Photo 101, MFA-student paralysis, and more
A few years ago, when I was still posting my own photographs on Instagram, I posted a series of pictures where I had placed the same object somewhere in my kitchen, with the winter light creating shadow play. For every picture, I would modify the object more. It started out as a blank sheet of paper, and I started folding it and adding a few needles to it. It was a creative exercise that had me make a picture every day, and it helped me deal with winter itself, the most dreadful of all seasons.
I don't know where the pictures went. They must be somewhere on a hard drive. I didn't make them for anything other that particular moment. Posting them on Instagram gave me added routine: there was, after all, something I'd do every day.
At some stage, some photographer left a comment underneath one of the photographs and wrote "photography 101". I knew what he meant. It was the kind of snark that unfortunately is too common in photoland. And it stung. I didn't stop taking the pictures, but I felt that that comment had soured what had been an exercise I enjoyed doing.
I have not given up on doing these kinds of exercises, though, even as I remember that comment. In the end, I decided, the comment was sheer projection -- much like large parts of the nastiness that exists on social media. Someone projected their own insecurities onto another person. In this case, it's a deep-seated insecurity that I think is shared by many photographers.
Years ago, I taught a class on visual literacy at an art school. Undergraduate and MFA students took the class. All I'd do was to project photographs and then ask people what they were seeing and what it meant (you learn visual literacy by looking and talking about what you see). I noticed very quickly that while the undergraduate students were only too eager to contribute, the MFA students wouldn't say a word. Even when pressed, they had a hard time. Somehow, I concluded, when you spend enough time in the world of photography, you lose your ability to respond to what is in front of you. Instead, you try to gauge first whether things make sense, and you are very careful about giving just the right impression to others.
And the right impression -- of course -- means to be a cool, highly educated person. You can observe this dynamic on steroids when you go to an exhibition opening in New York City: everybody is so concerned about doing just the right thing and talking to just the right person that it's almost comical (given that nobody is aware of the very strange social dynamic, it's actually quite sad to observe).
With that attitude, you can't easily do things. After all, what you do will have to yield the right result. You can't allow yourself to fail. Even worse, other people can't know about your failures. That's why such silly exercises as my winter pictures are pretty much the worst one can do: it is indeed like going back to photo 101, where you just try things to learn and grow.
During my decade teaching MFA students, I often saw the outcome of this mind set. Some students would be paralyzed. Instead of taking pictures, they were too worried about whether things would be working out. They knew all the relevant books and were able to rattle off the latest "hot" names, but they were unable to take pictures.
You obviously don't learn anything if you're not doing anything; you also don't build a portfolio or project if you don't have any pictures. The worst aspect of this type of MFA-student paralysis (that many photographers keep with them long after they've graduated) is that it's entirely self-inflicted. Taking a photograph literally is the easiest thing you can do. Right now, you could grab your smartphone and take a picture. Any picture. It won't cost you anything other than maybe a second of your time. If it doesn't come out right -- well, then you simply take another picture, right?
There's always another picture.
What is more, there is something to be said to the photo 101 exercises. If you challenge yourself, you can try all kinds of things. If you approach it as understanding more about who you are as a photographer and learning more about what works and what doesn't work, the silliest photo 101 exercise easily turns into something that has the potential to guide you towards something new. In fact, if you don't like the term "photo 101", simply view it as an excuse to engage in any kind of experimentation that might interest you.
For example, I am still interested in making a picture around the Japanese green tea I drink every day. So far, my attempts have centered on cyanotypes. I have the materials at home. The other day, I produced a number of them. I first prepared some tea (after the last infusion) on sheets of plastic and pressed it. I thought that if I put the wet tea on coated paper that would just be a mess (but maybe I should try that?). On one of the few sunny days we had, I created a number of cyanotypes. You can see one above.
It's not quite what I was after. Ignoring the fact that it's blue (apparently, you can tone cyanotypes green if you use sulphuric acid, but who has that in their house?), I can't put a finger on what bothers me about the result. I only know tat it's not good enough for me. Btw, that pattern you see at the corners is the shadow of the washi tape that I used to hold things in place.
The shapes of the tea leaves are not bad, though. They look a little bit like abstracted kanji, don't they? Still, it's not quite what I wanted to achieve -- even as I don't know what exactly what that is. Given that the weather has been atrocious these past few weeks (no sun), I can't easily produce new cyanotypes. I need sunshine. But I still want to get my pictures, even if the pictures -- like the ones I did that winter -- might ultimately end up on some hard drive (or, as seems likely here, end up in some envelope on a shelf).
What this all comes down to is the following. It feels like you cannot control your own creativity. You're either inspired, or you're not. If you're not inspired, you can't will it into action. But even when you're not inspired you can make things. Furthermore, you actually do control your own creativity when you don't allow yourself to do certain things simply because you're worried they're too basic or too simple or whatever else.
If you aspire to be an artist, you will have to notice how often, you're standing in your own way because you're too worried about failure or doing something that doesn't appear to be worthwhile. You want to ditch those restrictions. Your own creativity will be fueled by your doing something. The more you do, the more ideas you will have, the more things you will see.
Mari Katayama has been on my radar for a few years now. To learn more about her and her incredible work, read this recent interview. The combination of photography with a number of hand-made objects that often make it into the photographs and then are exhibited alongside them pushes the conversation what photography is and does forward.
I didn't know that chaotic nightclub photographs were a thing until I came across this brilliant article about them. It not only discusses their background but also places them into an art-historical context, which maybe isn't quite what you would expect after seeing the photograph above. Give it a read, it's well worth your time!
Russia's genocidal war in Ukraine is still going on. The Associated Press published a deeply researched article about one of the gravest war crimes so far, the bombing of a theater in Mariupol by Russian forces. It's a grim read. This tweet seems to sum it all up nicely:
Watching things unfold from afar, I'm struck by how many Western Europeans and especially Germans still cling to the idea that it's Putin's war, and ordinary Russians have nothing to do with it. To begin with, growing up that's the excuse I heard about Germans and World War 2. "We didn't know anything." Historical research has shown that that simply wasn't true. Most Germans had known, in fact they had known very well what was going on.
But what about Russians today?
Ukrainians are constantly asking, “Do Russians really not know what is going on?” The answer is no, most of them don’t. But they understand anyway. Fifteen minutes into every conversation, supporters would casually mention that yes, we were probably bombing the cities, people were dying, and everyone in Ukraine hates us. On some level, they understood everything — only they didn’t know it. And they refused to know, even when being confronted with direct evidence from their loved ones.
Read this in-depth article by independent Russian media outlet Meduza. It's a long and chilling read. Now we don't have to wait for future historians any longer to tell us what people might have been thinking.
And with that I'm going to conclude for today. As you might have noticed, I'm going to try to have these emails be a little bit more organized: my own text first, followed by a selection of links. I hope you'll find this useful.
As always thank you for reading!
-- Jörg