Imaging and Imagination: How Are They Related? Reflections on Creation v. Discovery

[Wouter Willemse]

<p>Lanny,<br>

Your way of working sounds much like mine. But that's about where the similarity ends with regards to this thread. You seek synthesis between the discovery and creation, and I think quite some answers already revealed that there is no need to hunt that synthesis. Regardless of the starting point is wrong (I think it is), you oppose things that are not exclusive to each other. I think you're hunting words, more than ideas, this way.</p>

<p>When I go out with my camera, I typically do not know what kind of pictures I'll make. If it catches my eye, I'll try to get capture it<em> in the way it caught me</em>. The latter, to me, is no different from creating. It may take a a split second, but framing, choosing settings, envisioning how the result would be etc. is as much creating as planning a shoot with controlled lighting in a studio. Whether we discover while creating or create after discovering, that's more a way of working than a serious difference.</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>you oppose things that are not exclusive to each other.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>No, Wouter, but I think that discovery and creation are factorable, if only conceptually.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Guys, let's get real here: you don't <em>really</em> "discover" things like this, do you?</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/photo/10548876</p>

<p>I know that I do not--not in my universe.</p>

<p>This photo by Marc G. comes much closer to<em> pure creation</em> than anything that I have ever shot--or seen!</p>

<p>Conceptual distinctions and dichotomies are only <em>more or less useful,</em> not absolutely <em>true or false</em>, according to my way of thinking--and I happen to find "discovery" and "creation" darned useful as polar opposites, even though the psychological processes of creating certainly do depend on prior discovered observations--and something like the reverse is true as well.</p>

<p>The psychological literature is full of allusions to this distinction. "Creation" and "discovery" are "ideal types," to use the language of Max Weber. They are, that is, limiting concepts that have demonstrated some utility, which is why we use the darned words in the first place.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Here is something from the realm of science and mathematics:</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>Does mathematics have an existence independent of our physical world? Do mathematicians discover theorems, rather than invent them? Such questions have exercised the minds of philosophers and mathematicians since the time of Plato, and many books have addressed the issues.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>Here is the link, in case anyone is interested:</p>

<p>http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=161513&sectioncode=1</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

 

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>Discovery and creation go hand in hand, in stage art as in photography. What else can one say? I often discover interesting photographic subject matter, but turning that into the subject and the photograph requires some creative input, with the creativity often a greater challenge than the initial subject matter discovery.</p>

<p>But "versus" does not make much sense to me.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Thank you, Arthur. Notwithstanding your last comment, you indicate that you are capable of factoring out the two mental processes of discovery and creation. That is gratifying.</p>

<p>When we say "versus" in philosophy, mathematics, and physics, the usual presupposition is not that we are saying that the two ideas being counterpoised are necessarily absolute polar opposites, rather that they can be fruitfully compared or even emphasized in contradistinction to one another.</p>

<p>This is such a common way of speaking that I am surprised at the reaction to the word "versus." This is not a legal proceeding, where one party must be right and the other wrong--or one word must be right and the other wrong. "Versus" functions in these contexts merely to counterpoise and contrast two concepts that differ <em>in some significant respect(s). </em>In other words, a simple <em>distinction</em> is being made. <em><br /></em></p>

<p>As to the extent to which discovery and creation <em>are </em>absolute opposites or not, that for me is a mildly interesting semantic and philosophical question, but it was not the point of this thread, which was about photography: some photos are more nearly discovered, and others are more nearly created.</p>

<p>That was intended to be the take-off point of the subsequent discussion, which was unfortunately derailed early on.</p>

<p>Here are the Online Dictionary's definitions of versus:</p>

<blockquote>

<p><strong>1. </strong><em> Abbr. </em><strong>v.</strong> or <strong>vs.</strong> Against: the plaintiff versus the defendant; Army versus Navy. <strong>2. </strong> As the alternative to or in contrast with: "freedom of information versus invasion of privacy" (Ian Hamilton).</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Might it be possible to get back to the original question:<br /> <br /><strong> Imaging and Imagination: How Are They Related?</strong><br /> <br /> --Lannie</p>

[jtk]

<p>Lannie, I don't think you've established a distinction between "discover" and "create." </p>

<p>You've asked if a photographer "created" or "discovered," but neither can be the case until you explain what you mean by the terms.</p>

<p>"Create" and "discover" remain words, not concepts, until you/we link them to something more substantial than you have done..a definition or, if necessary (because of something more subtle) a poem. </p>

<p>A picture can illustrate a word but cannot define it. Individual words rarely "mean" anything out of context. The word "two" means nothing until it refers to something such as "two dollars." A picture cannot define "dollar" or "two dollars," but can illustrate. That might instead illustrate two pieces of paper or "some money."</p>

<p>Given other ideas and concerns you've addressed, I wonder if you have something theological in mind when you use "create" ?</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>Given other ideas and concerns you've addressed, I wonder if you have something theological in mind when you use "create" ?</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>Thanks for the humor. I'm not a"creationist," John. I haven't thought about any possible theological implications of these terms.</p>

<p>By the way, you used the same terms in your early comments on this thread. I think that you understand the terms "discover" and "create." Most people do.</p>

<p>As for "two," of course it means something if not attached to particular objects. The IDEA of two might first require that it be seen with respect to apples, but it can then be applied intelligibly to oranges <em>a priori </em>or anything else--before one sees them, that is.</p>

<p>Definitions are yet generally meaningless out of context. That I will gladly concede.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[timages]

<p>WHAT A LOAD OF BULL!</p>

[luis_g]

<p><strong>Lannie - "</strong>Guys, let's get real here: you don't <em>really</em> "discover" things like this, do you?<br>

<a rel="nofollow" href="../photo/10548876">http://www.photo.net/photo/10548876"</a></p>

<p>No? :-(</p>

[aplumpton]

<p>Lannie,</p>

<p>Versus can apparently also mean "towards' as much as "against" in Latin, so I do understand your objection to an apparent definition of discovery against creation. In any case I meant to suggest not the latter but rather that both are important and inter-related ("towards") and that therefore the "against" definition doesn't make too much sense to me, at least in the way I try to work.</p>

<p>To get back to the original OP of imaging and imagination, as you rightly request, it is true that imaging can often be made synonymous as much with discovery as with creation. It all depends I think (and you mention) who is doing the imaging, and why. Imagination is a component part of any creative process, although many apply imagination in the act (event) of discovery. Like discovery and creation, imaging (a process of capturing an image) and imagination (a mental capacity) often are tied together. I don't think that is anything particularly novel.</p>

<p>That some photographers seem to use less imagination when imaging may be so, but if one removes the layers of their approach, as punctual as that act may be, there are often contributory elements to why the photographer chooses to photograph subject matter in a particular way and why he activates the shutter at a particular moment in time that are related to the way he or she imagines the subject and/or imagines the outcome of the photographic act. The degree of application of imagination varies. At the other extreme we have purposely set up, or "theatrical", scenes, in which the imagination of the photographer is especially privileged and often brought into use in a more measured way and less instantaneously.</p>

<p>It reminds me of the simplest of phase diagrams of physical chemistry, where two substances (A and B, spontaneous unimaginative imaging* and imagination) are completely miscible in each other over the full range of A (0% top 100%) and B (100% to 0%). Spontaneous unimaginative imaging at one end, through to the situation where the subject matter becomes subject and is 100% imagined as an image. I guess that most of the time most of us are thinking, pre-visualising (however instantaneously) and shooting somewhere between the two extremes.</p>

<p>(* if such really exists, apart from a randomly operated automatic camera viewing a continually variable and unpredictable scene)</p>

[jtk]

<p><em>"It reminds me of the simplest of phase diagrams of physical chemistry, where two substances (A and B, spontaneous unimaginative imaging* and imagination) are completely miscible in each other over the full range of A (0% top 100%) and B (100% to 0%)."</em><br>

Canadian response to Lannie's pilfered nude?</p>

[DickArnold]

I agree with Tim. I don't know why I tried to contribute here. I have learned my lesson.

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>I agree with Tim. I don't know why I tried to contribute here. I have learned my lesson.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Which part is the bull, Dick? That's the question.</p>

<p>By the way, I enjoyed your comments last night, but never got around to responding. I think that most of us here have from time to time sworn off this forum, but, like fools, we come back again for another round.</p>

<p>Stick around and you can play the fool, too, from time to time. If it gets too bad, you can retreat to the No Words forum for a week or so, as I did just before posting here, for rest and recuperation. I was thought that I was ready to return, but I miscalculated.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>The degree of application of imagination varies. At the other extreme we have purposely set up, or "theatrical", scenes, in which the imagination of the photographer is especially privileged and often brought into use in a more measured way and less instantaneously.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>I like this, Arthur, along with your comments about miscible substances. (Acetone and water come to mind: mutually soluble in any and all ratios.)</p>

<p>So, of course you are right, even though there surely is no realm of pure imagination and creativity, nor any realm of pure observation and discovery. We all operate somewhere in between--in [almost] any and all ratios, so to speak. I simply tend toward the "discovery" extreme, although whether out of lack of creativity or simple laziness I am not sure. Or maybe it is because when I go out to shoot I just want to relax and get my head out of a book or out from in front of a computer screen--I just want to look, and occasionally capture what I see, but what I see certainly is affected by my imagination.</p>

<p>It was intended to be a playful post, but it got heavy in a hurry. You guys play for keeps over here. I think that it is safer over in No Words.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>John, I like the idea of the "pilfered nude." In fact, I actually like more than the <strong><em>idea </em></strong>of the pilfered nude. I like the picture--so much in fact that I am going to pilfer it over and over, starting right now:</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/photo/10548876</p>

<p>I feel better already, atlhough, if I ever "discovered" such a thing in my neck of the woods, I'm pretty sure that I would feel even better.</p>

<p>Even so, "Nothin' gonna match my sweet little imagination; everything looks worse in black and white." --Paul Simon, "Kodachrome"</p>

<p>The nice thing about images of naked women is that, once seen or discovered, one can then summon them up at will over and over again and re-create them in the imagination (which I think was Paul Simon's point). The image or fantasy will never quite match the <em>dich an sich</em>, however. If I could conjure <em>that</em> up, I would just give up on photography altogether--I wouldn't need it anymore.</p>

<p>Of course, after Kant, we can't even discover the "thing in itself," can we? We can only conceptualize it.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p> </p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>My reactions when framing a picture many times totally lack any conscious analysis. They just happen based upon those years of conditioning. A friend of mine is a Professor specializing in brain function at a large university. He tells me that action without awareness of mental process is common. For instance I have typed this without being aware of how I am typing. This same is true in decision making in airplanes if the process of flying is deeply imbedded in muscle memory. One can have a close near miss without ever consciously deciding how to immediately maneuver the airplane. Your arms and legs just respond. What I am saying is that sometimes, a lot of the time actually, I take or reject a picture without having the slightest idea of why I did so until I think about it post action. Anyway, my friend tells me and he has studied this stuff extensively and as far as I can understand him he agrees with what I posited here. He does a lot of stuff with sheep's brains because they resemble humans only smaller and he can easily acquire them. So most of my photography is knee jerk reaction to what I am seeing at the moment. I have set up pictures for weddings and newspaper photographs. I have done some product stuff like clothing and studio portraits where I did set up pictures but that's necessary to get paid. I also did a lot of candids at weddings where I just randomly and spontaneously took pictures. I become calculating when I am waiting on a subject to evince some kind of expression or emotion before I take the picture. I immediately know when I have it and maybe I will react quickly enough to get it before it fleetingly disappears into the ether.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Well, Dick, that is one way of looking at it: a good, down-to-earth practical kind of way. Aristotle rules the forum tonight. Plato, Hegel, and Kant can just scram for at least this one evening. I'm not in the mood for anything too ethereal tonight.</p>

<p>To drive the point home, let's see what John Kelly calls the "pilfered nude" one more time:</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/photo/10548876</p>

<p>I could swear that she gets better the more she gets pilfered. Remind me to drop Marc G. a thank you note.</p>

<p>In all seriousness, I was actually thinking more of contrasting photographic styles than competing theories when I posted the question. After a day and an evening in the classroom,. I was not in the mood for anything too heavy.</p>

<p>Posting around here is like stepping off the curb and getting hit by a Mack truck.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Wouter Willemse]

<blockquote>

<p>Posting around here is like stepping off the curb and getting hit by a Mack truck.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Lannie, is that "our" fault for challenging your post? If we disagree and try to substantiate why we do, are we being harsh on you, or on your statement? I'm really puzzled here. You seem (here above) to agree with those who've claimed that the responses here are nonsens... while they are responses to YOUR question. As several times before, I get this feel you ask questions wanting to hear specific answers, and when those answers do not come, you seem disappointed. That way, yes, the Mack truck will run over you several times.</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>No one is being faulted for challenging my post, Wouter. I am a political philosopher. I am used to controversy. I actually thrive on it.</p>

<p>Even so, no, this is not a hospitable place to be at times--for anybody, not just the persons who post the questions.</p>

<p>I am not so sure that we should expect much more from an internet forum, however. The internet seems at times to bring out the worst in people--even in moderators.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Julie H]

<p><strong>Fred</strong> said: "I don't think using the building blocks of photography (images from the world) is quoting."</p>

<p>That's not what I meant. The (whole) photograph quotes the world; it doesn't quote other photographs/photographers.</p>

<p>Another [text] quote, this one from anthropologist Tim Ingold:</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>"[The] combinatory view of creativity, as the endless generation of first-time novelties through the rearrangement of elements is deeply embedded not only in biology and psychology but in many other fields of academic discourse as well, not least in anthropology. For example, it underlies Levi-Strauss's celebrated notion of the creative mind as a <em>bricoleur</em> that is for ever engaged in the novel assembly of structures of thought out of the bits and pieces of old ones. And in linguistics, it reappears in Chomsky's notion of 'rule-governed creativity' as the capacity to construct an infinite variety of comprehensible expressions from a finite repertoire of lexical items. Yet this view has always existed side by side with another, less mainstream perhaps, which would <em>deny</em> that there is anything intrinsically creative about the recombinatory generation of novelty.</p>

<p>[ ... ] Alfred North Whitehead insisted that the creativity of the evolutionary process was to be found in something other than the mechanism of variation under natural selection. For the world we inhabit is not made up of static and discrete bits and pieces that may be connected up in myriad ways into ever-changing patterns. It is rather a movement, or flow, in which every element we might identify is but a moment. Creativity, for Whitehead, lay in that very movement of becoming by which the world, as it unfolds, continually surpasses itself. Whitehead's term for this unfoldiing was 'concrescence.'"</p>

</blockquote>

<p>[<em>That quote was all within one paragraph; I added a break for onscreen readability</em>.]</p>

[fate_faith_change_chains]

<p>It is an interesting thought, the photograph quoting the world. The photographer paraphrasing it ?<br /> Julie, I think there are instances to be found when a photograph <a href="../photo/6847611">'quotes'</a> another photographer or photograph first, besides quoting the world and its subjects.<br /> <a href="http://www.lensculture.com/rauschenberg.html">http://www.lensculture.com/rauschenberg.html</a><br /> <a href="http://www.christopherrauschenberg.com/Site/Atget.html">http://www.christopherrauschenberg.com/Site/Atget.html</a></p>

[aplumpton]

<p>It would be quite difficult, although immensely original, to create a photograph or a painting that originates in the mind but which is not taken from the World, or more specifically, from the world of our cumulative visual experiences to date. That creation might be something as I suggested in regard to the immaterial that may be present in an image, with the exception that the premise for that OP supposed the material, and not a thought which may be of the immaterial.</p>

<p>However, in the realm of imaging and imagination based on the much more normal material subject matter, the situation is otherwise. Any element that we introduce to create or imagine the subject of our image, in addition to the subject matter appearing before us, derives also from the visual world (as in using the subject matter in a particular way, by using a differing angle of light and shadow, with differing filtration of light, by composing the elements differently), or comes from that introduced from our prior visual experience (and operating in the realm of our imagination), being our recognition of something else that the subject can communicate (spiritual, erotic, moralistic, etc.), or something that we can imbue to it by intention. Often, the latter will include symbolic elements or compositions. What I mean here is the application of a necessary visual language in order to convey the product of our imagination.</p>

<p>We may borrow from others (which might be called building blocks, like those of our other prior visual experiences) or we may not, but whatever we do with imaging and imagination is not in the written world of grammar and phrases, but in the visual world we know and use in making an image. We use our experience of the visual and material world, a constraint not so strong in some other forms of creation (writing, philosophy, music). </p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Julie, I understood what you meant. What I was saying is that I think one photographer can quote another but I don't think all photographs "quote" the world. When we quote someone, we are quoting it because it already says something, already makes a very particular kind of sense. We are usually keeping that sense and <em>relaying</em> that information to others by quoting the original source. When I take a photograph, I am <em>making</em> a kind of sense out of the world, not relaying a sense that already exists.</p>

<p>Using the word sense here is probably controversial, especially in light of recent discussions about meaning. So let's say I'm showing (rather than telling) a kind of <em>visual</em> sense that was never there before. Framing is a creative act. </p>

<p>I agree with Whitehead that the world continually surpasses itself. A photograph surpasses the original content and context of the world with much more fluidity and difference than a quote surpasses the original statement made. Think about school. When you write your first papers, the teacher tells you not to rely on too many quotations and, when you use them, to add something of your own. Explain them, put them into context, make something of them, etc. The photograph, if it is like a quoting, is simultaneously that addition of the something more the teacher is asking for, so it's more than the quote to begin with. The putting into context, the making something, has already been done. The quote is much more barren (in terms of a utilizer's input) than the photograph is. The <em>quote</em> usually needs more. It needs something from the quoter. The photograph needs no more.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><em>Addition:</em> A quote is not just an arrangement of words, it's a recreation of a statement (and making that statement was the original act of combining the words and grammar). To me, the photograph would be much more comparable to the original statement than to the quoting of it.</p>

[aplumpton]

<p>"That creation might be something as I suggested in regard to the immaterial that may be present in an image, with the exception that the premise for that OP supposed the material, and not a thought which may be of the immaterial."</p>

<p>Allow me to make a correction for those reading the above in my preceding post.</p>

<p>After the term OP, read:</p>

<p>".....supposed the material <em>as the basis, </em>and not a thought <em>or idea, the latter two being in the realm of things immaterial in nature."</em></p>

<p> </p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>To me, the photograph would be much more comparable to the original statement than to the quoting of it.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>Fred, this is not quite the same thing, but it is a question that just popped into my head: I wonder to what extent a conversation could be conducted through the posting of pictures. Not all conversations would be possible, of course, but some interesting ones might.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>