From serendipity to bahramdipity

<p>Luis asked how I try to "maintain and even develop the capacity of serendipity?".<br /> Well, as Stephen has done until recently, at least, doing the irregular, unplanned, unscheduled discovery of the world around me, every day - besides repeating the ordinary habits, visiting known places, for comfort!<br /> Challenging oneself and one's certainties by for example reading Fox-news (for some of us) and the like, is one way. Going systematically to unknown territory intellectually, socially, culturally and geographically is maybe the answer. However, whatever some do, they sometimes seem always to come back with the same shots - maybe me included. All a question of how stubborn we are in challenging habits and well tested modes of doing things in photography - and life in general. I don't have the answer to how to maintain serendipity, that's one of the reasons I posted it. A sign of aging might be, apart loosing memory, a slow increasing degree of bahramdipity. Dying, is said by some, to be the ultimate serendipitous experience of life.</p>

<p>One comment to Fred's description serendipity based on the meeting of the farmers daughter. The way I use the term, but it can be used otherwise, for sure, is not necessarily related to "happy events" - also a comment to Luis above. I see it more as personal discoveries that expand our scope of knowledge and maybe understanding of the world. Such discoveries can in some cases be photographed. One could maybe say that most "serious" creative photography is that.</p>

<p>Julie, concerning "free-flowing" phenomena, I used it, as you mention, in relation to Fred's chains of events. You are right that the term can be related to breaks in expected and known chains of events. I however interpreted Fred's "chains" as the chains of any phenomenon you discover. In that latter case I believe that the "event" is mostly free flowing detached from a known "chain" (hope it is not too blurred !). Fred has just clarified it better above. I agree !</p>

<p>I always worked against the "prepared mind" axiom. Not because it is wrong. Scientific research is largely about finding what was not sought after. I employ a modified form of preparation that suites my nature. My wholly rational <em>seek and ye shall be found</em> method and <em>(n) degrees of separation </em>system of connecting random dots increases the likelihood of serendipitous discoveries. <br /> 1. Know not what ye are seeking.<br /> 2. Be confident that it will find you. <br /> 3. See the connection between each <em>find</em> in the shortest number of steps.</p>

<p>My methodology goes back to roaming the library card catalog and stacks aimlessness of childhood. I found that for me everything is interesting. I learned too late what a research librarian did for a living. Would'a been a great day job for an artist.</p>

<p>My sure-fire system at work.</p><div></div>

<p>Alan, your system is analogous to my: "Since serendipity only occurs for things that weren't being sought, the shorter that list is, the more likely it might be to happen."</p>

<p>That which you are not seeking is seeking you.</p>

<p>Though I enjoy going out to wander, I like to know what I want and go for it. Any surprises along the way are most welcome and, as I said, those surprises often feel like mine.</p>

<p>Disclaimer: I often feel trapped in trying to say how I work. Sometimes I do this and sometimes I do that. I suspect that's true for most of us. Just when I think I know what I want and am going for it, something comes along and goes for me. But hardly always.</p>

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<p>I still think we're dealing largely with superstitious behavior here --Luis</p>

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<p>I think there's a lot to this. There's something about humans wanting to relinquish responsibility . . . giving it all over to God or the fates is not so unlike giving things over to serendipity. In a sense, putting a premium on serendipity reminds me of putting a premium on candidness. You don't control what's candid either. But at the same time as we want this uncontrolled experience to come to us, we want to do (or consciously not do) everything in our power to make it happen (to control the circumstances). We are, as usual, schizophrenic, giving with one hand what we try to take away with another.</p>

<p>Responsibility and control are different but related. Some of my resistance to both candidness and serendipity is that they seem to want to slip one's responsibility and direct engagement under the door, though I know that's probably as false as it is true in different cases. We like things to be out of our control and then to take credit for the ways in which we fool the fates or God or the world into slyly seeing to it that these uncontrollable events happen. This may be the flip side to the coin of egotism I introduced in the thread next door. Being an egotist and a little bit more than selfish a good deal of the time, I may not be looking for ways to give up control.</p>

<p>[The above is me thinking out loud and is not meant as a put down to anyone or their methods. It's me being the usual skeptic I am, much more about me than about anyone else. And I'm very much unsure about all this but wanted to put it out there. Please take it that way. It means it is, to me, a fascinating subject.]</p>

<p>Double up-load !</p>

<p>I'll give a concrete example of serendipity, when it happens. <br /> The circular jade Bi disks which are from the Neolithic period of Chinese history (people were buried with them) and which is said to represent the sky and the earth, attracts me since long. <br />I made the image below on the basis of a photography from the Forbidden City in Beijing. It ended up with 64 (unintended) squares, equal to the Chinese esoteric system (that I had no detailed knowledge about), "I Ching", the Classic of changes, the Book of Changes, which presents 64 hexagrams, representing the same knowledge presented in different ways, from the "creative force, number one, to "before completion", number 64.<br /> A chess board is structured with the same 64 squares, because of the same historical reference (which I didn't know either) !</p><div></div>

<p>Anders, I have practiced the I Ching, and played chess recreationally, and never made that connection. Interesting.</p>

<p>Serendipity Luis, serendipity without superstition !</p>

<p>64 is a number of common occurence (serendipitous) in different cultures: The oft cited multiple of 8 x 8, or in the series of 2 to the power of n where n as 6 yields 64. Multiply twice over by two again and you have 256, the minimum number of colors generally accepted to create a chromatic image. The Commodore 64 was the single best selling computer model of all time, having 64 kilobytes of memory. "Will you still love me or will you then leave me, when I'm 64?" (The Beatles, possibly in 19??, 19...64? But it may only have been written in 67 in the classic Sgt. Pepper album).</p>

<p>Superstitious behavior in the psychological sense is not like believing in witches, Anders, but apparently you see that as 1) A negative and 2) Way below you, so I'll let it drop, though it is a serious part of this discussion. I don't want it to stifle a very interesting thread.</p>

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<p>I wanted to go back to the method that Alan and I mentioned. It's a form of prepared mind, but not er..."zombie-mind", if that makes sense. For me, and I almost hate to bring this up again, it is derived from meditation, but maybe I engaged in it before taking up that practice. I believe the universe is strewing gifts at our feet frequently, but we step over them. Nor is it a dogmatic way for me. Just like Fred said above, </p>

<p>"Sometimes I do this and sometimes I do that. I suspect that's true for most of us."</p>

<p>That's true or me too. Sometimes when I'm tracking on something , or in a series, I'll work with a narrower angle of acceptance. I don't see either method as necessarily 'better' than the other. I think one of the keys to serendipity is to be able to remain sensitized and (Ok, two) able to spot anomalies. There's a stepless gradient there, because I do remain open to accidents, and I might not engage a surprise immediately if I'm deep into something else, but I'll make a mental note, or jot it down, or I'll drop every other vector and take a new direction. </p>

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<p>Superstitious behavior in the psychological sense is not like believing in witches</p>

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<p>I know Luis, I played on words. Sorry !<br>

I think you are pointing at something important when you refer to the ability to spot anomalies. Anomalies to what you have seen or known before and anomalies to what seem to be common in the context you are in (neighborhood , country, culture, nature etc).</p>

<p>A new angle for Anders to ponder:</p>

<p>We live in a statistical universe (you know this from quantum physics, genetic recombination, weather, etc.).</p>

<p>Statistics apply to populations; they are meaningless to an individual. Therefore you, Anders, are pure serendipity to the extent that you find yourself outside of populations.</p>

<p>The 3 billion camera users who find serendipity kill that serendipity by being a predictable population; but each individual photograph, taken alone, is pure serendipity.</p>

<p>Steve Murray's (very nice) dog with roots photo is pure serendipity in the context of Steve Murray's individual picture-making episode; it loses all serendipity if taken in the population of dog-root pictures that one can inevitably find to fill a Flickr category.</p>

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<p>but each individual photograph, taken alone, is pure serendipity</p>

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<p>Julie, I expected that to come up at one moment or another.</p>

<p>Maybe we could agree on the observation that most individuals are variations of a theme. Some individuals are extraordinary different from others you have known or seen in one way or another, this is where I personally would introduce serendepity. <br /> If I should find myself and my camera in the middle of an unknown African tribe, if such a thing still exist, all would be serendipity to the extreme. My first photographical efforts would be to catch the characteristics of that tribe in all its social, human and physical dimensions. After a while (years?) serendipity would become phenomena which are in one way or another extraordinary and still unknown within the tribe, whereas anything else become variations of already known and photographed themes.<br /> Philosophically (in certain cultures that I will hold back to mention here...), all human beings are extraordinary and different from any fellow human being. In photographical or scientific terms it is not that much the case - they become an infinite series of variations to common themes. That's at least how I would reserve the term serendipity to the (relatively) extraordinary.</p>

<p>Julie, sorry I noticed that I forgot to explain the first step I did from your mail above, that of moving directly from the photos you referred to, to that of the photographer - and furthermore i forgot coming back to the photos. I hope it is useful anyway.</p>

<p>Improvisation is an enactment of serendipity, amongst other things. I prefer improvisation in photography as it is for me more process and less explanation after the fact of a result or some rarther vague quality or condition prior to exposure that a photographer may aspire to achieving. Better, I believe, is to improvise, and to do so with passion.</p>

<p>Serendipity is significant to me as a means of photographic motivation or simply inspirational accompaniment. I wouldn't fail to understand the serendipity Steve has described even when a billion photos of dogs near roots of trees were shown to me alongside his. Because I understand that Steve's photo is about his perspective on the dog and the roots, his seeing of it, not about some sort of generic subject categorization, "dogs and roots." I don't see it as a matter of numbers or as so tied into subject matter.</p>

<p>Also, for me, it's not limited to the circumstances of the shot. It is about what is seen when the photograph is viewed. I may look at a hundred or a thousand photos in the Street forum on PN of ironic moments when the "right" guy passes under the "right" billboard. Sure, after a while it becomes tedious and cliché (though occasionally a photo like this will stand out because it has a particular sensibility or depth of approach behind it), but that doesn't stop all of them from feeling serendipitous to me. It's one reason why serendipity alone is not necessarily a photographic plus. Serendipity can certainly yield a very boring photo. But a million photos showing a similar kind of serendipity doesn't make any of them less serendipitous, though it may make the viewing somewhat tedious.</p>

<p>What if I learned after years of viewing it that one of these ironic billboard shots had been staged. I would then know that a photo that conveys serendipity was not shot serendipitously.</p>

<p><strong>Julie - "</strong>Statistics apply to populations; they are meaningless to an individual"</p>

<p>Not in my world. When my grandfather won a huge lottery in Europe, it was meaningful, even if he made the list of winners. When my friend caught breast cancer and died recently, it was excruciatingly meaningful to her and to me. When Robert Frank criss-crossed the country photographing what would become The Americans, he knew only a handful of the 800+ rolls would be usable. One in 281 pictures were.</p>

<p>The universe has a limited number of possibilities (some say 10 to the 500th power). It repeats itself. Some of these events are serendipitous to the participant. Most innocous, some fatal.</p>

<p>Sometimes statistics just don't matter. Did you ever fall in love? How many people around the world fell in love that day? What are the stats? Do they matter to any of those people? Or that they fell in love?</p>

<p>I do not think all photographs are serendipitous, either. If they were, the word would cease to have any relevance in the medium, and we could close this thread. Does anyone here besides Julie think all their pictures are serendipitous? Let's say equally so?</p>

<p>A lot of people had the dog wander into their root pic, and uttered, "Damn dog" before shooing it away and exposing dogless frames. Were those serendipitous as well?</p>

<p>Luis, you don't seem to know what statistics are -- which (not knowing), I guess, is not as uncommon as it should be.</p>

<p>Julie, I pretend to know what statistics is and what they can be use for and they are only telling relative facts about the individual - like, I'm one inch higher than the average American male. They are essential for the individual if he/she needs (we all do), and wants to be informed about society beyond what can be perceived by individual experiences and hearsay.<br /> Nothing bad about good statistics they are essential in big complex and fast changing societies. Much can be said against how statistics are used and misused.</p>

<p>At times several of us have said we like to imagine narratives for our pictures. A good photo Serindip story might be like a mystery novel. The author goes back within the plot and places clues, red herrings, and esoteric facts. At the dramatic denouement with all the characters gathered in the library Poirot reveals the perpetrator. <br>

Hercule Poirot: "I am an imbecile. I see only half of the picture." <br />Miss Lemon: "I don't even see that.” <br>

The <em>reveal </em>for a picture goes something like this: When you capture the image whatever you see isn't a complete narrative - maybe only half. Serendipitous <em>clues </em>complete it.</p>

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<p>whatever you see isn't a complete narrative</p>

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<p>Beautiful post, Alan!</p>

<p>Very little (if anything) of what we talk about is like an on/off switch or is completely literal. It's PICTURES. Thank you for talking about <em>clues</em>, which are what drive most photos, like the effervescent bubbles that energize a glass of champagne.</p>

<p>Clues suggest. They don't explain and they don't justify.</p>

<p>Some of the serendipity I have experienced may never get <em>identified</em> in a photo. Yet it will have gone into the building of the photo. That may be all I need.</p>

<p>I wonder if it would make sense to think of my process in this way. It's not bad. I don't go out looking for pictures. I go out looking for and devising clues. Clues to mysteries that are not meant to be solved.</p>

<p>Thanks, Alan. You very often think and talk photographically.</p>

<p><strong>Julie Heyward - "</strong>Luis, you don't seem to know what statistics are -- which (not knowing), I guess, is not as uncommon as it should be."</p>

<p>Julie, much too kind and tactful. I made a big mistake, no, two, and I am grateful or the correction. Thank you.</p>

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<p>Anders, a heartfelt thank you. I owe you one.</p>

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<p>Alan, even though I am still not so sure about the business comparing photographs to text, I like what you had to say.<br>

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<p>In my opinion, serendipity in the <em>making</em> of photographs is exactly <em>not</em> to do with anything like clues to solve a case. It's exactly where your "case" vanishes; goes up in smoke -- POOF, it's suddenly gone and all your pre-conceived structure suddenly "is" something else. What you thought you were looking for is not at all what you are looking at; what you thought was going on, was happening, is not what is going on, what is happening. <em>You </em>are changed because the world is changed. You are the victim/recipient of this "crime," not the detective "solving" it.</p>