Pleasure of creative expression.

[Bernice Loui]

This question:
https://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?169382-What-will-happen-to-your-negatives-in-quot-the-end-quot


brings up another related question, "Pleasure of creative expression."

Creative expression be it image making (photography, painting and related), sculpture, writing, technology design and all related to creativity can bring self fulfillment, meaning to life, sharing aspects of one-self with others.. yet, the arts are often not valued to the degree as material indulgences..

"“In these days of political, personal and economic disintegration, music (~the arts in general~) is not a luxury, it's a necessity; not simply because it is therapeutic, nor because it is the universal language, but because it is the persistent focus of our intelligence, aspiration and goodwill.”

― Robert Shaw


Creativity is a gift to be shared, how might this gift be appreciated or valued by other members of humanity?
Bernice

[Tin Can]

Exactly

I 'make' for myself

always have

[Alan Klein]

Exactly

I 'make' for myself

always have

Wouldn't it be nice if your photos also please others?

[peoorvendal]

Wouldn't it be nice if your photos also please others?

I think it’s hard to answer this question with a hard “NO”.

However, for at least some of us, this is a rather slippery slope that can easily (and very stealthily) start chipping away at the core value we derive out of taking photos. When we start taking for photos to inspire awe and admiration from other, rather than to just express ourselves for ourselves, something is lost.

So there are simply two very different reasons to take photos. Neither is good or bad on an absolute scale, but they can be good or bad for any one individual.

As my photography is evolving, I am happier and happier with just keeping photos to myself, or, at the most, share them with a small group of friend photographers for the sake of getting their feedback, inspire each other, and evolve our photography.

Of course it “would be nice” to share the photos with others. It’s hard to argue against that. But I also don’t see any inherent value in it when I do so, and I know it will distract me. For me, it will always lead to a point where I actually start caring - maybe ever so subtly to begin with - about affirmation and whether a photo is liked or not. And then I’ve eroded the intrinsic value of my photography to myself.

[Ulophot]

Robert Shaw, quoted in the original post, was a person of great depth. There is a video of a rehearsal process he led in preparing a chorus composed of choral teachers/leaders from around the country for a performance of, I believe, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis. His thinking, concentration, and work with the chorus are extraordinary, the kind of creative intensity and depth to which many of us aspire.

[Corran]

I don't have a great memory, but what I've found is that making photographs greatly enhances my memory of places and experiences. I make the photographs I want to make for myself, despite the fact that I sell prints.

The most common sales I make are to people that have a memory connected to that image or at least similar to it. So perhaps my intent comes through.

I don't believe I've ever made photographs expressly with the intent to please others (except maybe my wife) but it certainly is nice when others enjoy them.

I will also say that creating an image is much different to performing music, which is more akin in my opinion to being a printmaker for a well-known artist. Which can still be very creative and fulfilling in its own way but different. I do miss performing in orchestras...

[Bernice Loui]

Robert Shaw:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi0h_iBWJZs

Sir Georg Solti:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asDPUTW_JUM&list=PLi8IURjJmajAB9SZjRXicMU8dPt4p4_Qn&index=3



Bernice

[r.e.]

I will also say that creating an image is much different to performing music, which is more akin in my opinion to being a printmaker for a well-known artist. Which can still be very creative and fulfilling in its own way but different.

I think that concerts, stage performances and films are collaborations and that conductors and musicians, and directors, actors, cinematographers and sound designers, are not just a composer's or writer's "printmakers".

Peter Brook died on Saturday. Watch his 1971 film King Lear and tell me that he and Paul Scofield were just Shakespeare's printmaker. If one reads critics who didn't like their Lear, the complaint comes down to the belief that being a printmaker was their job, an idea that mostly showed how out of touch they were with where filmmaking was going.

Guardian (no paywall) obituary for Peter Brook (https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/jul/03/peter-brook-obituary)


Peter Brook at his Paris apartment in 2019, age 94 (NYT Photo)

228834

[Corran]

Perhaps the difference in opinion here is because I was thinking of printmakers as being often collaborators in turn with the artist/photographer. Especially with photography, where a print can be truly a creative interpretation from the printmaker.

I get where you are coming from if one is thinking of a printmaker taking a watercolor, say, and working to make identical prints with exact color reproduction and the like, but I'm thinking more in terms of photography, where the negative is not a finished print and they may take it in many different directions/interpretations (remember the AA quote!). Of course sometimes a printer may be under the exacting direction to print it a certain way or duplicate an earlier print, so valid point in that instance.

Thinking about it more, especially related to Shakespeare, there's a lot of debate in academia about performing Bach and other similar works from that period in exacting ways without modern interpretations or conventions (for example, no vibrato). Some do that in performance, some go off into their own interpretations, even with some amount of improvisation (a recent listen of Emmanuel Pahud's performance of the Vivaldi Piccolo Concerto Mvt. 4 comes to mind, since I've performed it myself and he had a ton of interesting improv in his performance while my teacher was more of an urtext person herself). There's also a lot of "famous" interpretations of newer / modern works from big-name conductors that are often emulated. So it depends.

Anyway, performing someone else's composition, either in chamber ensemble or large orchestra, is certainly a very different experience to making a negative and then a print from start to finish. Especially just in the number of people needed to collaborate with.

[LabRat]

Another important factor is getting up and out to explore possibilities to create images... It makes us leave our "comfort zone" reality and immerse elsewhere where we might start other mental processes... New ideas, concepts, understandings, pattern recognition, problem solving, tech interacting, relationships etc emerge while exploring, and we are interacting with new environments...

And we can enlighten others with the results of our explorations... ;)

Steve K

[Dugan]

Has anyone else seen "Why Man Creates", the short film by Saul Bass?
It's an interesting, light-hearted exploration....it's on the Yu-Toobz.

[Alan Klein]

I think it’s hard to answer this question with a hard “NO”.

However, for at least some of us, this is a rather slippery slope that can easily (and very stealthily) start chipping away at the core value we derive out of taking photos. When we start taking for photos to inspire awe and admiration from other, rather than to just express ourselves for ourselves, something is lost.

So there are simply two very different reasons to take photos. Neither is good or bad on an absolute scale, but they can be good or bad for any one individual.

As my photography is evolving, I am happier and happier with just keeping photos to myself, or, at the most, share them with a small group of friend photographers for the sake of getting their feedback, inspire each other, and evolve our photography.

Of course it “would be nice” to share the photos with others. It’s hard to argue against that. But I also don’t see any inherent value in it when I do so, and I know it will distract me. For me, it will always lead to a point where I actually start caring - maybe ever so subtly to begin with - about affirmation and whether a photo is liked or not. And then I’ve eroded the intrinsic value of my photography to myself.

Would Pavarotti and the world have lost anything if no one heard him sing?

[Alan Klein]

Of course, they would have.

[Vaughn]

I have always had an educational bent to my photographic work. Educating myself...and others as a way to further educate myself.
I enjoy bringing a different way of visually experiencing a Place to others...the viewers' experiences are directly related to the expression of my experience through the prints...and to the "success" of the print. Printing in a university darkroom from 1977 to 2013, with continuous feedback and discussions over those years has created a different viewpoint than those who have worked and enjoy working in a less social atmosphere.

I am a member of a local artist cooperative, not so much for sales (which are always nice -- I almost make my expenses back), but to have my work out where a large variety of people can see it...and explain the processes I use and why (mostly platinum prints from negatives), if they seem at all interested on the days I work there.

Photography for me is not a hobby to keep myself constructively occupied. It is, to me, an art form I have structured my life around for the last 40 years in order to explore its (and my) possibilities and my connection to Light and Place. My 'projects' tend not to have defined endpoints -- most are life-long (or for as long as I can carry the cameras).

But there certainly is a lot of pleasure in the whole creative process. I'll look at an old print and wonder how in hell did I see what I saw and get it onto film then paper. I remember seeing the top of this palm off in the distance, hiked out into the Death Valley heat and down into the canyon of this spring. Only one image of it -- only one spot seemed right. 8x10, 300mm lens, platinum/palladium print.

PS -- I watched "Why Man Creates" in High School when it first came out. Always been a bit of an influence.

[j.e.simmons]

I’ve lately worked at having what I think of as a more expansive photographic vision - seeing better relationships within my images. I find that to be the same as playing music (trombone, bass trombone, tuba) particularly in the small church wind ensemble where the parts are not doubled and are more open. I have to pay a lot of attention to all of the parts and my relationship to the others. Maybe this makes no sense at all.

[Alan Klein]

I have always had an educational bent to my photographic work. Educating myself...and others as a way to further educate myself.
I enjoy bringing a different way of visually experiencing a Place to others...the viewers' experiences are directly related to the expression of my experience through the prints...and to the "success" of the print. Printing in a university darkroom from 1977 to 2013, with continuous feedback and discussions over those years has created a different viewpoint than those who have worked and enjoy working in a less social atmosphere.

I am a member of a local artist cooperative, not so much for sales (which are always nice -- I almost make my expenses back), but to have my work out where a large variety of people can see it...and explain the processes I use and why (mostly platinum prints from negatives), if they seem at all interested on the days I work there.

Photography for me is not a hobby to keep myself constructively occupied. It is, to me, an art form I have structured my life around for the last 40 years in order to explore its (and my) possibilities and my connection to Light and Place. My 'projects' tend not to have defined endpoints -- most are life-long (or for as long as I can carry the cameras).

But there certainly is a lot of pleasure in the whole creative process. I'll look at an old print and wonder how in hell did I see what I saw and get it onto film then paper. I remember seeing the top of this palm off in the distance, hiked out into the Death Valley heat and down into the canyon of this spring. Only one image of it -- only one spot seemed right. 8x10, 300mm lens, platinum/palladium print.

PS -- I watched "Why Man Creates" in High School when it first came out. Always been a bit of an influence.

Nice shot Vaughn. I sometimes look at my photos and feel great that it's just there. There is something spiritual in catching a moment in time forever.

[PatrickMarq]

Wouldn't it be nice if your photos also please others?

I would say I take photo’s for myself, but ‘secretly’ I hope that other people like them a lot.
As Alain said in another post somewhere here on the forum, https://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?168624-Jo-Ann-Ordano-life-s-work&p=1643544&viewfull=1#post1643544

Everyone wants to leave their mark in life. And I agree

[r.e.]

I would say I take photo’s for myself, but ‘secretly’ I hope that other people like them a lot.

There are very few examples of professional artists who aren't looking for an audience. The audience is what puts food on the table, but I think that the desire goes deeper than that. Even financially independent artists look for an audience. When amateurs say that they don't care about an audience, I think that it demonstrates either an honest self-assessment that their work won't cut it in the wider world or lack of confidence that it will.

Pandemic aside, I spend my summers on a river and I have a neighbour on the other side who plays the accordion. He knows that there are a couple of real masters of the instrument in the area, and I'm pretty sure that that's why he's shy about playing in public. Yet once in awhile I hear him play on his front porch. It's a bit faint, because he's downriver a ways, but he knows when he does this that sound travels on a river and that he'll be heard by others. He's a better player than he thinks, and we'll stop what we're doing to listen.

[jnantz]

Wouldn't it be nice if your photos also please others?

why does it even matter ?

[Michael R]

why does it even matter ?

It releases endorphins.

[Alan Klein]

why does it even matter ?

We all need "atta boys". Recognition from others keeps the juices flowing. As long as you don't get crazy about it and hurt others in the process. It pushes us and society to be creative and do better. Otherwise, we'd probably be hugging each other to keep warm since we still hadn't figured out how to start a fire.

[Alan Klein]

Not that hugging sounds bad. ;)

[jnantz]

Didn't really answer my question, attaboys and a group hug ... I don't really think it matters, it matters to you so .. ok.

[PatrickMarq]

Didn't really answer my question, attaboys and a group hug ... I don't really think it matters, it matters to you so .. ok.

I hope this not sound rude, but why do you post images …. If it does not matters ?
BTW, I like your images a lot.

[Michael R]

John, of course the answer is it doesn’t matter in any objective sense. It simply matters to many/most people because it’s one of those things that gives the brain a shot of the happy chemicals. When you get down to brass tacks that’s all most things come down to.


Didn't really answer my question, attaboys and a group hug ... I don't really think it matters, it matters to you so .. ok.

[jnantz]

John, of course the answer is it doesn’t matter in any objective sense. It simply matters to many/most people because it’s one of those things that gives the brain a shot of the happy chemicals. When you get down to brass tacks that’s all most things come down to.

all I wanted was that Pepsi!



I hope this not sound rude, but why do you post images …. If it does not matters ?
BTW, I like your images a lot.

I am not exactly sure .. compulsion ?

[JohnF]

I am not exactly sure .. compulsion ?[/QUOTE]

A good question, and that’s not really an answer. What compels you?

[JohnF]

A small group of members of my local camera club meet fortnightly by Zoom, each showing recent images, sometimes though not always sparking a discussion. I find this a very satisfying and ‘democratic’ way of sharing images

[jnantz]

I am not exactly sure .. compulsion ?

A good question, and that’s not really an answer. What compels you?

sorry, is this better >> ennui ?
to be honest I really don't post much ...

[Alan Klein]

A small group of members of my local camera club meet fortnightly by Zoom, each showing recent images, sometimes though not always sparking a discussion. I find this a very satisfying and ‘democratic’ way of sharing images

It's also a way of getting better. I often miss things that others point out that would make my pictures better if changed. The best golfers, athletes, musicians, and artists have teachers and mentors advising them. No one's perfect.

My friend who recently passed away was a commercial artist. After he retired, he took some art classes. He then told me he was amazed at how much he learned that he didn't know and wished he knew it during his career.