing can count as much as a skilled shot when one is serious. Speaking of volume, if you are not throwing out ten finished prints for every one you exhibit you’re not being critical enough. If you are not shooting 100 negatives for every one you print, you are not being energetic enough. Motor drives don’t count.

2. 2. If I could do one thing that would improve most photographs more than anything I would simply tape a big dot in the middle of the viewfinder so that you can’t see what’s in the dead center of the composition. Avoid bulls-eye composition whenever possible. Whenever I see the subject plopped in the dead center of the frame, I know the photographer is confused; they are confused about the purpose of making art. We don’t make art to show someone what something looks like. All this requires is eyes (or a lens). Art is supposed to have meaning, emotion, power, or magic. Don’t merely show what the subject is; show what it isn’t, show what it means, show why it is, how it is, for whom it is, where it is, and/or when it is. Imagine a novel with only descriptions; without plot, motivation, depth, crisis, or crescendo, a novel would be merely a catalog of object descriptors. It is the same with photographs.

3. 3. Think in two-dimensions. You are not making a picture of something; you are making something — and what you are making is two-dimensional. If you can’t learn to see flat, use Polaroid materials. If you don’t have Polaroid materials make a sketch/drawing of your photograph before you make the exposure. Learn to see edges and shapes instead of details and colors. Squint and look at the world through your eyelashes so the details dissolve. Or, try looking through a lightly frosted piece of plastic. See your composition in terms of its large masses first, and let the film reveal the details. Learn that composition is about shapes and that texture is about details.

4. 4. The best telephoto lens in the world is your feet. Move closer. Move even closer. Use wider-angled lenses and get closer. The best photographs are almost always ones in which the viewer feels directly involved in the world in the image, and this happens most successfully with direct engagement. Become engaged with your subject material. The easiest way to do so is with wider lenses and physically closer involvement. Of course, not every great picture of the world is made with a wide-angle lens. But, if 30% of your images are made with a wide-angle lens and 70% with a telephoto, reverse this ratio and you will find your photographs improve dramatically.

5. 5. Photography is part art and part science. It involves the human heart, but is made manifest through optics, chemistry, electronics, and the laws of physics. The science part of photography is composed of an infinite number of variables and is much, much easier to learn if you reduce the number of variables. In the first several years, choose one good film and paper and stick with it. Limit the number of cameras you own, especially early in your career. Learn thoroughly what your materials will do and don’t get seduced by the idea that better photographs reside in better equipment. Never forget that all the great photographs in history were made with more primitive camera equipment than you currently own.

6. 6. Work in projects. Make lots of images and look deeper. Allocate time to rephotographing things you’ve already photographed. Look at the clues in your images and see the things that your photographs tell you they would have liked to have been. Assume your first photographing session is a warm-up, a sketch pad, a get-acquainted session. Allow the images to unfold as you work the project repeatedly. Learn to be receptive to the inanimate objects around you, because they speak to you as an echo of your subconscious creativity. The same can be said of your photographs. Pretend as though your previous photographs are teachers, not children. Every project, no matter what the project, requires research — the kinds of research you do in the library as well as in the field. Read, study, ask questions, look at the work of those who’ve gone before you, think, ask questions, listen some more, and ask more questions. Write things down. If a project doesn’t occupy a serious percentage of a notebook full of notes, you probably haven’t done enough to think about the project before you pull out the camera. Mull over projects from the very beginning to the very end. What do you need to know? Who knows it? What will it look like in its final state? Where will you need to go? Who’s going to care? What are the components? How does this fit? When is the deadline? Is there a budget? How much will it cost? What defines success? What are you willing to sacrifice in order to complete this project?

7. 7. Reverse engineer your equipment. Every image, every project, is best created with a certain set of tools. Start with the image or the project and figure out which tools will best help you to succeed. If you find you are constantly needing new equipment, review #5 above and be honest about whether or not you are choosing the right projects.

8. 8. Attend workshops. Read books. Seek out the advice of experienced photographers. There is no virtue in reinventing the wheel other than the intellectual exercise of doing it. If you want to make great photographs, look at great photographs and talk to great photographers. Be someone’s apprentice for a while. Assign yourself the task of reproducing great photographs as closely as you can. Then, when you’ve succeeded, throw that film and those prints away and never show them to anyone. Learn from the masters, but don’t become them. Don’t seek the masters; seek what they sought. This relates to ...

9. 9. Work through the compulsories. It has truly been said that to see farther than others you should stand on the shoulders of giants. Great photographers and artists before you have made work that survives today as a testament to their creativity. In order for you to carry their torch, you must first trod their path. Don’t be discouraged if it takes you years to learn what they already know; it took them years to learn from those who came before them. Study history. Know the conventions, the rules, the clichés, the techniques — know the mind of those who have already asked and answered your questions.

10. 10. Finish it. Don’t allow yourself to use negatives or raw data files as a storehouse for potential artwork. There is nothing to be gained by having the potential to be great. To paraphrase the movie cliché: if you finish it, they will come. There is a universal Law of Audience that says if you finish work, the universe cannot stand that it remains unseen. Opportunities will unfold as if by magic. In addition, when you are old, you will be able to look back and see which of your projects were the best ones. This is inevitable. But if your best project is, for example, your 10th project, there is no way you could have gotten there until you completed the first nine. There is no faster way, no more efficient way, to get to your life’s best work than to finish the necessary work you need to do that prepares you for your eventual best work. Finish it, let go of it, move on.

11. 11. Realize that creativity does not work on a clock. Be prepared for your creative subconscious whenever it is prepared to show itself. Use a memo recorder. Carry paper and pen. Be disciplined about capturing odd thoughts at odd moments when they pop up. Do photography (or at least think photography) every day. Don’t be surprised if your best and most creative ideas happen when you least expect them.

12. 12. Let go of photography and make art. By that I mean recognize the highest purpose of photography as art is to communicate and connect with your fellow human beings. The objective of photography as a fine art pursuit is not to accumulate artifacts that will impress collectors and curators. Ultimately, your real work is to connect your Self to the world. In doing so, you will pass on to the viewer an artifact which connects them to the world and back to you. Ultimately, if your work does not move someone, it does not move anything.

13. 13. Develop your photographic literacy. Read books, attend exhibitions, subscribe to magazines (particularly ones with photographs that are non-photographic magazines) and develop your own personal mental gallery of images, image-makers, imaging trends, and likes and dislikes. The more you know about other photographers, strange as it sounds, the more you’ll know about yourself — and in particular when it is that you are walking your own creative path and when you are walking someone else’s creative path in delusion.

14. 14. Ignore advice from others if they tell you how to do it their way. Of course, ultimately I suppose this advice also pertains to this list. But, fundamentally, I mean this to apply to photo criticism. There is no more useless critique than when the comment starts out, “If it were my picture I would have done...” It is not their picture, and how they would have done it is totally non sequitur. The best critics will tell you what it is they see in your photograph and leave it up to you to decide whether or not what they see is a function of their unique vision or your success or failure in making the image you intended.

15. 15. Live with it for a while before going public. Create a space in your home or your studio where you can thumbtack lots of pictures to the wall. Keep them there, look at them repeatedly, look at them at different times of day, in different light, in different moods, to see how your response to your image changes with time. See both inside and outside the frame of mind you had when you were creating it. The process of doing so will likely lead you to try printing variations, cropping variations, and even entirely new approaches with a given image. This is good and generally shows that the image is speaking to you — and that you are listening.

16. 16. Forget grants and figure out a way to make it happen on your own. Don’t let the lack of resources get in your way. Do not let limitations prevent you from doing your art. Do not rely solely on the generosity of others; this is a seductive trap. To do so will mean that your work can only progress when someone else wills it. Ultimately, no one cares about your artwork or your artistic progress more than you. Recognize, as Stephen Bender said, that the art life is a benefit you must be willing to pay for.

17. 17. Think clearly about your objectives. Which is more important to you: earning an income or getting your work distributed? Which do you care about more: making images the public loves or making images that you must? If you’re lucky, these are the same, but if they’re not, clearly knowing which is more important to you makes everything else easier. There are no right answers here. There is only confusion when you work at cross-purposes to your objectives.

18. 18. Photography is not a group activity. Learn to work alone. Learn to work without distractions. Turn off the music. Surround yourself with silence. Each one of us has a muse within us who tries to communicate and advise us on the creative path. There are no exceptions to this. But there is also a universality that all muses tend to whisper. To hear them clearly one must reside in a very still place.

19. 19. Don’t photograph what is “photographable.” Photograph what interests you, even if it is impossible to photograph. It is almost impossible to make a great photograph of something that doesn’t interest you. Passion about the subject matter, about the way it reacts with light, about the way it moves and changes, about the way it makes you feel — this is the subject of photography, not the things in the image. There are no boring subjects in the entire universe — there are plenty of boring photographs made by bored photographers. Become passionate about something and that passion will, with time and dedication, manifest itself in your images.

20. 20. Think. Think from your subject’s point of view. Think from your audience’s point of view. Think about what you are communicating. Think about how this will look in the passage of time. Think about what’s on the edges, just inside, just outside the photograph. Think about what you have said. Think about what you haven’t said. Think about what people will think you have said, and what they’ll think you haven’t said. Most importantly, know when to think and when to suspend thinking on purpose. Art without thought is incomplete. Art with thought is incomplete. Artmaking requires both thinking and non-thinking in order to become more than mere pretty pictures.

21. 21. Remember, art is not about artwork. Art is about life. To become a better artist, first and foremost become a better person — not in the moral sense, but rather in the complete sense. Remember that the greatest artist is not the one with the best technique, but the one with the most human heart.

That’s about it, although I do reserve the right to amend and modify this advice as I grow older. I do so because — and this is the real key — art making is a process, and lessons wait in every moment to be discovered. I’m still making art and still learning every day. And I have faith that the most important lessons — as well as my most important works of art — are yet to be discovered. Come to think of it, that in itself is a lesson worth remembering.

THE ARTIST STATEMENT

The first thing I ever wrote was with a crayon — Crayola Burnt Sienna, as I recall. [I see you stifling a yawn.] Then, in first grade, I started using a #2 yellow pencil [You interested yet?] and now I use computers and Microsoft Word version... [“AAAARRRGH!” you say, as you throw this book across the room in frustration.] But, wait, I have a point. This is precisely the reaction of most readers when presented with an Artist Statement that begins with, “My first camera was a . . .” Who cares?

Let’s be honest — don’t we all know that artist statements are rarely read? Ever stop to ask yourself why? Could it be that they are boring, immaterial, poorly written, or simply useless? You can fool me once, but after a few hundred piffly artist statements, can you blame me if I stop reading them?

It’s too bad. The artist statement has a very important role to play in the presentation of art — be it an exhibition, a book, a digital publication, a magazine publication, or a portfolio. As you can imagine, we’ve reviewed thousands of artist statements over the years. With that in mind, let me share a few ideas that might help.

It Ain’t About You, My Friend

I’ve come to the conclusion that for many photographers there’s tremendous confusion between the role of the artist statement and the role of the artist’s biography. Far too many times, a poorly written artist statement reads more like a personal history. Save that information for your biography or curriculum vitae. Instead, make the artist statement about the work the viewer is about to see. It is almost your one and only opportunity to talk about the work itself. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that most artwork requires some sort of introduction that helps the audience understand the work — or at least understand it more deeply. Think of the artist statement as your opportunity to be a docent for the work, rather than an autobiographical statement about yourself.

I’ll go even further. If the attraction of viewing artwork is a function of one’s connection to the artist, then the only people who will be interested in your artwork are those who know you (friends and family) or those who know of your celebrity (a dubious strategy often employed in today’s big-time art world. Rather than artist statements, with this latter strategy you would need talented and effective press agents who could help you cultivate a pop culture buzz. Good luck on that.)

Use first person with extreme caution

The first rule: Never start an artist statement with the personal pronoun “I.” The minute that first sentence starts I saw…, I felt…, I went…, etc. we immediately know the artist statement is written from a photographer-centric point of view. Because the artist statement should not be about the artist but rather about the work, the first sentence needs to focus our attention on the content of the art.

Like everyone else I suppose, when I write text for my artist statements I find it incredibly easy to slide into some form of first-person narrative. That personal pronoun is a dead giveaway; I use it as a yellow flag. Anytime I see the word I in my text, I step back and re-examine what I’ve written to see if it can either be rewritten without first-person, or whether I should eliminate the thought entirely. Usually, I find I eliminate it because it pulls the reader’s attention away from my work and back to me — the last thing I want as the viewers’ focus of attention. Rather than, “I was amazed how beautiful the light was,” try something like, “The angle of the light made the landscape glow.” You get the idea. Not first person personal, not third person detached — find the midpoint that focuses attention on the external.

Whose Motivation?

Nothing pulls an artist statement off-track so quickly as the confession of the artmaker’s motivations. Whether you are motivated to make your art for mercenary commercial reasons, altruistic benevolent ones, or some form of auto-psychotherapy, it really makes no difference to viewers why you put your time and energy into the production of this artwork. Again, such a statement says more about the photographer than it does about the work.

True, artist statements should be all about motivation — but that is to say, the necessary motivation a viewer needs to engage the work with focused attention. Why should the viewer care what you produced? What is their motivation for spending their precious time viewing your work? Why should they give your work the gift of their attention? This is the only motivation that needs to be addressed in the artist statement. In fact, it’s the only reason the artist statement should be written at all. This introduction to your work has the solitary purpose of whetting the viewer’s appetite and piquing their curiosity about what you’ve produced. At the conclusion of the artist statement, the reader should be even more excited to see your work. Artist statements should build anticipation as well as pave the way for deeper understanding. If it can accomplish these two goals, it is an asset that will serve the artwork well.

The Universal

As a Scandinavian, I have been both culturally and genetically impregnated with the idea that braggadocio is unseemly. Perhaps this influences my thinking about artist statements, too. I find I am put off by artist statements that seem to be bragging about what the photographer uniquely saw, how wonderfully they’ve crafted their image, or (the worst of all) the thrill the photographer had while photographing that can only partially be experienced when viewing the work. As a baby boomer, I’ve been told that we are at the leading edge of the “Me” generation — but I just can’t let go of the idea that the best art is never so self-centered.

With this in mind, I’ve always felt that the core of the best art is some universal component that allows everyone to relate to the artwork. For example, Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel paintings are not about his relationship with God, but rather about everyone’s relationship with God. There is a universality in his art that allows each and every viewer to see themselves reflected in his paintings.

I’ve always felt the best artwork has this magical mixture of the personal and the universal. This applies equally to a well-crafted artist statement. Ideally, after reading the artist statement the viewer’s response is both empathetic and personal. We’d like them to think, “I understand. I feel that, too.” The worst thing they can think after reading a poorly crafted artist statement would be, “This artist is boring. I can’t relate.”

Short and Pithy

Shakespeare famously said, “Brevity is the soul of wit.” If this is true for life in general, it’s especially true in an artist statement. Keep in mind that the time required to digest the artist statement is a diversion from the center stage performance. Almost by definition, viewers are anxious to get on to the main event. Artist statements should be short, easily read, and to the point. Condense your message to a couple of main points, not some rambling essay with a dozen observations.

Style

Use vocabulary wisely. Avoid words like hagiography, pusillanimity, and pinteriety. (Yes, I made up that last one, but doesn’t it sound important?) You wouldn’t use such words in everyday speech, so avoid them in your artist statement, too. I’m convinced there’s a special class that all MFA graduates have attended for the purpose of establishing such mellifluous and intellectually vapid writing styles. You will do well to relocate such training in the back corner of your brain where you store algebra, pluperfect verb tenses, and other useless tidbits learned in school. The most accessible writing is conversational in style, not academically obtuse or conceptually opaque. You may quote me on that.

The All-Important Title

We would all do well to accept the fact that not everyone will read the entire artist statement we’ve so painstakingly eked out. It is, however, a very safe bet that everyone will read the title and subtitle. These need to be crafted with the same care that you put into crafting every image. I spend at least as much time on getting the right title and subtitle as I do in crafting the entire rest of the statement.

Choosing exactly the right words takes time. I’m reminded of that old joke (forgive me if you’ve heard this one) of the husband patiently waiting in the living room as his wife prepares for a night on the town to celebrate their anniversary. As she emerges, he would do well to say something like, “Wow, what a vision you are tonight!” Imagine, however, if he selects a slightly different word and says, “Wow, what a sight you look!” Vocabulary is a tricky thing.

Note that the title of the artist statement need not be the same as the title of the portfolio or the project at large. The title of the project identifies what the viewer is about to see, but that can be easily expanded if the title to the artist statement adds and clarifies the project. By further including a subtitle in the artist statement, it’s possible to have three instantly-readable components that virtually everyone will read. Even if they skip the rest of the text, these three carefully crafted components can accomplish a great deal to set the stage for the work and prepare the audience for the experience.

Structure

Also, as best I can, I try to keep paragraphs short, lengthy passages set off by section titles, typography clean, and spelling (ahem) conventional. A good friend of mine (who shall remain nameless) unveiled a new portfolio at a workshop that proudly displayed his artist statement, beautifully typeset in ornate graphics, including an unfortunate extra consonant in the phrase “tits siren song.” A word of advice: Software spell checkers are not sufficient.

Story writers are often advised to have a beginning, middle, and end. This is good advice for an artist statement, as well. A standard structural technique that is both easy and effective is to begin the artist statement with some visual reference or concept which is then again referred to in the final sentences. With this in mind, my final piece of advice is to avoid writing your artist statement with crayon — but if you insist, you can’t go wrong with burnt sienna.

WORKING IN SERIES

or Lessons from Sherlock Holmes for Photographers

Novelists have always understood that one of their great challenges is to get readers to care about the characters and the outcome of their story. How does one quickly move the potential audience from a glance to full involvement? Gee, as a photographer, doesn’t this sound familiar? Well, if their great challenge is similar to ours, wouldn’t it make sense to examine how novel writers accomplish this, and how we might adapt some of their techniques to our medium?

Clearly, a novel fails to engage us if the fictional people don’t somehow “come to life” — and that is a process that takes time and sometimes many pages to accomplish. I’m sure you’ve had the experience of slogging through the first 50 pages of a novel — somewhat disinterestedly — as you developed an understanding of the background, the introduction to the plot, and most importantly developed interest and curiosity about the characters. Fictional characters, like three-dimensional people, take a while to get to know. But here is the rub: the more you need to know, the longer it takes to read and learn about them and this is in direct opposition to the novelist’s need to capture your attention as quickly as possible. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle developed a nifty little trick to overcome this problem.

I was recently reading an essay about Doyle and the Sherlock Holmes mysteries. I had not previously known that Doyle’s strategy with Holmes was based on a pragmatic challenge in writing fiction for periodicals. Doyle wrote primarily for the Strand Magazine. Simply said, it takes valuable space and precious words to introduce new characters to an audience — in particular, to do so in such a way that the characters are convincing, engaging, and interesting enough to the readers that they want to know what happens next. Doyle realized that a series of stories using the same characters would economize their introductions, allow him to move almost instantaneously into the plot with each successive story, and thereby captivate an audience more quickly. By employing this idea of series, he developed a following that was passionately engaged with his fictional characters. They were so engaged that when he killed-off Holmes at the end of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes he was forced to bring him back in The Return of Holmes to satisfy the clamor for more from his devoted audience. (I don’t know about you, but as a photographer I find the idea of an audience clamoring for more of my artwork an appealing, if unrealized, notion. Ahem.)

This is a very old technique in literature — from Alexandré Dumas’ Muskateer series to James Fennimore Cooper’s The Leather Stocking Tales (The Deerslayer, Last of the Mohicans, etc.), and Baroness Orzy’s The Scarlet Pimpernel, to name just a few. In more contemporary examples, so many of today’s writers assume a structure for their work that spans several books — to cite just a few: the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer, The Bourne Series by Robert Ludlum, and Vince Flynn’s series of books about secret agent Mitch Rapp. This list of examples could be very lengthy indeed because such a structure allows a long-term relationship with an audience, and for a corpus of work and characters to develop over time.

How could we use this idea in our photography? It’s a bit of a stretch, but I see similarities in the work of that most famous of photographers, Ansel Adams. For many years, across so many books — and in so many media other than books — Ansel Adams continued to explore the natural beauty of California: the Sierras, Yosemite, the Redwoods, the beaches, etc. In one sense, his entire career can be seen as an extended series of explorations of this common theme that create a sort of continuum that spanned decades of his productive life — similar to the extended story of Harry Potter or Sherlock Holmes told in successive volumes. Each new Ansel Adams publication was another exploration of a familiar theme that did not require a lengthy introduction for us to place the work in context. Adams may not have perceived his career this way, but there are definite parallels between his approach and that of the serial fiction writer.

Examples in photography also occur in the work of Elliot Erwitt, Paul Strand, André Kertész, and Josef Koudelka. Eugene Atgét’s life work can be seen as a serial exploration of one theme only: the streets of Paris. I should also include Lewis Hines and Werner Bischof. In more contemporary examples, Jock Sturges, Keith Carter, and Michael Kenna come to mind. Here again, the list could grow indefinitely, although in some cases it’s not always easy to differentiate between serialized work and work that is unified by a photographer’s personal style.

In a somewhat simplistic example in my own work, I’ve employed the ideas of series in my annual Winter Trees folios. Each year I produce a new folio of five images that can be appreciated outside the context of the series, if need be — just like individual stories in the Holmes series. However, in the context of the annual series, each folio complements its brethren as the series grows year after year — just like the corpus of Holmes stories do for serial fans of the famous detective.

But, there is another application for this ideas of series that I’ve been thinking about of late. I have three bodies of work that are growing into a cumbersome volume of images — the calligraphic-like abstracts from Fort Worden, my long-term project from the farms of rural North Dakota, and the new work I’ve begun in the shipyard across the street from the LensWork offices. I now have over 200 images from Fort Worden, over 150 from North Dakota, and can foresee double that accumulating from the shipyard. These projects can very quickly become unwieldy and uncomfortable with the inclusion of so many images. Viewer fatigue is a serious challenge in this age of the short attention span. Allow me to digress for a moment.

The other day I sat down with a new photography book that included some 85 wonderful landscape images. After the first 20 or so - in spite of that fact that the images were incredible and engaging - I found it difficult to maintain my attention and, in frustration, set down the book. At least for me, that many photographs cannot be consumed in a single sitting. Unlike a novel (which is consumed over several sittings by definition), a photography book feels more like something that should be seen or enjoyed in a single sitting — like a movie, or a television show, or a gourmet meal. I’ve been working with portfolios in LensWork (12-20 images) and folios (5-20 images) for so long now, perhaps I’ve just become accustomed to viewing in a single sitting. Which brings me back to the problem of projects that have hundreds of images.

What do we do when confronted with an overwhelming volume of artwork? We can edit with a ruthless machete; we can force the viewer to consume more than they are comfortable consuming; or, we can divide. We can serve up smaller bits that are aesthetically digestible in comfortable portions. For example, when viewing classical artwork (paintings at the museum come to mind) it’s silly to try to consume the museum’s entire offerings in a single visit. Instead, we make several visits, examining a small portion of the total with each experience. We could do this with a book of photographs, too, but for some reason this seems an unsatisfying answer to me.

Here is an example of dividing a project into digestible portions from my Made of Steel project: in addition to publishing the 96 finished images in the project in a single PDF e-book, I divided the project into five folios of fine art prints, each with a specific focus based on geography. I used the term Made of Steel to identify the series but titled each individual folio based on its collection of prints, i.e., Made of Steel – Oregon; Made of Steel – Washington; Made of Steel – North Dakota; Made of Steel – The Central States; and one special set Made of Steel – Joe Sasak from the photographs I made of this single individual and his shop. Each folio is independent, but each is also part of a larger series.

So, with larger projects perhaps one answer is this idea of serialized publication. That, in combination with ruthless editing, could produce a series of smaller, more easily digestible portions from a project — be they folios, Blurb books, PDFs, or even a sequence of servings in a gallery exhibition. (I know I’m running dangerously close to overload with all the food metaphors, but they so aptly express the concept. Sorry.) Strategically, I’ve done this with my annual Winter Trees folios mentioned above that, with the passage of years, will develop into a sizeable body of work but be served to my audience in more comfortable annual bites. (I promise, that’s the last food metaphor.)

Similarly, I’m specifically building a structure for my work in the shipyard that will divide that project into smaller subsets. Rather than visualize this as a book of 100 to 200 prints, I see it developing as a series of individual folios (or PDFs), each with the typical 10 to 20 prints, and each with its own title, but collected under the series name Shipyard Stories. I’m simply following the pattern laid down by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who essentially published books of independent short stories under collective titles like The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, etc. Examined more closely, each of the short stories were an independent, freestanding tale later gathered under the single series title. This seems a perfectly reasonable approach for a long-term photographic project as well.

One obvious challenge is how to balance the needs for independent units that also fit into the superstructure of the whole. Here again, the novelists have given us some clues: common titles, using similar writing styles across the series, linking projects with common themes or characters, carrying the plot forward with each installment, etc. If you are not familiar with the Nick Bantock publication series in the Griffin & Sabine books, they are well worth your study. Pay attention to this brilliant and playful artist and storyteller’s use of a similar color scheme, physical size of books, use of type fonts and styles, and how each book works both as an independent story yet fits just as comfortably as a part of the whole.

As photographers, we can adapt these ideas for use in our visual series as well. Think about paper choices, printing techniques, toning and coloration, layout on the page, typography, size and scale, and perhaps even the tonal range of the images in the project. It’s a fine line to determine when consistency crosses over to repetition and boredom, but these are the details that can make the difference between a cohesive whole and a hodge-podge collection. As always in artmaking, the real genius is in the execution.

Clearly such a layered structure with multiple parts is not appropriate for every project, but it’s an idea that appears to have potential when the project becomes uncomfortably large and issues of viewer fatigue become a concern. It can also be a useful production logistic when a project is produced over an extended period of time, e.g., when you find yourself coming back to a theme you thought you had finished some time ago only to realize you weren’t done. Serializing a project has application in such a wide variety of circumstances that it seems a reasonable approach with which to experiment.

Will it work? With Shipyard Stories I’m not sure; I’m just starting the project. I’m much more comfortable writing about ideas that I’ve actually implemented and found successful rather than, as I’ve done here, share untested ideas that may be burdened with impracticalities yet unforeseen. Nonetheless, it’s an idea that has merit at least for a thought experiment and, in my case, for tangible experimentation with a couple of projects. And I can report that this idea of serializing a project has worked successfully in Made of Steel and Winter Trees. I have no doubt that it is a production concept that has merit with at least some projects.

For Ryan, Noah, and Lauren

from Grandpa Apple

Copyright © 2013 Brooks Jensen

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

First Edition, First Printing March 2013

ISBN #978-1-888803-98-3

Published by:

LensWork Publishing, 1101 8th St. Suite C, Anacortes, WA, 98221-1800 USA

www.lenswork.com

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Table of Contents

Cover

Books in this series

Title page

Part 1

When Photography Becomes Art

About Content

On Faith & Fame

The Pursuit of Which Excellence

The Case of the Misplaced Identity

The Context of the Question

Why I am Encouraged by the Piffle on Parade

Part 2

Why Make Art

Creativity Questions

Excellence

The Second (or Third) Time Around

Lessons from Jazz

Look at This

The Pragmatics of Creativity

Tool as Door

Photography and the Meaning of Life

Ambition, Age, & Art

Commitment

The Matter with Subject Matter

Imaginative Photography

Ten Motivations

Part 3

Your Inner Pragmatist

Keys to Productivity

Blocks to Creativity

Photography as a Verb

Lessons from LensWork

Collaboration

Finding the Project

Printing for a Purpose

Twenty-One Ways to Improve Your Artwork

The Artist Statement

Working in Series

Dedication page

Copyright page