It’s probably no accident that one of my favorite words in the English language is “serendipity.” It’s defined as a chance happening that works in a fortunate way, which is a longish way of saying that it’s a happy accident.
I bring this up because I know in many past posts, I’ve emphasized mindfulness and care in making your photos. I still stand by that on general principle, because a careless process often leads to careless photos. With that said, let me emphasize, often but by no means always. I’ve also mentioned, after all, that sometimes we need not to try so damn hard, and I’m reminded as I go back over some of my work that some of my favorite photos didn’t happen because I set up the perfect shot; they happened more or less in spite of me. They happened, in other words, by chance, as happy accidents.
This reminds me a bit of the Taoist idea of Wu Wei, variously defined as “action without purpose,” or even “action of no-action.” For practical purposes, it means not worrying about process or about control, and essentially getting the heck out of your own way. Photos like the one that accompany this post came about not because I’m such a skilled photographer. If I had a mind to, I could pick out several things wrong with this picture. The point, however, is that if I’d taken the time to think all of them through and fix even a fraction of them, I’d have missed the shot. Sometimes you just need to stop worrying, point your camera in the general direction of something interesting (or that has the potential to be interesting) and see what develops.
In a roundabout sort of way, that brings me to another point: if, like Woody Allen said, half of life is simply showing up, the same holds true for our best (and worst) photographic accidents. Just the same as it’s important to always have your camera, it’s important sometimes to just get the shot. True, if you pass up the shot, you can’t really screw it up. But you also pass up the chance of creating something that could be great, or at least a lot of fun.
Have any interesting accidents to share? Pass them along and we just might feature them here!
Marcel Duchamp, "Fountain," photo by Alfred Stieglitz. Courtesy SFMOMA
Maybe because of my choice of subject matter (much of it inanimate) or my choice of gear (camera, lenses, and not much else) I wonder sometimes if I’m somehow “cheating” at photography, especially when I look at work by other photographers whose work clearly involves backdrops, complicated lighting setups, staging, makeup, an assload of post-production, and God only knows how much else. Maybe I’m doing it wrong?
Or maybe not. I got to thinking recently about Marcel Duchamp, the artist and provocateur whose “Readymades” (like Fountain, the repurposed urinal pictured above, plus other works that incorporated things like bicycle wheels and bottle racks), and decided it probably wasn’t worth the worry. There’s a long tradition of using found objects in art (collage and montage are two good examples), allowing “found” detritus to express itself as art by recontextualizing itself. What Duchamp did, in my opinion, was to take this a step further.
Where Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 and The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even (a.k.a. Large Glass) at least nodded in the direction of figurative art, the Readymades are simultaneously found art, meta-art (art about art, if you will), and a poke in the eye at the avant garde of the time. Rather than creating an art object from whole cloth, if you will, Duchamp seems to argue that artistic intent creates its own context, and its own objects. Put in simpler terms: Why’s this art? Because I said so.
Image by kind permission of Brian McCarty/McCarty Photoworks
Like Duchamp, Brian McCarty is less concerned with defining art than with simply making it. And like Duchamp, rather than creating art objects, McCarty’s art springs from the recontextualization of mass-produced objects. Like Duchamp’s urinal, McCarty’s objects aren’t from the hand of an artisan or craftsman; they’re manufactured, and their artistic value comes first from the frame in which they’re placed (Fountain caused quite a stir in the context of the 1917 Armory Show, and McCarty’s photos are as likely to figure in galleries as magazine pages), and second from the artist’s intent.
Let me clarify what I mean by that second point. These objects — a urinal, an injection-molded plastic rabbit, or any other mass-produced object you’d care to mention — aren’t what we’d generally look at as “art” in their own right. They’re commonplace to the point of banality.¹ We pass by these things daily, without giving them as much as a second thought. What’s shared between Duchamp and McCarty² is a willingness to put a frame around the banal, and to assert that it’s worthy of consideration in its own right; the object can be more than what it was designed for, and can in some sense transcend its purpose. In contrast to Warhol, who we’ve discussed elsewhere, neither Duchamp nor McCarty draw quotation marks around what they’re depicting; Duchamp, especially, has irony to spare, but there’s not the same sense of distance in his work that there would be in Warhol’s.
Let’s bring this back down to Earth for a minute, and circle back to where we started. Your photography doesn’t need a studio, a thousand-dollar lighting setup, and a cast of thousands. As long as you’ve got a camera and eyes to see, you’re set. You’re not cheating if you’re taking shots of classic cars, faded signs, or Tinkertoys; you are, whether you realize it or not, working in a tradition that dates back nearly a century. As was written about Duchamp’s piece when it first appeared: Whether Mr Mutt [Duchamp had signed the piece “R. Mutt”] made the fountain with his own hands or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view – created a new thought for that object. Sometimes it’s not up to you to make the art so much as to find it, frame it, and share it.
If we want to grow as people, much less as photographers, we need to be challenged and to challenge ourselves from time to time. If we fail to do that, both we and our work start to go stale. Of course, the challenges we pose to ourselves aren’t without their own perils. Sometimes we find that our reach exceeds our grasp; we may not yet have the skills to pull off what our ambitions and dreams tell us should be our next logical step. Other times, we just might acheive what we set off to do, only to find that the people who’ve understood, encouraged, and nurtured our work up to a certain point suddenly decide that this new direction of ours isn’t quite their bag.
Some artists find a zone that’s comfortable, or highly profitable, and settle there. Year in and year out, they produce the same predictable stuff that’s earned them plaudits and a nice living. Some part of them might yearn for something new or different, but they’re afraid of what might happen if they suddenly change course. Others may tread a new path briefly and, stung by what they perceive as a backlash, decide they’ve gone a bit too far off track. Others still will just stubbornly go where the muse leads them, their audience (or lack thereof) be damned.
Part of the problem, I think, is that we tend to view this sort of thing as an either/or proposition. We can either follow our vision, or we can be profitable. I think that’s what’s given us artists like Anne Geddes, Thomas Kinkaid, or Garth Brooks. They’re predictable, and in that predictability, there’s a level of safety, both for artist and audience.
There’s an equal and opposite problem, however, when an artist decides to romanticize their own inaccessability. Yes, you can be obscure for the sake of it, and wear the fact that you tend to alienate people like a badge of honor, but if you view art as a primarily social activity,* the antisocial attitude isn’t helping anybody.
A healthier middle ground, I think, comes both in acknowledging your audience, and having the same faith in them that you’d have in yourself. As my mother’s fond of saying, “There’s an ass for every seat.” Not everything you do is going to be a park bench that seats thousands, but it also doesn’t have to be a game of musical chairs sans chairs. If you don’t make a point of routinely leaving your audience in the dust, they’ll keep up. It won’t always be the same audience; some will be as prone to drifting in and out as others will be to stick around from start to finish. But if you respect the craft, respect your audience, and respect yourself, you’ll always find someone willing to meet you halfway even if not everyone likes or “gets” it.
Be willing to make a strong statement in your own voice. If you’re trying to be everybody’s everything and you want everyone to like you, someone’s going to dislike you just for that. All of this comes down to one very simple question: who are you, really? What makes you who you are, which in turn makes your photos what they are? What is there in your craft and art that can only be seen and realized by you and by nobody else? Okay, so that’s three questions, but really, they all come back in some way to that initial question. Some of the best art — The Rite of Spring, Joyce’s later works (here I’m thinking Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake), the mature works of Jackson Pollack — succeeds not because it aims for a mushy universalism, but because it’s as highly specific (and, sometimes highly controversial) as it is. Your work doesn’t have to be polarizing, need not provoke riots in the aisles, doesn’t even have to be obscure or confusing to half the people who view it. What it should be is completely, irrevocably, and irreducably yours.
If you’ve never heard of Bill Bruford — who, at one time or another, drummed for Yes, King Crimson, Genesis, Gong, UK, David Torn, and Kazumi Watanabe, not to mention his own projects with Bruford, Earthworks, Patrick Moraz, and Michael Borstlap* — you’re missing out on quite a bit. As if it weren’t enough that Bruford’s tastefully polyrhythmic, delightfully off-kilter drumming practically defined Progressive Rock, the drummer went back to his jazz roots in 1987, and proceeded to expand the boundaries of what was possible behind the kit there as well.
I followed Bruford’s career through myriad twists and turns from my teenage years up to his retirement in 2009. His music was challenging, but always accessible. The man clearly didn’t like to stay in one place for too long. But for as much as I enjoyed the music, one thing he’s said has always stuck with me: “You exist to serve the music. The music does not exist to serve you.” He expanded on this in a recent interview, saying that musicians too often approach music thinking only of what they can take from, rather than contribute to, it… an attitude that’s hardly limited to musicians, unfortunately.
Listening to that interview, I got to thinking about someone else who successfully reinvented himself and his work, and who’s likewise prospered because he’s consistently as willing to contribute to photography as to take from it. Sebastião Salgado started out as an economist, but by 1973 he would turn his attention to photography.
The nearly four decades since have seen Salgado documenting people on or near the margins of society. Concerned more with what he terms the “archeology” of the changes wrought in the physical and psychological landscape by the forces of modernization, globalization and capitalism than with art, his work has nonetheless earned the label and reputation of serious art. In his books An Uncertain Grace, Workers, Terra, Migrations, Sahel and Africa, Salgado has turned an unflinching but sympathetic eye on humanity in all its forms. His work succeeds precisely because he approaches his subjects on their own terms: “The picture is not made by the photographer, the picture is more good or less good in function of the relationship that you have with the people you photograph.” One could argue that as a documentary photographer, he could do nothing else; however, a good many current photographers who claim to work in a Street or documentary style don’t take nearly as much care with their subjects as Salgado does.
On one level, Salgado and Bruford probably couldn’t be more different. They’re separated by geography, experience, their respective media, and quite a lot else. On the other hand, I think that if the two were ever to meet face to face, they’d find that they’ve operated, each in his own way, in and from a very similar place. It’s an outlook and approach to craft that relies heavily on a response to what’s going on (whether it’s a copper miner or a Tony Levin bassline), based on an active act of collaboration rather than a strong-willed insistance that there’s only one right approach. As Salgado himself put it, “It’s not the photographer who makes the picture, but the person being photographed.”
As I mentioned earlier this week (Rule 22: The Art is to Conceal the Art), your ego is not your art. I do think that creativity and a healthy dose of ego necessarily go together; none of us who create, who put the love and the sweat equity into perfecting our craft, do it for the sake of being ignored, and on some level I think we do what we do because we feel that it can make a difference, even if only to one other person besides ourselves. However, if we allow our ego to be a motive rather than just another ingredient, and decide that really, what we do or make is there only for the sake of attracting wealth and followers, then we’ve immediately got it ass-backwards.
That ego can manifest itself in any number of ways. If we’re going to continue the musical analogy, let’s imagine for a minute that you belong to a band that relies heavily on improvisation. You’ve got this bass figure that sounds like Jaco channelling Hendrix. Never mind that the rest of the band is playing something that sounds like it came from “Flamenco Sketches,” you’re getting your Jaco on regardless, dammit. Well, guess what? It’s not only musicians who do it. The rest of us have done it, too, from self-proclaimed street photographers** practicing ambush tactics on their subjects, to photographers who have a favorite Photoshop preset that gets used on everything from wedding portraits to landscapes, or portrait photographers who’ll try to whack their square peg subjects into whatever round hole they’ve relied on for years. If you approach your subject — whether it’s a living subject or an inanimate one, the end result’s still much the same — with the assumption that you know what’s best for it, trying to bend it to your will, it doesn’t matter if your subject’s a bird in flight or variations on “Birdland.” You will have stifled any room that your subject had to breathe, and will have closed your work off to what your subject had to say.
Let me repeat: I don’t think that there’s any work that’s totally devoid of self, of ego. But, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere in these “pages,” your craft is about engagement. It’s about finding a space in which creator and creation can coexist, communicate, and be present to one another; in essence, our work is about collaboration with and within our medium. That collaboration works best when it’s not about us alone.
*This is just a partial list, mind you; an exhaustive one, with discography, would be one very long document.
**I can name names, but I’d rather not. Not out of any sense of professional decorum, mind you; just that I hate drawing attention to people whose only aim seems to be whoring for attention in the first place.
Whether you’ve been doing photography (or some other creative endeavor) for about five minutes, or for something closer to five decades, it helps to think about your craft, your approach to your subject matter, and eventually, even your thinking about your thinking. It’s easy to find yourself blocked from time to time, unsure of what (or even whether) to photograph next because it feels like the well’s run dry. It’s easier still sometimes to find yourself wanting to do something different just for the simple reason that you’ve been doing your “thing” for so long.
If this were a certain type of blog, and if I were a certain breed of blogger, I could tell you to just “think outside the box” and be done with it. End of post, end of story. Pat self on back, have beer, and think of the next blindingly obvious bit of pablum to foist upon my unsuspecting readers. There’s just one small issue: the problem with “Thinking Outside the Box” is that our “boxes” aren’t a bunch of discrete little things stacked on shelves. They tend to be more like those nesting Russian dolls, one box inside another inside another. We think we’re thinking outside the box, only to find that we’ve traded our usual box for a larger, or smaller, one.
Worse still, we might even find we’ve traded our box for someone else’s. We follow someone’s formula, or try to learn from their example, only to find that all of a sudden, we’re boxed in by a process of thought or creativity that doesn’t feel right because it isn’t ours. Individuality is just that — it’s as individual as you are, but it happens by default and not by effort. The easiest way to get out of a box or a rut is to be aware of your boxes – your processes, methods, ruts, even your prejudices – especially when they box you in, but don’t obsess over them. Acknowledge them, play with them, but don’t allow them to become an impediment to doing, or being, what you really want.
Sometimes, just casting light on our process is the thing that allows us to change it or trade it for another. This isn’t something passive; you’re going to have to be aware at the various stages of your creative process, breaking down each step, and being aware of the what, how, and especially why of each one. When you start to unpack all of those steps — both as you’re taking the photo, and when you’re evaluating your finished results — you can begin to identify the ways you might be boxing yourself in, and perhaps even gain some insight as to why you’re doing it. Having done that, you can start taking the necessary steps to change what you feel needs changing.
Postscript: Tell me: What do you do when you find your work’s beginning to get stale? How do you change your thinking or your practice to refresh what you’re doing, and how well has it worked for you?
Received the following press release from Help-Portrait, which I’m reproducing verbatim. If your photo charity/portrait charity has an upcoming event and you’d like to get the word out, please contact me at thefirst10000@gmail.com — PB
THIRD ANNUAL WORLDWIDE HELP-PORTRAIT™ EVENT SET FOR DECEMBER 10 HELP-PORTRAIT WILL BE SHOWCASING PHOTOS FROM THIS YEAR’S EVENT FOR THE FIRST TIME
Nashville, Tn –October 27, 2011— This December 10, photographers around the world will gather for the third annual Help-Portrait event. In 2009, Help-Portrait began as an idea that transformed into a movement in just three months. The idea behind Help-Portrait is simple: 1. Find someone in need 2. Take their portrait 3. Print their portrait and 4. Deliver their portrait. In the last two years, more than 101,000 portraits have been given by 10,000 photographers and 12,000 volunteers. Help-Portrait is now a global movement in more than 1,000 locations in 54 countries.
This year, Help-Portrait founder Jeremy Cowart announced new elements to make Help-Portrait a more hands-on experience for those being photographed. From the beginning of the Help-Portrait movement nearly three years ago, photographers and volunteers have embraced the Help-Portrait ethos: that is giving, not taking photos. However, this year Help-Portrait is encouraging the photographers to share the photos of those subjects who want to tell their story to a wider audience.
“As the founder of this movement, I felt it was best to not show the photos,” shares Cowart. “I didn’t want this movement to be about photography. But I underestimated our community – they all instantly caught on to the spirit of Help-Portrait. But now I’m realizing just how much we’ve kept the world from seeing and experiencing what we get to see each year. Now I want to let everyone in our little secret by sharing the photos of those who want to tell their stories to the world.”
Another addition to this year’s event will involve a personalized element. Those photographed will have the opportunity to draw and write on their photos to tell their stories. This provides an avenue for their voice to be heard. See the examples of the photos taken at a recent Help-Portrait event with Cowart at the Union Rescue Mission on Skid Row in Los Angeles.
“We believe that the portraits will transform into works of art that reflect their subject,” states Cowart who saw this first hand last week in LA.
In addition, the Help-Portrait team is encouraging photographers to hand the cameras over to the subjects and do their own shooting through the lens giving them a unique opportunity to be behind the camera. It’s never been about the photographer or his skills or what he has to offer. It’s always been about connecting with and giving back to the subject. For more information on Help-Portrait visit, http://www.help-portrait.com .
ABOUT HELP-PORTRAIT:
Celebrity photographer Jeremy Cowart formed Help-Portrait, a non-profit organization, in 2009 as he contemplated using his skills and expertise to give back to those who may not have the opportunity for a professional photo. The idea is that a photographer has the unique ability to help someone smile, laugh and return their dignity. It is a movement, a shift in photography. The rapid growth of this organization is a perfect example of Social Media use for good as the community shares ideas and stories through the channels of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and blogging. Help-Portrait has partnered in the past with corporations including Ritz & Wolf Camera & Image, creativeLIVE, Chick-fil-A and Flosites, which created Help-Portrait’s website and online community.
From Bangalore, India to Ghana, Africa, the language of Help-Portrait crosses cultural and socio-economic barriers. Even Hollywood has gotten in the act. In 2010, A-list actors Zachary Levi and Yvette Nicole Brown volunteered at a Help-Portrait event in Los Angeles and participated in a live webcast. The online live stream of the main event day from the creativeLIVE studio in Seattle featured hosts including Help-Portrait founder Jeremy Cowart, another high-profile photographer Chase Jarvis and Help-Portrait volunteer staff member Annie Downs.
ABOUT JEREMY COWART:
Cowart began full-time photography in 2005 and has traveled to six continents with his talent. He’s photographed Imogen Heap, Sting, Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, Carrie Underwood and more. He’s also worked with entertainment clients ABC, E!, Fox, A&E, FX, The Style Network, CMT and others. http://www.jeremycowart.com
Hopefully neither of you will mind if I do a little thinking aloud in this post. I realized something today: I’ve read an awful lot of books on photography in the few years. Some covered technique, some had a more philosophical bent, and still others were just collections of great photos from the last 150 years, give or take a couple of decades. We’re talking thousands of pages, thousands more photos, and countless pieces of advice (some of it explicitly contradictory).
In some cases, I knew quite well what I was looking for, especially when someone had some technical knowledge to impart that’d help me nail some setting or compositional technique or other. Sometimes, with the more philosophical stuff, it helped to read someone whose ideas and philosophical approach to the craft were close to my own; it’s nice to have your thinking validated to some degree I suppose, and/or to find out you’re not (that) crazy. And the collections of photos were great for inspiration and visual literacy…
Every once in a while, though, I found and still find that I come away from all that stuff — the thinking, the knowledge, the input, even the inspiration — feeling like I’m missing something. I finally figured out that all of this amounts to nothing more than asking permission. Not to pick up a camera (once the bug bit, it was already too late for that) or to get the pictures themselves, but to just let go. It’s taken (or taking) me a while to realize that sometimes what we need isn’t more knowledge, more technique, more inspiration, or more stuff. Sometimes it’s more about letting go of all that, and not worrying so damned much whether you’ve got enough of it. Face it: you do not know enough. You will not know enough, ever, since the more you know, the more you start to get the broad outlines of how little you know and how much you have yet to learn. And that ignorance (I use the word literally, not pejoratively) is enough to intimidate the hell out of you if you care about something enough to have learned about it in the first place. You start to realize that if you’re waiting for enough knowledge, or the right knowledge, you are and will remain paralyzed.
At some point, then, you just have to say, “enough,” and mean it. Know that you have enough, even when it doesn’t feel like nearly enough, and even when you’re told it’s not enough. Improvise, learning as you go, allowing and even welcoming the mistakes. That kind of faith feels rash and counterintuitive, but having faith that what you’ve got is sufficient to get you started can mean the difference between taking those faltering first steps and remaining perfectly, frustratingly still. Maybe we need to set our knowledge aside in order to move past our ignorance?
If you were anything like me in elementary school, you probably came thisclose to missing out on some cool stuff ’cause you were probably a bit late with a permission slip or three. When it comes to your craft, whether it’s photography or something else altogether, stop waiting for permission. Don’t wait for someone else to tell you it’s okay, or that now you’re ready. Indulge, experiment, screw up/succeed beyond your wildest dreams. You don’t need permission, not mine or anyone else’s. And if you’re still waiting for it after reading all this, what you need is not permission, but a swift kick in the ass. You want permission? It’s already yours for the taking… the only catch is, you have to give it to yourself.
Help-Portrait was founded in 2008 by photographer Jeremy Cowart. In just a few short years, the organization’s presence has ballooned; what started out as a small handful of participants now involves groups and individuals from all points on the map, including the United States, the UK, Brazil, and many other places. Their mission, as they describe it:
In December, photographers around the world will be grabbing their cameras, finding people in need and taking their picture. When the prints are ready, the photographs get delivered.
Yep. It really is that easy.
And by the way, we don’t want to see your photos. This is about GIVING the pictures, not taking them. These portraits are not for your portfolio, website, or for sale. Money isn’t involved here. This holiday season, you have the chance to give a family something they may have never had before—a portrait together.
As with any good mission statement, the above can be condensed to a handful of no-nonsense bullet points:
1. Find someone in need
2. Take their portrait
3. Print their portrait
4. Deliver their portrait
Predictably enough, some photographers have griped about all of this (usually they’re the same ones who spend more time on discussion forums bitching over their manufacturer of choice not updating their favorite camera yet, so they’re jumping ship to (insert name of other manufacturer), wondering whether the time, money, skills and photos could be put to better use. There’s a video at the end of this post that explains the organization and their mission pretty well, but in the meantime, let me say this: if someone’s living in poverty, or just barely making it, one of the last things they’re going to spend money on is having photos done. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not really a vital need. I’ll grant that. But the service provided here — and simultaneously, some part of its genius — is that it gives families and individuals the opportunity to get their portrait done professionally when they wouldn’t otherwise have the chance. Since family portraits are a big thing for some of us, it becomes easy to see why a simple click of the shutter can give someone not just a photo, but also a reminder that they count.
Notice that there’s nothing here that states you have to be a professional, though plenty of professional photographers do donate their time and services. You don’t even have to be a photographer to get involved. Each site typically requires not only photographers, but also people to help with lighting, makeup, general tasks and errands, and people whose job is primarily to look after the needs of those photographed during the shoot. In short: not a pro? No problem. Not even a photographer? They’ll likely find a spot for you, as well.
You can find Help-Portrait in a few places on the web. You can, for instance, follow them on Facebook (your local chapter may also have a presence there), or on Twitter. The real goldmine of information and resources, however, is the organization’s main site, http://help-portrait.com/ From there, you can find information on the 2011 event (which takes place less than a month from now), read their Mission Statement, a robust Community section, a blog, and — perhaps most importantly, information on getting started.
Postscript: Here’s a video posted by Help-Portrait that explains, in their own words, what they’re doing:
You could be forgiven for wondering for a minute if you’ve wandered into the wrong blog. Read through to the end and it’ll make a great deal more sense, I promise.
Last evening (around the time that I’d normally be writing today’s blog entry, which is why this one is late), I saw the singer/songwriter/Afro-Baroque musician Stew at Joe’s Pub in Manhattan. It was advertised as (and was, in fact) a night of songs from the musical Passing Strange, which Stew wrote in collaboration with Heidi Rodewald. I was curious to see how they’d manage to take music performed by a five-piece band and six-person cast at the Belasco Theater and translate it for a smaller ensemble in the more intimate confines of the Pub.
The whole thing translated remarkably well, as it turns out. This was partly because of Stew and Heidi’s talents as songwriters and arrangers, but it’s also due in no small part to an artist being willing to act as though his own back catalog is nothing sacred. The arrangements were turned inside-out, in most cases being miles away from what had been performed at the Belasco, and the show as a whole had less of a Broadway feel to it than an evening of cabaret. There were long discursive and digressive asides alongside the music (and sometimes in the middle of songs), and – just as strikingly – new lyrics to many of the songs that took them to places they hadn’t already been.
Alright, so what in the hell does this have to do with photography? I’m getting there. Give me a minute.
One of Strange’s many themes is the idea of the “Real,” the search for authenticity that nearly every artist (and probably any number of individuals who wouldn’t call themselves artists) goes through in forming and discovering their identity. “The real is a construct,” Stew sang in Passing Strange, and that’s something that’s probably worth keeping in mind, since authenticity generally comes best, and fastest, when you quit worrying about it and just be it. Sometimes this means being willing to go out on a limb with your craft, being willing to experiment; sometimes too, it means being willing to operate without a net, beyond the confines of what’s emotionally safe or comfortable. It’s easier to be true to yourself, and your muse, if you’re willing to ditch the way things have always been done, and not be worried what anyone will think as a result.
"Blue Period with Banjo," William Wegman, 1980
One photographer among many that I can think of who exemplifies that sort of approach is William Wegman. Like a certain songwriter, Wegman gets away with a lot in his work, but his fans – who, by this point, are legion – love him for it. Born in 1943, his early works consisted of conventional portraiture and video work. Acquiring his first dog, Man Ray, proved to be crucial to his work; Wegman’s Weimaraners have become synonymous with the artist.
Over the past few decades, Wegman’s work has evolved, expanding from 20×24 Polaroids to other photographic formats, and also incorporating video. His work has taken him to television (including multiple stints on Sesame Street, work for Nickelodeon, and an appearance on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson), a residency at Phillips Academy, and exhibits worldwide, including the LA County Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Smithsonian. All the while, the subject matter – those expressive dogs and their creative collaborator behind the camera – have remained consistent, but it’s Wegman’s continual willingness to experiment that’s kept his work vital, and kept him from being a one-trick puppy pony. It’s also ensured that his work has gained quite the following, as his fans (not only those serious about art, but also those who may not give the art a second thought and just love the fact that some guy gets such amazing photos using little more than his imagination and a gaggle of dogs) have followed every permutation of the Wegman esthetic.
I didn’t hear a single complaint last night that the songs weren’t note-for-note the way they’d sounded on the stage or on the cast album; indeed, anybody who’s been a fan for any length of time would probably have walked away disappointed had that been the case. The point is that Stew and Wegman alike have carved out very individual, and idiosyncratic, voices. The fact that both have been true to their individual styles so stubbornly and for so long gives them a pretty wide berth to do what they damn well please. If you’re willing to stick your neck out and do that, your subject matter I think immediately matters a heck of a lot less; people will stick with you through all the changes because they understand where you’re coming from, and appreciate the integrity you bring to your work. So: follow your muse wherever she may lead you. Your audience will keep up.
William Wegman online The official website of Stew and The Negro Problem
The video above is from Theater Talk, and features Stew and Heidi Rodewald performing “Work the Wound”
A friend recently shared something with me that I’d like to pass along. Paying it forward, as it were. Before I show you what he shared, though, I’m going to go back a couple of weeks to Art and Fear, which I reviewed in this space. There’s a parable in there about quality versus quality.
The short version goes like this: a ceramic teacher divides his class in half, and tells half of them they’ll be graded on quantity, and the other half that they’ll be graded on quality. To get a good grade, the “quality” group has to produce a masterwork; the quantity group, on the other hand, is being graded by the pound.
When the end of class rolls around, the group graded on quantity fares better; while some of what they’ve created is of poor quality, much of it is at least competent, and some of it even great. The quality group, in the meantime, has gotten itself so bogged down in endless debates over what makes a good pot that they don’t have much to show for all their talk, and the pots are lousy anyway.
There are a few lessons to be drawn here, not least of which the simple fact that all the theory in the world, no matter how attractive or how good it may sound, doesn’t amount to squat unless you can back it with results. Just as importantly, it’s by putting things into practice that we learn what works and what doesn’t; it’s where all that theory is realized, and made concrete (or porcelain, if you’d rather).
Speaking of making it concrete, let’s go back to our regularly scheduled post. What my friend passed along is a story that unfolds over several years’ worth of practice. An artist named Jonathan Hardesty (who also goes by MindCandyMan on www.conceptart.org) charted his evolution online for all to see. His first attempts at painting – just working out the basics of line, shape, color and composition – are all there, and you can chart the progress all the way through to his later works, which are fully realized art by any standard.
It’s inspirational, but not in the often-told, generally hackneyed “person just happens upon their art or craft one day and almost immediately discovers a long-buried talent” sort of way. While I’m sure that happens every now and again, I think there’s something in that conventional narrative that poisons the well, ‘cause people miss the part of the equation that involves them putting in a shitload of effort no matter how talented they are. At the beginning of this “version,” on the other hand, there’s no inkling of some phenomenal talent. There are just a handful of studies in color, line, shade and shape. That and a lot of effort that leads, slowly and seemingly inexorably, toward someone finally being able to fully realize their vision.
It’s inspiring because it applies to the rest of us, as well. There’s a debate to be had over the role and nature of talent (whether it’s inborn or cultivated), and we’ll no doubt get to that another time. Leaving talent aside for a moment, though, just think about your own work. If, as it’s been said, it takes ten thousand hours to get good at what you’d like to do, that’s an awful lot of hours to invest, especially when you’re measuring them out 1/125 of a second at a time. I’m not sure that the 10,000 number is meant to be taken literally, or if, like Jesus’ “seven times seventy,” it’s just a simple reminder that it’s something you’re going to have to do quite a lot of. Whichever it turns out to be, plan accordingly but also realize that you will see results for your effort, even if it doesn’t always feel that way at the time.
As sometimes happens, this story came along just when I needed it. It’s easy to look at other people’s amazing work and be intimidated by it. After all, they’ve already had so much time to get to where they are, and here we are – well, here I am, anyway – still a newcomer by comparison. How and when do I get to that point, if ever?
But then I’m reminded of something: when you see work like that, you’re (hopefully) seeing someone at their best. Like a first date, an artist (no matter what their medium is) is going to put their best foot forward. Often as not, that means you only get to see the pinnacle of their work – the peaks, with all the valleys (the false starts, the doubts, the things left unfinished or never started) glossed over or omitted. Part of the value of Hardesty’s work is the reminder that none of us is alone in that process… it’s just that most of us aren’t generally brave enough to put all of it – not just our highest highs, but our lowest lows and every point in between – out before an audience, and essentially grow up in public.
I rather like the idea of calling the act of something “putting it into practice,” ‘cause really, at the end of the day, that’s all we’ve got. Practice, and when that’s over, more practice. We continue ‘til we’ve got it right, and keep going ‘til what’s right gets that much better. There’s no destination, no perfection; only perfecting.
Postscript:
You can see the original thread tracing Jonathan/MindCandyMan’s evolution here, and further along his journey here. His personal website is here. And the “Online Atelier” he started to pass on what he knows is here.
