Are you a discoverer or a designer?
Blossom through the bathroom window – one morning’s discovery
You might know that I’ve been doing the 12 x 12 photo challenges for the last couple of months. I’ve completed two of them, and the third is coming to an end now and, after a bit of thought, I’ve decided not to do this one. Before I go into why, let me give you a bit of background. The third challenge goes like this:
Build something with the intention of photographing it. After you have photographed it disassemble whatever it is that you created.
— Dan Winters
Dan adds…“Create whatever type of object that you want. It could be as ambitious as a house or as simple as a house of cards. The photographs will be the evidence of your efforts.”
My mind began busying itself with the possibilities, and there were many of them. I wasn’t short of ideas. My first thought was something along the lines of Andy Goldsworthy’s work – for those of you not familiar with him, he creates wonderful structures, usually in wild places, made out of natural materials like brightly coloured flowers, icicles, leaves, mud, pinecones, snow, stone, twigs, and thorns. He photographs them, and then they’re left to decay, melt, be blown apart, or drift away. His work is transient, and very lovely.
I had plenty of other ideas as well, from building something from coloured ice cubes and watching it melt, to making a drawing with watercolour pencils and then spraying it with water to dissolve it, to building a sandcastle and watching the sea take it away.
After a while, though, I felt a definite lack of enthusiasm when it came to making any of these projects actually happen. And then I began to think about why that was. Here it is: I’m a discoverer, not a designer. I like to stumble on subjects and allow them to present themselves to me. I’m not so good with creating things from scratch, or with planning, except in a very loose sort of way.
Twyla Tharp, in her book The Creative Habit, talks about the blank page, the empty room, the white canvas, and how every artist of any kind is constantly presented with the daunting challenge of making the first mark or its equivalent. My immediate thought was that photography is possibly the one art where you don’t have to face the blankness unless you choose to. There’s always something there to make a photograph from, and it’s only a question of being open to noticing it.
For me, this has always felt easy. My brand of creativity lies in building on something that’s already there. When I cook, I like to have a recipe to give me a kick start, but the end result will be my own take on the original and is often very different. And I’ve always loved programmes about makeovers, because I delight in the idea of taking something unpromising and doing something wonderful with it.
This is one reason why contemplative photography suits me so well – it simply asks you to be open to what’s there and to see it in a new way. (I do also like to transform what’s there into something different, which is not really part of contemplative photography – but then I treat the contemplative approach like I treat a recipe: take from it whatever I find useful, and play around with the mix.)
There are numbers of photographers who take the opposite approach and go in for meticulous planning. People like Gregory Crewdson, for example, who builds the most elaborate sets and lighting to produce haunting, unnerving tableaus that require a whole film set full of people to produce. And Ori Gerscht – who would have fitted perfectly into this 12 x 12 challenge – who cryo-freezes elaborate flower arrangements, blows them up, and photographs the resulting gorgeous explosions. These photographers are designers, not discoverers, and I really like their work but I’ve got no desire to emulate how they do it.
Twyla Tharp also talks about what she calls our ‘creative DNA’ – a creative style of our own that’s intrinsic to us and comes easily to us. We can work in other ways, and it can be good for us to do that, but our work is never going to be as strong and effective as it will be if it’s aligned with our authentic creative instincts.
For me, the planning involved in coming up with an idea and building it from nothing takes away what I most enjoy about photography. The fun for me lies in discovery and serendipity – it’s like a treasure hunt, where I go out never quite knowing what I’m going to get. I lost my enjoyment of photography once before, when I was in a learning environment that was taking away the aspects of it that gave me pleasure and forcing me to work in ways that didn’t. I don’t want to go there again. Being a designer isn’t for me, and that’s why I’m not doing this month’s challenge.
June 4, 2015 @ 1:44 pm
It won’t surprise you to know that Tharp’s book is one of my favourites, too! I have a wee designery streak in me – for example, I often customise creatively to solve problems – but like you, I thrive when I’m working with what’s there. As you know, I wrote a post a few months ago where I looked at all of my roles and how they affect my blogging; it was an eye opener. I’m more of a translator and rearranger than an artist who enjoys a blank canvas. I channel or reproduce what I learn and see, trusting that it will all somehow get filtered through my me-ness. (Being the age I am, it means all of my experience, loves, passions, learning and skills merge somewhere inside to form a filter, a multi-faceted prism, with me having very little control over the blending process!) When I get too ‘self aware’, I can’t create. In addition to being a discoverer, my obsessive, compulsive, lyrical nature also means I’m often an empty jug, again with no control over what floods in or gets shared in the overflow.
I enjoyed this post a lot – thank you!
June 7, 2015 @ 9:12 am
I really enjoyed this post too Gilly. And I completely understand where you are coming from as far as deciding not to do this challenge.
I’m still digesting your words and wondering where I fit in. Like you I love to go out for a walk with my camera and see what turns up. On the other hand I did once take the flowers from the same hydrangea bush in every stage from buds through to dried and skeletonised, and make a circle with them, and take a photo which I called Circle of Life (original eh?!). It was quite pretty actually!
Also I used to make jewellery from potatoes (yes really!) and I loved the design process there. Come to think of it though, it was usually a matter of waiting to see what shape the piece of potato dried into and then ‘running with it’ from there.
I guess I’m a bit of both!
June 7, 2015 @ 9:14 am
PS Forgot to say, I really love your blossom bathroom photo.
June 8, 2015 @ 8:02 am
Thank you, Janice, and Jane, for your thoughtful and interesting comments,
What’s obvious, I think, is that there are a lot of different ways of being creative and, although we no doubt express all of them to some extent, some ways work better for us than others. I do plan to some extent, and I have conceived an idea at times and followed it through, but it’s never my best work. The best stuff always seems to happen by chance for me, which sometimes makes me feel I have no control over it. But I think the ‘control’ comes from being open to what presents itself and having a willingness to run with it.
I’ve read the Twyla Tharp book several times, and each time I get something different from it. I’ve always thought that I’m not really very creative, because I can’t conjure up wild ideas from seemingly nothing like so many truly ‘arty’ people I’ve known can do. But I’m seeing now that this is just one form of creativity and that we all have our creative strengths and weaknesses. Also, despite the title of the post, I don’t think you can neatly divide people into two separate camps – there’s always a sliding scale and a bit of overlap (some mixed metaphors here, but you know what I mean…….).
I’m so with you, Janice, on too much self-awareness getting in the way of creating. You can see it in a lot of art students’ work – it’s overly self-conscious and seems contrived and I think this is one of the ways in which formal art education gets in the way of creativity. (I have a lot more to say about the mixed feelings I have about organisational art education but will save that one for later.)
And Jane, jewellery out of potatoes?!! I can’t imagine what that would be like, but it sounds extremely creative. Have you got photos?
June 8, 2015 @ 8:34 pm
Thanks for asking Gilly.
Here’s a link to the potato gallery page on my blog, which I actually took down but maybe I’ll leave it there for interest and old times sake!
http://earthapplejane.blogspot.com.au/p/jewellery-gallery-shop.html
Looking back, I really did enjoy it but it was so time consuming and life took over.