Pleasure of creative expression.

[Bernice Loui]

This question:
https://www.largeformatphotography.i...t-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=asDP...4p4_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


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

[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