I came across this quote in the eclectic and always entertaining blog Swiss Miss and it's one of the ongoing themes of this blog, namely that there is a way we "know" things without being able to conceptualize or articulate them, and that way, though elusive, is the key to true creativity:

“Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.”

                                                                                            - Ray Douglas Bradbury

George Schumacher, a practicing psychiatrist, engaged in photography as a hobby from the late 50's to 1970, utilizing especially the Polaroid instant process, and he wrote this about his experience

 "Often as one explores an object or subject with macroscopic or even microscopic scrutiny, the beauty and meaning seen and felt deepens to a spiritual quality. One is thus led inexorably to a more humanistic philosophy; to a better and more compassionate understanding of one's fellow man which, especially in therapy, aids in seeing and understanding more fully the "self" within. Photography thus becomes a means to a richer fulfillment in life. For me no other art medium so facilitates this integrity of seeing as photography."

If there is a thread that runs through the posts in this blog it is the ongoing exploration of art, and beauty, intellectually vs. emotionally.  With that in mind, I came across a quote by the actor and comedian Charlie Chaplin that describes his view on the matter:

“What do you want a meaning for? Life is a desire, not a meaning.”

During a recent radio interview, a book author paraphrased a haiku by the poet Issa and it struck me as a perfect metaphor for apprehending the natural world:

I look in the dragonfly's eye
and see the mountain over my shoulder.

I came across a provocative interview with celebrity portrait photographer Norman Seeff and enjoyed his response to the question:

Was anyone particularly challenging to photograph?

NS: Yes, me. I was the biggest challenge to my photography, in the sense that I had to shift my paradigm inside out once I began working in the arena of public personalities. My discovery was that true communication is emotion based — emotions are the fuel of the creative process.[emphasis mine]

In the world I had come from emotions were considered to be an impediment to being objective. The very inner resources at the source of creativity, both imagination and emotion, were considered weak, irrelevant and embarrassing. And then I find myself in a new world where those fundamental resources of the creative process are the foundation out of which thoughtful creativity emerges. I had to begin learning the 101 fundamentals of how to create an intimate, emotional interaction between artists and it scared the s— out of me.

As cameras continue to get better and better, it's not surprising when we photographers become overly obsessed with performance: lens resolution, megapixels, DMax…etc. until we can't see the forest for the trees! At the end of the day, we have to remind ourselves that these tools, as good as they are, cannot provide the most vital component of any image – creative expression.  As Ansel Adams once remarked on the subject: "I've seen a lot of sharp photos and fuzzy concepts."

Here's a provocative observation from renowned cellist Yo Yo Ma on the subtle but important distinction between perfection and expression:

For Ma, the tedium of the flawless performance taught him that there is often a tradeoff between perfection and expression.  "If you are worried about not making a mistake, then you will communicate nothing," he says.  "You will have missed the point of making music, which is to make people feel something."

Artists often credit an external source for their creativity. What I didn't know until I read Imagine was how prevalent this notion was in the past:

"… until the Enlightenment, the imagination was entirely synonymous with higher powers: being creative meant channeling the muses, giving voice to the ingenious gods. (Inspiration, after all, literally means "breathed upon.")

Just finished reading Jonah Lehrer's fascinating new book: Imagine: How Creativity Works. It's well-written and full of behind-the-scenes examples how the creative process has been observed in situations from all walks of life – the arts, business, education…etc.

Though it's clear there is not just one way to tap into the creative portion of one's own mind, Lehrer's book does provide convincing anecdotal evidence that, for example, a diligent approach to problem-solving is not often the best one.  Instead, putting aside a problem may allow our minds to arrive at a creative solution that would otherwise not be considered … food for thought…

I recently spoke to a photography club and, in preparation, was reviewing some materials I've collected over the years that disucuss different aspects of the medium.  I planned to talk about what makes a photograph work and wanted to draw an important distinction between the photograph as a document and the photograph as artistic expression.

In a back issue of Aperture magazine (#186) I found an interview with photographer Stephen Shore who, I think, summed it up perfectly:

Some regard the photograph as a finger pointing at content and not a creative expression in itself.  That's the distinction between a photograph and an illustration.  I guess what it comes down to is: an illustration is aiming the camera at the direction of some content, while the photograph is making sense of it.