Breaking free

[aplumpton]

<p>Welcome Sarah,<br>

You will no doubt find some ideas on the subject here of value. Your new subject matter may lead to exploration and a evaluating your approach, important I believe to the idea of breaking free. </p>

 

[charleswood]

<p>Minor White quote from Phil above: <em>The state of mind of the photographer while creating is a blank. . .</em></p>

<p>Sounds Zen like?</p>

<p>So from that I guess that breaking free would be a process since breaking is an action word and might translate as 'traveling to' or 'working toward' freedom'. Having a blank mind when creating would then be the 'free', the destination of the breaking. So free = a blank mind that nevertheless:</p>

<blockquote>

<p><em>...is a very active state of mind really, a very receptive state of mind,<br /></em><em>ready at an instant to grasp an image,<br />yet with no image pre-formed in it at any time.<br /></em></p>

</blockquote>

<p><br /> Which isn't a description of a blank, so White might be saying something like: When photographing creatively my mind is a blank, but as a blank mental state it is a very active state of mind, a very receptive state of mind that is ready at an instant to grasp an image with that blank mental state having no pre-formed image in it at any time. So does White mean a mental state blank of pre-formed images, but not blank of the intent to nevertheless take a picture of something anyway?</p>

<p>These self-descriptions by artists of their photographic mental apparatus I read while making allowances; and I do get a sense of what White is saying despite my half-hearted attempts to glean more specificity from White's words than are there as just written on a page. And I take what seems to be Phil's point that breaking free may also involve an exercising of a state of mind as much as an exercise of skeletal muscles. Yet the mind thing is quite a struggle for me.</p>

<p>Could White's description of a photographer's creative mental state also be a description of a painter's? It's very hard for me to arrive at a place and call forth from myself a blank mental state devoid of pre-formed images. So when doing a portrait, I think of other portraits, lighting, posing and those then are pre-formed images in my mind, my mind isn't a blank and I'm not sure that, for instance, a sports photographer wouldn't also have in her mind not a blank, but a bank of pre-formed images to in some way emulate even if approaching the sporting subject with an artist's intention. In fact, if I read Michael Freeman's photography books, if I remember correctly he describes his experience as a photographer as collecting a set of pre-formed images and attempting when approaching a subject to call those forth. I believe he would look for juxtapositions for contrast, i.e., large next to small; or leading the eye and he writes of studies of how viewer eyes generally visually read a picture. Some things generally get visually read first; so when Freeman knows that something will be noticed second he makes the second thing significant in order to impart the experience to the viewer of a sort of delay that is then followed by recognition. That delay is supposed to be satisfying to the viewer. I would compare those techniques to a category called 'viewer expectation management' and though I find such pictures satisfying, I can see where musical compositions are also arranged to meet my expectations, as are flower arrangements I suppose. But if Freeman's books catalogue elements of craft that doesn't suggest that art is a slave to craft. Which brings me back anyway to White who can't be unaware of the elements of craft and yet seems to say he can clear his mind of them.</p>

<p>Adding: so it may be that White is describing a mental state as a blank one when it can just look at what is there. </p>

[aplumpton]

<p>Charles, having quickly read your text (and needing to re-read it later when time permits) I do not think White really is starting from an absolutely blank state. And do you think he is clearing his mind of crafts or rather of crafts and mental pre-conditions (a state of incipient or nascent creation?) of what the captured image should look like? Sometimes we listen to music and are extremely sensitive to it, to the sonorities, to the composition, to the mind of the composer (insofar as that is attainable). At other times we are less receptive. Do appreciation and perception require a so-called ideal state of reception and/or blank mind? I tend to think not and that is part of the question of exploration and evolution (or "breaking free"). To what point are we in control (which allows in my mind an ability to explore) and to what point are we simply receivers of what the subject is. As soon as we perceive the subject in one manner or the other we seem to be engaged and not blankly waiting for the subject (and time and environment) to manifest itself.</p>

<p>This is probably hogwash... I haven't yet had my morning coffee.</p>

[charleswood]

<p>Other thoughts,</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Arthur: "The ability to break free from former approaches is probably recognized by many as an essential element of that freshness."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I like that for Alfred Stieglitz his break from his former approach, pictorialism, was in part precipitated by depression and furthered along by falling in love and remarrying into an even fuller life.</p>

<p>So I guess there are many ways to picture water, the sense of it, its fluidity, effect, tactility. Rain clouds approaching a landscape say one thing. A downpour over a broad landscape can speak to cleansing, catharsis, and imply the coming renewal that rain invariably brings. Tears are water, cleanse the soul, and ritualized purification baths suggest also the cleansing sense of water. There are a lot of things water can be. I'm not so sure my dogs know that the water in the bowl is the same 'water' they are bathed in or is the same water that comes from sprinklers or comes down in the form of rain. They experience water in its many forms and respond not to water, but respond to how water behaves in each situation. Is it really all the same water in the final analysis, or are my dogs wiser than I to consider irrelevant the fact that it's the same water? It may be water but my dogs will break free to get away from baths anyway. Would it be a breaking away if in your water series you included a picture of yourself all refreshed in a warm bath? Why not! can be a breaking away?</p>

<p>What is water then? How have humans experienced water and used it to express even their most intimate and varied experiences of life? Water is as fundamental as breath, and it simultaneously is trivial and even a nuisance despite that water indeed accompanies and announces every birth of a human being. Baptismal rituals anoint with water although each birth is naturally accompanied by anointing water and our current base of knowledge suggests that our origin stories begin in water. Water is sensed differently in different situations.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>As for water, I can recommend <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKS3prrp2tk"><em>Window Water Baby Moving</em></a>, a short "experimental" (or non-narrative) film by Stan Brakhage documenting the birth of his first child.</p>

[AlanKlein]

<p>"Breaking free" could be a state where your ego does not lead your work but rather your spirit, to be taken to places that are formed by the unconscious. But art copies life for most. Who can say that their life's actions were generated by the senses rather than the goals and fears of the mind? It's a very difficult thing to do to step out of oneself and trust the results for whatever they are. </p>

[charleswood]

<p>Alan it does sound like Minor White's <em>The state of mind of the photographer while creating is a blank... </em>might refer to an egoless state. I mean it probably does. I've heard about egoless states, maybe that's what he means. If so, how achieve that state in order to be more creative, more fresh? On the other hand, Minor White can read, can read about blank states of mind, thinks he can achieve that state and describe it. But he is saying his mind as a photographer while creating is 'blank' and then goes on to describe the activity going on in that 'blank'. It isn't a blank he is describing. Instead it is a very active, so active you could hardly call it blank. An active, receptive, ready mind isn't a blank. He still has a mind, it's still his, and it is doing something. What?</p>

<p>So I think that part of the problem with decipherability of such statements, statements like finding your center or Phil's attribution to Duane Michals a '...zen like metaphysical understanding of how things truly are' is that a road map isn't included in such descriptions or references of a mental state. Because what I find in my mind isn't a blank unless I am asleep. Language is my constant companion and I can't shut it off entirely. Where's the off switch then? With what manipulation of language might I push that off switch? Is there in language a language that could shut language off, it's still language then, and language isn't a blank. When are we not talking to ourselves? And if someone knows how to blank that off, what language is used to achieve the shutting off of language, of spontaneously arising thoughts.</p>

<p> </p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<blockquote>

<p>When are we not talking to ourselves?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>When we're anticipating, expecting what's coming next as is often the state of mind when I search with my eyes for something to photograph. At that moment I can't think of creating the greatest photo ever taken or any other scheduled drudgery such as cleaning out my refrigerator while I'm in this state of mind.</p>

<p>Or maybe it's impossible to have a quiet, blank mind for those that can multitask and compartmentalize all that cross talk.</p>

[charleswood]

<p>Well I think that those who can advise others to become centered are responsible then for a detailed self-description conveying how they got there. So I can get there and decide once there if it is somewhere to get.</p>

[charleswood]

<p>And it may be that language just itself isn't up to the task.</p>

[charleswood]

<p>Tim "Or maybe it's impossible to have a quiet, blank mind for those that can multitask and compartmentalize all that cross talk."</p>

<p>I think it isn't possible, whether one can multi task or not. Cross talk is part of the inner landscape out of which creative expression nevertheless comes. Clarissa Pinkola Estés speaks to the subject of cross talk and creativity along with all the feelings about that in an audio talk <em>The Creative Fire: Myths and Stories About the Cycles of Creativity</em> (1993) (mp3s/CDs). That's about creative expression generally. Natalie Goldberg discusses that cross talk in intimate detail in her writing and in her writing workshops.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Maybe one way to understand this, especially as it relates to art/photography is not to approach it literally. Would it help to read "a blank mind" as "a blanker mind"? If that helps, I think that would be fine. If this were a science, I'd expect a provable analysis. But it's not . . . so I don't. I don't read "blank mind" objectively. I think about what it could mean to me and work with that. There are meditative exercises one can do to reduce the internal dialogue and particularly the noise. They can be found on the Internet. I imagine they work for some and don't work for others. To put it in terms of photography, a clue may be focus.</p>

[charleswood]

<p>OK, that makes sense, focus and noise handling.</p>

[alan_zinn]

<p>Arthur P. This has been a rewarding topic. Thanks. <br>

<br>

Phil S. – Evans quote is best ever RE seeing photography as an additive process of expression. <br>

Got in a creative rut? Go to galleries and museums. Study work you usually blow by. Soak up their creative aura. <br>

<br>

Alan Z.<br /></p><div></div>