Permission To Suck

How do we know we aren’t behaving like comfort loving factory workers? I doubt there is a material answer, but the subtlety of creative exhaustion knows no bounds. Take a look at this experiment explained by Dan Heath at Fastcompany.com.

I think this is what Sir Ken Robinson has in mind: Too many of us tolerate what we do rather enthusiastically do what we love. Our schools don’t teach us to discover and cultivate our passions. Transforming means shifting from a linear manufacturing approach to an organic agricultural approach; create the environment under which students can flourish.

I’ve been influenced by Usher Fellig (aka Weegee the Famous). I had no idea. But I’m in good company from Diane Arbus to Cindy Sherman, and the rest of us. It’s hard to peel away the nostalgia from his photos from mid 20th century NYC, but as I try the feeling of intensity remains; as though one held a candle under humanity fluid and let it reduce.

What defines our story are significant moments and endings; memorable works and what we’ve done lately. Artist’s think of the future in terms of anticipated great works. It’s a trap.
+ View a TED video presentation by Daniel Kahneman

Artistic creativity is an act of intimacy or not; it’s genuine art or it’s artifact. Learn to manipulate tools and their crafty mechanisms so they become secondary or not.

In general, the scarcity shift is away from artifacts and toward process. Can you establish the culture that creates, the moment worth photographing, the performance that affects, or the product that markets itself?

Flame finding is your talent. Imagination is hot, execution is cold. The flame is illusive; if you must obsess about something, make it a flame search. “I think part of the process of this whole thing is to get as close to the flame as you can get without being burned” – Graham Nash

Like colloquial speech is to literature, vernacular photography is any type that isn’t intended as art.
“There are no accidental masterpieces in painting, but there are accidental masterpieces in photography.” – Chuck Close

“Everyone has to learn too much in too short a time. The only way of learning is to do it. There is no shortcut. You need to do a lot of things over and over to get better and better … Time is short, art is long” – Saul Bass

I can’t grip rational leverage on conceptual composites that look like photography but really aren’t even, though they defy any other category and have original photographic components. What are these things?