Intuition and photography

<p><strong>Fred</strong>, the more I read you explaining Kant the more I'm convinced that Kant were totally incapable of making a porcelain bowl of the dynasty of the Song of the North (11th century) and he would even more be incapable of perceiving it's "beauty". You are deeply rooted in what, I think could be called <strong>Solipsism </strong>(it is better to disregard the unreliable observations of alleged other people and rely upon the immediate certainty of one's own perceptions). Fred don't lapidate me on that one please, I"m just with the greatest innocence testing the thought. I'm sure you have already though about it (if it is right, what influence does it have on your photography??)<br>

<strong> </strong><br />Without being a philosopher of training and even less of profession I would rather have expected of you to go back to Plato and Aristotel or why not Hume and maybe even the mentioned Bergson when it come to understanding the relationship between our intellect and intuition - and art. </p>

<p>Why not go back to the infamous "<a href="http://design.caltech.edu/Misc/pirsig.html">Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance</a>" of Pirsig. You will find the following paragraph that I think is relevant for what is going on around here ("Phaedrus", is a Platonian imaginative traveling companion):</p>

 

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<p>Kant's metaphysics thrilled Phædrus at first, but later it dragged and he didn't know exactly why. He thought about it and decided that maybe it was the Oriental experience. He had had the feeling of escape from a prison of intellect, and now this was just more of the prison again. He read Kant's esthetics with disappointment and then anger. The ideas expressed about the "beautiful" were themselves ugly to him, and the ugliness was so deep and pervasive he hadn't a clue as to where to begin to attack it or try to get around it. It seemed woven right into the whole fabric of Kant's world so deeply there was no escape from it. It wasn't just eighteenth-century ugliness or "technical" ugliness. All of the philosophers he was reading showed it. The whole university he was attending smelled of the same ugliness. It was everywhere, in the classroom, in the textbooks. It was in himself and he didn't know how or why. It was reason itself that was ugly and there seemed no way to get free.<br /></p>

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<p><strong>Dave</strong>, you writings and observations are showing that you have fully understood the main subject atter when it comes to the relation between intuition and intellect and it's importance for photography - although I would not have made the reference to the bodily functioning. </p>

<p>Anders, good question you've asked about the way this relates to my photography. Intuitiveness, I trust, will come . . . more in time. The striving I have (the goals) is not to pursue such intuitiveness but to pursue what matters most to me, the people I photograph . . . developing my relationships with them (including working relationships and where those can lead me) and my understanding of and connections with them. It is to become more fluent with my photographic tools in hopes of the relationships with my subjects being more and more apparent in my photos themselves. One example of something I'm curious about is to explore the contrasts and harmonies between pose and genuineness or authenticity, to enhance the expressive power of gestures. The more I pursue that, the more intuitive it seems to become to me.</p>

<p>Please don't take my discussion of Kant, which you asked for, the wrong way. As I've said before in these threads, as a philosopher I may be somewhat unusual in that I don't care much about choosing sides. It struck me that Kant was relevant here and someone else brought him up, so I explored his relevance. I could do the same with Hume. I don't honestly have a philosopher whom I prefer or who most reflects my own leanings (well, I do, but it seems to vary from day to day and situation to situation). Believe me, I know Kant's shortcomings. My own frustration with all kinds of "philosophy," be it Western or Eastern, Kantian or post-modern, is what led me both to music and photography. Both music and photography seem to me a better outlet for approaching these matters. Ultimately, they are the answers to most of these unanswerable philosophical questions. Each enables me to express myself more personally and freely than does philosophy. As a matter of fact, I think most philosophizing is solipsistic and that's probably why I'm ultimately glad I never pursued it academically to become a professor. Photographing has put me out into the world.</p>

<p>Basically, what I photograph is what's important to me and the photographs themselves are important to me. It is through those relationships and the acts of photographing that whatever I am experiencing (intuitiveness, understanding, planning, spontaneity, what have you) will evolve. Photographing and photographing more, I suspect, will make me more intuitive. A striving for intuitiveness itself, to me, seems counterintuitive.</p>

<p><strong>Fred</strong>: "A striving for intuitiveness itself, to me, seems counterintuitive". I totally agree with you that somewhere we are confronted to a hermeneutic circle. The least one can say about you Fred, is that you are surely a thoughts-provoking sort of teacher.</p>

<p>This is somewhat off topic, but while rummaging around Google lookiing for online stuff by T. Alajouanine (on his studies of artists with aphasia), I found the following quote in <a href="http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/131/1/3.full">this linked article</a>:</p>

 

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<p>"In him ‘the aphasic and the artist live together on two distinct planes’ and the patient reflects that ‘there are in me two men … the one who grasps reality … the other who is lost as regards abstract thinking … when I am painting I am outside my own life … I find everything again; I am a whole man … these are two men, the one who is grasped by the reality to paint, the other one, the fool, who cannot manage words anymore’."</p>

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<p>Though that does not in any way necessarily having anything to do with intuition (being unable to use language does not mean that you are therefore only thinking intuitively), I feel a tremendous kinship with that description (ignoring the gendering of the quote) -- and I'm fascinated by my feeling thus since I obviously can blah, blah, blah with the best of us. I think that, even with a normal speech endowment, there is a feeling of so much that is known (intellectually AND intuitively) but that resists or is always just out of reach of saying.</p>

<p>Intuition is speechless, not being speechless. In a way, discussions like these - interesting as they are - are everything what intuition is not.</p>

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<p><strong>Phylo</strong> you are right, but you could make the same remark on discussions fora on photography like this one. It is anything what photography is not. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDun4xY5X1U">Words, Words, Words</a> !!!!</p>

<p>I actually find it quite intuitive to use words in an Internet forum on the philosophy of photography.</p>

<p>Fred, I knew it !</p>

<p><em>But</em>, it's much less intuitive to use words on a discussion on intuition in context of photography, as the word(s) can't quite transmit its meaning and *meaning* can only be intuited. Rarely, if ever, it is being described.</p>

<p>Photographs as communication would have served better, and even those would have failed.<br /> <br /> Why not be <em>silent</em>. I'm dead serious. Just sit in front of your screens in silence for awhile. Resist an urge. And perhaps we'll know what can't be known.</p>

<p>I'll refine that a little, Phylo, and say that I don't care to remain silent in front of my screen but I will be silent toward you. Baby steps. Maybe you'll afford me the same honor.</p>

 

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<p>Baby steps</p>

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<p>Footloose. Sssssst !</p>

<p>I guess I better won't do my Yoda voice now, saying I sense much in you anger ?</p>

<p><em>Relax</em>.</p>

<p>Sledgehammer.</p>

<p>I think Phylo is at something here and that he has invented the most poetic finish to a thread possible. Even the old Taoist would appreciate it. Kant maybe not.<br>

Thanks to all that have contributed.<br>

<br /> Sssssssssssssssssssssssssss....</p>

<p>Anders<br>

I didn't follow the whole discussion as I have very little time to spend on the internet nowadays (a baby girl is coming and work is taking a lot of time). I think I got your point and I will answer with one of my photos<br>

<img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/6955955-lg.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="375" /></p>