To See With Someone Else's Eyes
Of late, I've been wanting to be someone else again. Or rather, I've been wondering how other photographers manage to take the pictures they take, seemingly without effort. I'm old enough to know that you can run only so far from who you are; and I've resigned myself to the fact. Still, I can be quite pig headed when it comes to my own limitations: it's not always the best for my own mental health, but I often very forcefully rattle my own cage.
In my previous email, I shared the picture of the two tomatos in their sorry plastic container. It's not the picture I set out to take, even though everything in the picture is exactly what would have been in the picture that I set out to take. I wrote that Rinko Kawauchi would have no trouble taking the picture I wanted. Anne Schwalbe would probably know as well. That is, alas, the best way for me to describe the problem.
I suppose it's not that I want to be someone else (even though at times, that would be such a reprieve). I want to be able to see how other people, well some other people see. Why or how is it that they can imbibe their photographs with so many emotions?
(Maybe this is not how one would use the word "imbibe". But I think you get the idea, and I like the sound of "imbibe" in a sentence that ends with "emotions".)
Why can't I?
I'd like to think that it's my handling of the machine, the camera, that's responsible. The alternative would just be too dreadful to consider.
Meanwhile...
One of the most intriguing differences between languages might be how they render animal sounds. Even more intriguing is the fact that people will defed their own native language's version over all others, regardless of how absurd it might be. For example, in English a rooster crows "cock a doodle doo", which is a lot more blatantly absurd than the German "kikeriki" or the Japanese "コケコッコー" ("kokekokko"). I mean the idea that a rooster would engage in a rather complicated intermix of hard and soft consonants... No siree Bob.
Meanwhile...
Someone wrote me a few short sentences in Japanese, and there was an expression I wasn't familar with. I typically look such things up because it's a good opportunity to learn something (if you're wondering, it was なんて -- nante). Often, there is plenty of information online. This time I decided I might as well watch a video because this case appeared to be a little bit more complex. Which is how I found Cure Dolly (subtitled Android Dolly Sensei). This easily was one of the weirdest things I've seen in a while. If you're curious here it is:
I couldn't stop watching. But I still don't know how to use なんて. So I should probably avoid it until I find an easier explanation.
Meanwhile...
I've kept thinking about what I started this email with. I keep coming back to the question. Over the years, I've thought about it mostly in the context of other artists. Some artists never change their work. So you basically know what you're going to get even before you've seen something new. Some artists manage to re-invent themselves, surprising you with what they have achieved -- and I must assume themselves along the way. And some artists attempt to re-invent themselves, only to produce a meager simulation of what somehow could have become meaningful work, but now is little more than an empty formalist exercise. Much like me, you've probably seen examples of all of these as well.
The artists who never change baffle me: how can one go about producing the same stuff over and over again? Let's say wherever you travel, you set up your camera on a tripod, to basically take the same picture over and over again. Isn't that dreadfully boring? For me, as a viewer it certainly is. I get the idea that commercial success can cushion an otherwise empty artistic life. But the cushioning can only go so far, can it? I guess I'll never know, given I'm never going to have commercial success.
Of course, it's hard to know what's going on in most artists' minds because everybody is so secretive about their process. I've long stopped listening to artist talks, mostly because usually there's so little insight to be had. Everybody plays their cards so close to their chests: more often than not, the end result is just barely better than a TED talk (if even that).
Failure almost never features in artist talks, even though to be an artist means to fail all the time, often in the most crushing ways. Nobody wants to admit that. Nobody wants to talk about it. I remember in a recent job, someone had the idea to have guest artists present failures in a brief presentation (so students could see that everybody fails, and it's all good). But no artist showed actual failures. Instead, all artists defined the word "failure" in such a way that what was being shown was an artistic success dressed up as a failure. Something along the lines of (not a real example; I forgot what people showed): "So I decided that I was going to try my luck at still lives..." (at which stage a very good still-life picture would appear on the screen) "... but I wasn't happy with that so that's a real failure." (Yup, the old humblebrag dressed up as pretend-openness about artistic failure.)
Anyway, today I was wondering whether I was the only person wishing I could see the world with another artist's eyes. I obviously can't be. I mean, does any one of the artists whose work I admire (or someone else for that matter) ever think "I wish I could take cityscape pictures that are as clean and analytical as Colberg's?" I don't mean to say that my work is on par with theirs (that discussion is completely besides the point). But I'm curious about this: if I see something in someone else's work, and they see something in mine, and we both admire what we do, there actually is the basis for a very good conversation where we could both learn a lot from each other -- both about ourselves and each other. Unfortunately, I've never had the opportunity to have these kinds of discussions with photographers (mostly because I think so far, nobody has taken me seriously as a photographer, given I'm the "blogger"). But I've recently had such conversations with other writers, and they have taught me so much.
I'll leave you with that. As always thank you for reading!
-- Jörg