11Art and Rebellion

So . . . try for that other world, the real world, where orphans burn orphans and nothing is more difficult to discover than a simple fact. And with that pride of the artist, you must blow against the wall of every power that exists, the small trumpet of your defiance.

—Norman Mailer

It appears I have committed a grave sin. A chiding note from a concerned photographer informed me that my moral standards are too high, my approach to art incompatible with the contemporary definition of the term, and my writing politically incorrect. At the risk of further offending the sender, I confess that the note prompted not only some anger, but also a bit of pride.

To eliminate from one’s work and rhetoric anything that might offend is also to eliminate from it anything that might matter—anything that might make a difference. Call it arrogance, but I have little interest in producing things that don’t matter.

You may wonder what I said to have prompted such a response. In summary, it was my audacious claim that the majority of what is presented today as (fine) art photography is meaningless, repetitious, lacking in imagination and creativity, and safely ignorable; I also said that reliance on found aesthetics to the detriment of expressing personal significance in photographic work is often a crutch for the creatively lazy.

Many artists before me have contemplated their role and agency in society. Indeed, I believe that anyone worthy of the title “artist” ponders such thoughts frequently. Regrettably, few dare to express such thoughts and fewer still find the courage to live by their convictions.

In the most simple-minded perception, the goal of art is the production of pleasing and/or well-crafted works. Beauty is the soul and the bane of art; it lures those seeking distraction from the mundane, but if it fails to lead to ulterior meaning, the work is little more than temporary entertainment, and ultimately of no lasting significance.

The production of artistic objects may amount to the tangible legacy of an artist, but producing tangible objects is not what being an artist is about. In fact, artists will do well to avoid speculating about posthumous fame altogether. Being an artist is about living passionately and deliberately, placing curiosity, awe, honesty, and significance above social conventions, celebrity, and material spoils. Living artfully is not about finding interesting anecdotes, but about discovering them within, creating them anew, elevating and sharing and celebrating them in defiance of all that is corrupt, cynical, greedy, cruel, bigoted, and shortsighted—it is to make your very life your greatest artistic creation. Works of art, beautiful or otherwise, are means to an end, which is elevating one’s living experience.

Photography of natural things can be a rewarding hobby to many, but it may also be fraught with cognitive dissonance. Some may claim to seek a connection with the natural world, yet limit their impressions to short-lived encounters at well-planned “magic” hours; some may claim that photography is their creative outlet, but venture no further than repeating compositional templates. When photographers contribute nothing of themselves to the outward appearance of found scenes beyond just technical skill, beautiful images may ensue, but meaningful expressive work will not. When photographs are not founded in such things as personal convictions and sensibilities, original concepts, and subjective significance, they may be beautiful, but they are not (by definition or by concept) creative art.

We are the fortunate ones. We live in a time and in a world where adventure is still possible, where mystery still exists, where undiscovered beauty is still there to inspire, where great rewards can still be attained for relatively small risk, where the incessant cacophony of motors, gadgets, and televisions has not yet banished all silence, where a livelihood can still be made by personal enterprise and not in servitude, and where fellow humans still find value in the elevating force of art; and their generosity may still make an artist’s life possible. This world of opportunity and freedom is not to be taken for granted. With each generation, more people seemingly become more jaded and disillusioned, inclined more and more to believe that a meaningful life can be had within the confined and dumbed-down bubble of artificial places and virtual worlds, and in disconnect from the very things that make life possible, and the elevating effects of such things on the human psyche.

My work is not meant to offer benign glimpses into things that happen to be beautiful in their own right. If understood as intended, my work should serve as both inspiration and as a stern warning about the wager we placed on our ability to reinvent reality—not just in the material sense but also in the sense of jeopardizing the knowledge, inspiration, peace, and reverence we find in natural things, and that if we are proven wrong may never again be possible by artificial means. A generic image of a pretty place will not do. Only the deliberate explorations, revelations, and personal stories we tell in original work stand a chance of breaching the barricades of socialized indifference, built and fortified in the course of millennia of decadence, misplaced priorities, greed, and unsustainable practices.

I want others to have what I have, to know what I know, and to feel what I feel, even if they don’t yet know why it is important. I want to call to task all those who proclaim themselves artists yet limit their work to the purposeless pursuit of aesthetic trophies (and more so those pursuing trophies already shot, bagged, stuffed, and mounted by others). I want photography to be worthy of its rightful place as a creative, expressive, and important form of visual art, as valid and respectable as any other art, and I believe that such distinction has to be earned through investment of hard work and creative thinking and in adhering to the highest artistic morals. If that makes my standards too high and me politically incorrect, so be it.