Authenticity vs. Ground Breaking
This is one of those posts that I’ve been thinking about writing for a long time, but didn’t really know what to say. Every once in a while I’ll read something that will trigger these thoughts again and allow them to clarify a bit more. Finally, I think that I have enough to talk about it.
A few months ago I arrived at work and found a magazine on my desk. I believe that it was a running magazine. I’m not runner, to be sure; however, the person who dropped it there knew of my interest in photography. On the cover, in bold, was the title of a feature article: 139 ways to improve your photography! Wow! I must be missing something, I thought. 139 ways. The interesting part of this was that I didn’t even open the magazine, instead I thought that I’d take it with me an peruse it a bit later when I had time. It rode around in my car for months before I ended up throwing it away without looking for those 139 ways to improve my photography.
Just the other day, Paul Butzi had a post about sharing your work. He states that sharing is good, but that it isn’t necessary to share all of your work because, if you do, you will not make deep, personal work because you are always going to hold back. I’d probably have to agree with that for the most part. Art is very personal and you may not want to share some of your more personal pieces with the population at large.
Back to the 139 ways … there are so many top X lists out there telling you how to ‘improve’ your photography, but is it really improvement, or is it making it like everyone else’s? I think to high school fashion, or fashion in general. If it is fashionable and everyone else is buying it, where’s the uniqueness?
People seem to want to be original rather than authentic. Perhaps original is not the correct word, let’s say ground breaking or trend setting. It doesn’t take much time to go wide, but it takes lots of time, patience, and most of all, courage to do deep. It takes a bit of a thick skin to put your work out there and hear that some people don’t like it. It’s OK. There’s no need to start pandering for the crowd. Keep working for that authenticity, that unique style that is you. Also, as I’m finding out, authenticity is not something you strive for. It’s one of those Zen paradoxical things, the more that you seek it, the further away that it gets. And, as far as the style is concerned, as soon as you finally recognize it, it will change. It’s always changing, being shaped as you are shaped.
These thoughts seemed to really bubble-up because it is the Christmas season and all manner of cameras, lenses, filters, etc are available. Vendors are hawking their wares trying to get you to buy that next latest, greatest, and most-up-to-datest thing that will take your photography to the next level. What they certainly don’t want you to know is that it is there already within you. You just have to let it come out with a lot of practice and a lot of patience.
Actually, authenticity is something you can strive for… Take a look at the appropriately-named book “Creative Authenticity” by Ian Roberts. It deserves a place on your bookshelf right next to Ted Orland’s books.
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Paul Reply:
December 10th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Thanks, Dave. I’ll have a look at it probably after I finish reading Death of a hero, birth of a soul.
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Paul, interesting post. Perhaps I’m missing the point, but this issue strikes me as being about “short-cuts vs. putting-in-the-time” and seems related to the instant gratification age we live in. Vendors are hoping people will believe they don’t need to put in 10,000 hours if they buy a gizmo that will give “almost” the same results. They only problem is, while these tools may be useful in the right hands, they never make up for practice and experience.
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Paul Reply:
December 10th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Earl, I don’t think that you are missing the point. I would certainly agree with you. I was speaking more to the idea of trying to find something ‘different’ rather than trying to find yourself. The vendors are offering us gadgets. It’s just what they do. It’s what they are in business to do. Why else would cameras and lenses keep improving?
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I understand exactly what you are saying here Paul. I have experienced the same observations in the world of complementary art. My take on a lot of it is “Sometimes nothing to say, translates into make it different”. Authenticity will come through in images and any art if it is real and from the vision of the artist. Style isn’t something you put on it is something that is inside you. This is what I see, this is the way I see it, this is what I have to say. To many times it get translated into this is different so it is cool.
If your vision and heart aren’t ‘authentic’ and a part of you, the original becomes just noise. I am not even sure I could take 139 ways to become real, as it wouldn’t fit me unless I made my own list.
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The photograph stopped me for a while, had to look at it carefully to find out why it works so well. Nice!
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I read something on this recently, I can’t recall what or where, but it hit the same chords within me as what you write about here. It was about following others or making your own way. I believe the consensus was that either way might be right, you chose what feels right to you. Common sense, in my opinion. I’m not sure whether there are more followers nowadays than before. It might be that the followers are seemingly more visible due to blogs and sites like Flickr, and that might increase the need for step-by-step guides in how to improve and make your voice heard. We all want to be heard or seen, but we have different tool sets to achieve it. And I guess, different audiences too. That’s my take on it.
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I think that, unfortunately, many of us are terrified to discover ourselves. It’s so much easier to tinker with gadgets instead. That way it’s so much easier to imagine we are who we would like to be, not who we are.
The photograph is filled with mystery.
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Top three things to improve your photography:
1. Takes lots of photographs
2. Look at lots of others’ photographs
3. Repeat
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May I dare to extend Martin’s list?
* Get interested in different things, also outside of photography
* Learn, not only but also your subject matter
* Find your goal, your vision
* Intensify all those steps…
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An absolutely stunning image. Great.
As to the topic, yes, I think just doing is the best you can do. In fact, I really suppose that most of these problems come up when someone tries to commercialize his art, Suddenly you need a “style”, suddenly you are expected to never fail, always be interesting, always original and “true to yourself”, and so on and so forth.
That’s really an unrealistic expectation, and one has to understand that it is not a necessary condition for making art, it is simply a side effect of art being commercialized. It should be ignored, otherwise sanity is in danger
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I struggle a bit with the following inner dialogue: “am I posting this image because I like it or because I think the people who read the blog will like it?”
‘Nuff said.
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