1The Mission of Art

It’s easy to rediscover part of yourself, but through art you can be shown part of yourself you never knew existed. That’s the real mission of art.

—Bill Evans

I’ve often been accused of taking my work too seriously. Understandably, many who practice photography as a fun hobby or as distraction from less rewarding impositions may be reluctant to overthink it. As a friend jokingly expressed, “why ruin a perfectly good hobby?” In truth, I never made the conscious choice to pursue photographic art as seriously as I do, just as I never made the conscious choice to limit art’s role in my life to being simply a satisfying hobby. I just followed where photography led me until I realized somewhere along the way that it had ceased to be merely a casual interest; that it had transformed my life and my personality in ways I could never have predicted and did not even know were possible. I also could not have predicted the depth of gratitude I would come to feel for these transformations.

We all pursue photography because we enjoy something about it—the creative process, the tools and mechanics of the medium, the aesthetics of photographs, sharing photographs with others, competing with others, or some other reward of making photographs. Every career photographic artist I know started off with one or more such motivations, but I have never met any such photographers who, in hindsight, can say they had any idea how such simplistic justifications would ultimately guide the course of their lives. It’s no wonder that those who choose explicitly to not take their work seriously, and who therefore have no frame of reference for (let alone personal familiarity with) where such seriousness may lead them, may fail to understand those of us who do.

Photography has many uses, art being just one of them. Of these uses, photographic art is arguably the most contentious, not only because art often requires venturing beyond the medium’s ostensible purpose of objective representation, but also because art’s purpose (at least to some) is different from the purposes of most other uses for photography. Most photographers aim to convey the appearances of things outside themselves—views, objects, people, events—to people other than themselves (viewers), serving mostly as conduits of visual information. We photographic artists, on the other hand, often seek to elevate our inner experiences beyond just witnessing beautiful or interesting things outside ourselves and relaying to others what they may have seen if they were standing next to us. Instead, we seek to give subjective and emotional meanings to external views, to discover things about the world and ourselves beyond what we already know and beyond what would have been obvious to anyone else in similar circumstances. We thrive not only on being in certain places and witnessing certain things, but also on the inner experiences and rewards of artistic creation and personal expression. We wish to contribute some worthwhile things of our own making to the world, and not just to be passive consumers of things already in the world. In sharing our work, our goal is not to merely convey information to our viewers, but to express to viewers our inner feelings about—or through—the things we photograph; to inspire our viewers to experience their own sense of meaning and discovery, not by showing them what we saw, but by composing and presenting what we saw as to imply its significance to us, or to suggest that it may have greater significance worth discovering beyond just being visually attractive or interesting in some objective sense.

To most, the goal of photography is to make appealing photographs. In a larger sense, some consider the purpose of art simply to make beautiful objects. Lost in such simplistic ideas is the power of art to elevate the lives of both artists and viewers, not just by injecting ephemeral distractions into their days, but by shaping and influencing perceptions, lifestyles, and attitudes in positive and lasting ways.

Friedrich Nietzsche proposed that art offers a means of escaping the innate negative nature of reality. In his words, “If we had not welcomed the arts and invented this kind of cult of the untrue, then the realization of general untruth and mendaciousness that now comes to us through science [. . .] would be utterly unbearable.” Albert Camus, on the other hand, proposed that what we perceive as negative about reality is not reality itself but the stories we tell ourselves about reality; and that art, if we invest sufficient effort in it, allows us to transcend these negative interpretations and to see reality for what it is. He wrote, “The great work of art has less importance in itself than in the ordeal it demands of a man and the opportunity it provides him of overcoming his phantoms and approaching a little closer to his naked reality.”

Although it may seem that Nietzsche and Camus contradict each other, in fact, their differences are only in their premises, and not in their conclusion that art has the power to elevate life. In my opinion, Camus is correct in implying that reality is neither innately good nor innately bad—it is indifferent, and as such we are free to interpret and perceive reality as we choose. Among the great tragedies of humanity, I believe, is that most people are not aware that they have such a choice. We accept as inevitable what others declare to be good or bad, and sometimes we don’t even realize the power we have to elevate our lives by resisting, or at least balancing, such imposed values. For example, in accepting such things as busy careers, material wealth, and prevailing in competitions against others as “good,” we may fail to see the greater good (at least in proportion) of leisure, of avoiding the complexities that come from superfluous possessions and obligations, of not measuring ourselves against others (especially when such measuring ultimately amounts to another person’s subjective opinion), and of pursuing rewarding experiences (such as artistic expression) for their own sake, and not for any material outcome.

For about half of my photographic career I failed to realize what Camus meant by the “ordeal” that art demands. The ordeals in my life generally came from mundane obligations, stressful employment, or complicated relationships. These things had little to do with art or photography. In fact, in those times when I was free to photograph, I found photography to be exactly the opposite of an ordeal: it was a way to set aside for a while the trials of life. Photography did not seem to me to be demanding, as Camus described, but easy and enjoyable. Alas, the same was true of my photographs from that time: they were easy and enjoyable, but not more than that, and at the time I didn’t feel they needed to be. More accurately, I didn’t know how much more rewarding they could be. Despite being beautiful, most of these photographs were quite ordinary, uncreative, and easily forgettable. However, every so often I did experience times of profound inspiration and creative energy. The photographs arising from these uncommon states were of a different nature: they were not only unique and original, but also more challenging to make, requiring greater investment of thought, time, and labor than just aiming the camera at something beautiful and pushing some buttons. More important, these photographs felt much more profound, meaningful, and memorable than those that were easy to make; and they gave me a sense of pride beyond just taking joy in good fortune or in witnessing a beautiful scene.

For a while I believed that creative epiphanies were lucky coincidences—statistical anomalies that happened every now and then in the course of ordinary work, for no real reason and requiring no conscious action or attitude. This changed for me as I became more versed in art, in cognitive sciences, and in philosophy. Specifically, I began to identify bits of wisdom in the writings of scientists, artists, authors, and other thinkers relating, in one choice of words or another, to the inner rewards of the psychological state of flow. Flow—referred to by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as “optimal experience”—is a deeply enjoyable state, which may lead to the intuitive but incorrect assumption that flow ensues from ease and relaxation. Csikszentmihalyi suggests that, in fact, the opposite is true, writing, “The best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times [. . .] The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” [Emphasis added.]

I decided to try it—to invest as much energy, creative thinking, and emotional engagement as I could in making my photographs. After some early attempts, I realized two things: first, that accomplishing such intensity of engagement was difficult, as my mind kept wandering; and second, that when I was successful, I not only made better (i.e., more satisfying) photographs, but also my emotional experiences became richer and more intense.

After more practice, I experienced yet another revelation: because making such photographs demanded a high degree of attention and cognitive effort, I was not aware I was experiencing flow until after I was done, when I suddenly felt like I had woken up from a lucid dream. I felt an emotional version of the sweet, endorphin-induced physical exhaustion that often follows a long and difficult workout. I also felt a sense of accomplishment and pride, and felt justified in allowing myself a well-earned break. I just wanted to sit for a while to savor the feeling and the memory of the experience.

In time, these feelings became so consequential to my satisfaction with my work that I decided to pursue all photography in this manner—to stop chasing after fortuitous circumstances and benign aesthetics, and instead invest whatever time and effort I could muster to become so emotionally and creatively engaged in my experiences, both in the field and in the studio, that nothing else occupied my mind. This required training my mind to let go of distractions, to focus entirely on conjuring concepts I previously would not have thought to consider (or perhaps even considered impossible), and to work on them incessantly—to think of possibilities and to experiment constantly, to strive to visualize as effectively as I could how I may be able to use certain visuals and/or to express certain feelings—even if ultimately unsuccessful. Ironically, I realized I had become like those characters I always felt sorry for in television shows—those whose entire lives revolved around their professions and workplaces. Except that I didn’t have to confine myself to a hospital or a police station or an office. I could wander in solitude in sublime places, and process my work in the comfort of my quiet office with jazz music playing, and I didn’t want to be anywhere else.

The adjustment to this mode of work was difficult, even unpleasant at times, but after a while it became intuitive and habitual, and I realized that making photographs in any other mode seemed boring and unsatisfying in comparison. It might seem like an unproductive way to approach photography, especially for a professional, but productivity is not much of a concern to me. I live a simple life by design, and I need only to make so many photographs in a given period to be able to sustain the income I need.

While most photographers, especially nature and landscape photographers, find ways to fit photography and outdoor experiences into their otherwise busy lives, I chose instead to simplify my life and to design it such that pursuing my idea of rewarding experiences is now my primary occupation. I am not beholden to any routine. On most days I can wake up in the morning and decide what I want to do, where I want to go, and how long I want to be there. Almost every day I have time to read, to study, to listen to music, to experiment with my work without concern for any outcome. The more I learn and experience, the more I want to learn and experience. The more I discover, the more I want to discover. The more expressive I become, the more expressive I want to become. The more seriously I take my work, the more seriously I want to take it.

There are many ways and many reasons to make art—many missions that art may serve. Art, photographic or other, can be a source of great beauty and interest to those who view it, but there is another realm in art that is available only to artists, only to those who take their work seriously. By becoming serious to the point of obsession about photography, I didn’t “ruin” a good hobby; I discovered a better life. I discovered, in the words of Bill Evans, “the real mission of art.”