Narratives about what we see are fundamental to good photography. Capturing what we see in a deliberately composed frame adds a well examined viewpoint and inculcates ideas and emotions into what we see in the photograph. It changes the narrative but doesn’t eliminate discussion.

This is where it begins; the 1000 words theoretically embedded in every photo. Art and photography depends on language translation. The narration begins in our heads as we create. Just as music rises above its mathematical roots, imagery is descriptive.

Beyond “that’s nice” a good photograph excites curiosity, inspires imagination, and invites empathic exchange. How do we know it’s beyond a nice photograph? “Beyond nice” translates into language without straining our vocabulary.

Good art students learn through classroom discussion to translate the visual into language. We learn to ask ourselves the right questions. What was I feeling at moment of capture? Why did I make that frame that way? What am I feeling while viewing the finished photo? What changes would increase the volume of that feeling? Is the volume loud enough to reach an audience? And so on.

Motivated by massive frame numbers, a competitive market, and an incessantly starved ego, among other things, our nuanced talk begins to morph into criticism. Criticism breeds authority; influence embodies itself while meaningful relevant discussion corrodes erodes.

What is an expert? “Unless you’re an academic” – I’ve read like phrases repeatedly in reference to art writing. In your face academia, I’m an expert by default; by working in the field for 30 years post relevant college degree. Furthermore, so is every vaguely accomplished human who’s learned to translate visual to language despite published pedigree.

Art criticism has a few inherent problems. It’s irrelevant to most everyone but the critic and those interested in assigning material value, plus, it’s inwardly focused. Critics talk to other critics in some “other” vernacular. At best it’s readable and at its worst, comedy bait.

The value of most expert criticism to the artist is minimal if not destructive. Divide art discussion into two piles: 1) What you know 2) What you think you know, and you’ll find one pile much larger than the other. The challenge is that the latter is typically presented with more authority than the former.

What we know belongs to the artist and viewer but involves no speculation.

The Artist: I know why I made this photograph and listen as I describe why it’s important to me and what I hope viewers take from it.

The Viewer: This is what it makes me feel, how it’s changed me, and why I find it important.

The Historian: This body of work has changed the way people respond to (insert subject here) . It is evident for these reasons and through these examples, and influenced the art era in these ways.

The Critic: This is why this photo will be important to society. Listen as I describe why art endures in the historic body of collected works; this is why it’s a collectible piece. This is how it should make you feel and why this body of work has overestimated value.

Bruce DeBoer - post author

Tell the difference? Undeniably, there is room for intellectual discussion about art. In fact, I enjoy it.  The challenge, in my opinion, is to keep it relevant to viewers, artists, and historians while at the same time rejecting speculators. Speculators are non-value adding to the process.  They are typically outsiders offering “expert” opinions about speculative artistic value. They wallow in the pile of “what we think we know” beyond nice.

Similar posts with alternative viewpoints:

How We Talk About Photography – Asad Haider

We Need Better Critical Writing about Photography – Joerg Colberg

Conscientiously Full of Myself – Art is Hard

This post was inspired by Luke Sullivan’s post, “Writing to the 2010 Customer” at HeyWhipple.com from July 20, 2010: .

“…as I grew up, black-and-white authority became nuanced with the greys of authenticity.” – L. Sullivan

I easily recall the exact moment my father’s authority became less relevant to me. It was during one phone call in college when he tried to exert influence from a distance without understanding my context. Rejected; his message disconnected from my reality and so things went grey.  Just as Luke mentioned at the end of his post, at that point, I moved from authority toward authenticity; ultimately,  it’s a transition from following to leading.

Our nation’s Daddy lost Authority during Watergate. Spin accelerated; propaganda rules, so we’ve learned  to certify by following agenda’s motivation (often money), gain information from trusted sources, and believe only what feels right or that which delivers gut punches.

In 2010, our world views are individualized by collecting nits we pick off our favorite blogs and media channels. We’re home schooled and attend college on the internet. Walter Cronkite no longer tells us the Way It Is.  We’re in constant conversation but mostly with like-minded folks in a hunt for validation.

Authority is officially decentralized and renamed authenticity.  We are a nation of non-followers; we are “The Man”.  To me, this was recently made plain when a blogger with an agenda, through artful video editing, deceived government leaders and dinosaur media into firing a department manager who didn’t deserve such discipline. Who’s the authority now?

That said, Please allow me to make a thought leap.

Creativity disrupts the status quo; “established authority” if you will.  Creativity is by nature disruptive; always asking questions and refusing to follow.  With our shift from authority to authenticity, wouldn’t it make sense that creativity has shifted too?  Is creativity disrupting as it once did?

Remember the promise of virtual collaboration?  From the late 90’s we thought for sure we’d be working from home in partnership with a nationally diverse  creative team.  “We don’t need no stinking offices.” We’re all connected. Proximity to vicinity no longer mattered. The concept didn’t explode the way we thought.

Most recently, crowdsourcing promises to give us access to the brilliance of others through portals at low cost. Cisco Systems tells us we can “field trip” to China from home base; the virtual experience without experiencing anything. We’re forming tribal networks through social connectivity; we have friends without friendship.

I’m excited but skeptical and looking for a balance.

Another of my highly admired opinion leaders, Edward Boches (Executive Creative Director at Mullen Advertising in Boston), was interviewed by the social media road show now known as Humongo Nation. In the interview Edward talks about social media and Mullen’s new space in downtown Boston.

Ya gotta follow Edward even if you aren’t from Boston like me.

Edward points out that the new challenge for companies is to unite media platforms into something meaningful that drives a consistent message. Rightly so, they’re preaching convergence in a divergent landscape.  There’s a desperate need to organize fragmented authenticity into a central authority; aka – a reliable brand.

Furthermore, in the video, listen for the most important consideration when designing Mullen’s new work environment: They desired to cause unavoidable creative collisions. Not virtual collaboration but rather, they created a space that is conducive to innovative crossover.  What sounds “old school” is new school.

Maybe we’re yearning for an old fashion sense of community; more likely we just know how creativity works. We’ve shattered authority with technology and skepticism, do we now need a replacement? The old way of broadcasting influence has transitioned into collecting authentic influence for distribution; an old fashioned opinion leader or a newfangled network hub.

I can’t help but think of Goerge Clooney’s character in Oh Brother, Where Art Though – Everet – “Vernon’s got prospects. He’s bona fide.”

Looks like our new leaders are going to be curators of the best ideas backed by authentic consumable content. Moreover, creative collaboration is becoming more crucial because collecting and distributing that content is much more complex. Fragmented authority needs to pool into tribes of authenticity.

Check this out.

Humongo Nation Boston – The tour hits bean town with stops at Kane’s Donuts, Mullen and New Balance. The visit with Mullen starts at time code 1:52.

I must have had ½ dozen conversations with musicians, photographers and designers in the last week about artistic soul searching. Perhaps we’re looking for meaning, or overcoming creative block, or simply have too much free time, yet my wager is on the speed of which our cultural environment is changing.  We simply can’t keep up so we are gradually choosing an alternative: finding a place to plant our flag.

When asked about including fret tapping in his playing, one of my guitar heroes answered, “I don’t like the sound enough to spend the time necessary to master it”. To help me out, immediately following my question, I watch as he fret tapped a solo only to abandon the sound in seconds.  Message received: “I’m willing to try anything but I’ve got to have it inside me if it’s going to have meaning”.

The choices are so vast; the horizon is expanding at such a rate it’s as though we are pioneers racing west to find the most fertile land to which we can lay claim. We can only sprint for so long before every square mile passes in hopes of something better around the corner.  At the end of the day, we’re still homeless and looking.

We, the more experienced folks (please accept my generosity), get fooled into thinking our legacy habits are getting in the way of younger seemingly more agile talents.  I’ve watched vigilantly with the wisdom that human capacities don’t change all that much; human is human, look for the patterns they’re consistent through history.

Probing for artistic soul can make an agile impression but experience easily keeps pace with enthusiasm by avoiding needless wholesale experimentation. Edginess is commonly a dormant tradition, like 80’s fashion, tweaked then labeled fresh.

What I see is an increasingly large group of creatives probing deeper inside to find what they own; what unique individual value can inform their work. In spite of that, we make comparisons to a growing creative class: we see things, hear things, and witness ideas that shake our confidence.

“I would never have thought of doing that.”

The Truth:

Of course not, because it’s not you; why do you expect any “other” to be something you could have done? Look inside, plant the flag and do what’s authentic.

Permission To Suck Manifesto Law #2

The boss is the problem; the puzzle to solve, the idea to create, the crowd to excite, or your soul to satisfy.  Don’t piss off the boss.

Seth Godin had a great post last week about adding value, avoiding factory work, and staying true to your art:

A small island grows sugar cane. Many people harvest it, and one guy owns the machine that can process the cane and turn it into juice.

Who wins?

Go Here for more: Seth Godin – The Sugar Cane Machine

Previously Titled: A Hunt for Empathic Exchanges through Curiosity and Imagination

There are elements of a great picture beyond composition, simplicity, light, color, texture and all that designy-crafty stuff. With some tormented thought, I’ve narrowed it down to three elements that seamlessly overlap but are also separate enough that they seem to own a category.

[Warning] This is a less concrete way of thinking about quality imagery of the 2D variety; no “how to” list found here. I prefer to stay on the softer more inquisitive side because I believe if your art stimulates curiosity, excites imagination, and induce empathy, it matters little how it’s presented; success on these are paramount, nothing else really matters.

The elements I’m presenting belong to both the artist and the spectator; presented by the artist and collected by the viewer. The extent to which the art is successful belongs to the viewer with blame placed firmly on the artist.

Curiosity:

It’s the power of the unanswered question. Nothing happens in your art without first stimulating viewer curiosity. It’s what I’d initially call the “give-a-shit” portion of our viewing experience that promptly transforms into something else.

This is where surprise lives. We can be surprised by how similar yet different the artist depicted familiar territory, or perhaps how foreign the subject is altogether while remaining relevant.

Curiosity ought to linger unsatisfied to some degree lest the spectator loses interest and leaves unaffected. If there is no need to review the artwork it’s unmemorable, and who wants that? The intensity and shape of disclosure further feeds or disposes of the viewer’s curiosity.

Imagination:

By imagination I think most of us consider the “how” of it: a works staging, basic concept, or overall presentation. Most of us intend “be imaginative” when we say “be creative”.

What I suggest by imagination in this case is as though there were such a thing as an active noun. A two dimensional image is perpetually abstract so it requires some degree of fantasizing for the artist to portray, while involving an active imagination for the viewer to perceive.

Bring me there in my mind, make me fantasize; cause the imagination to jump the chasm that is linking artist and spectator. This is how we see a moment’s capture or still picture as an event. There is a tolerance of ambiguity by the artist and viewer but we surround the still visual with a mind experience that lasts more than the split second it takes to perceive the picture.

The still picture plays as a story in our head and it changes with every new experience. Imagination is what triggers empathy in the viewer.  We project a personal narration as part of a fantasy involvement with the image.

Empathy:

It’s where passion and compassion lives. Art is an empathic exchange. What we are “Seeing-In” [from Richard Wollheim on The Art of Painting] a picture are projected personal narratives. We see art similarly as we see a cut finger on a friend; it makes us feel beyond what is offered to our senses. Call it your pictographic syntax if you will.

As a picture maker I induce empathy; I’m projecting my passion and sensibilities in a search for empathy. I want my art to make you feel what is in you to feel, but I can’t do that without using empathic abilities.

“We see something in the picture, and then become aware of an affinity with some emotion, only then to reperceive the subject which is then couloured by the emotion.” – Malcolm Budd

If artistic imagination and curiosity is used adeptly then there is room for the spectator to maneuver their empathy in the openings we’ve allowed. The door to empathy is closed by being too literal and by answering all questions in the presentation. Think of it as enigmatic empathy; it’s a response intended or unintended, appropriate or inappropriate that the art work pulls from its spectator.

I think a void of artistic empathy is the artwork epitome summarized in this definition of Artistic Narcissism found in Wikipedia:

Artistic Narcissism is the personality trait of egotistic artist denoting vanity, conceit, or simple selfishness. Applied to a social group, it is sometimes used to denote elitism or an indifference to the plight of others.

The name “narcissism” is derived from Greek mythology. Narcissus was a handsome Greek youth who had never seen his reflection, but because of a prediction by an Oracle, looked in a pool of water and saw his reflection for the first time.

Even an artistic narcissist will find viewer empathy but without seeing a reflection in the art produced, it’s impossible the artistic narcissist to connect with their viewer.  Ultimately, isn’t that what we want as creators?

My art is my attempt to elicit empathy from you while simultaneously attempting to empathize with you.  When I make the right empathic trade I create a tribe  through my works of art – a.k.a. admirers – my tribe are those with whom I successfully induce empathy through my curiosity and imagination that I present as artwork.

Permission to Suck Manifesto Rules applied:

6.    Your creativity is about your heart, not their surface. Creativity is your world view filtered through your talent. It’s your passion, experience, expertise, inspiration and your rules that drive you to create wonderful things that you’re destined to hate because they’re not good enough, and others are open to admire because they couldn’t do it.

14.    Don’t let anyone talk you out of your passion. If you have passion for an idea, don’t lose it by asking others if they think it’s good.  They probably won’t.

16.    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

17.   Imagination accelerates in the abstract and slows with tangibility.  Daydream,  maintain vulnerability, innocence and a sense of wonder so that your creativity stays vigorous.

I firmly believe, as this presentation video suggests, that empathy is the invisible hand. To truly understand art’s role in civilization, our society, and our relationships, we need to understand the profound degree to which empathy has shaped our culture.  RSA 21^st Century Enlightenment and Jeremy Rifkin, author and political adviser, helps us examine empathy in this animated video.

Clay Shirky, author of “Here Comes Everybody” is one of everyone’s favorite TED speakers.  Here are a few of the points I took from his most recent on Cognitive Surplus – a title shared by his latest book.

Our new found connectivity is changing what we do in out free time.  A significant portion of our intrinsic motivations are not economic; As a society, we are discovering that we like to create and share. We like to create value for our civilization.

Through the sharing, we witness a host of stupid creations (he uses LOLcats as an example: cute cat photos with dumb captions) but the importance that shouldn’t be missed is that the gap between creating nothing and creating something is narrowing.  Stupid creativity is still creativity that can, and probably will, improve.

Taking that initial step is like going to the gym; the first step out the door is the toughest. After that first step fitness comes easier as does creativity.  The first step in the creative process is the hardest: doing.

The next step in the use of our free time is in creativing value for society which Shirky calls Cognitive surplus.  His talk is worth view.

I had a chance to talk with Creative Director and Copywriter Mike Allen about his career in Advertising and get some of his thoughts on branding and creativity.  Here are 10 minutes from that discussion.

As this embedded spot for American Airlines demonstrates, Mike gives voice to a brand’s essence.  This spot and two others in the campaign ran shortly after the 9/11 tragedy.  Worried that the country didn’t need a reminder of plane flight or the of who’s company mark was stenciled to the side of the terrorist weapon, American Airlines was on the verge of canceling all Advertising for 6 months.

The alternative was to show the emotion of what plane flight means to those who chose to travel; don’t show planes, show what planes can do besides fly into buildings. It’s easy to see how the “We know why you fly” campaign was born from these early spots written by Mike.

Additional 30 sec. spots in the Campaign from American Airlines 2001:
“Friends”
“Family”

Summery of Mike Allen’s Advertising History:

His 24-year advertising career includes creating brand-building work for American Airlines, Bank of America, Nortel Networks, Subaru of America, the U.S. Air Force, Bell Helicopter, Terminix and Bennigan’s while at Temerlin McClain in Dallas, TX.

From 2003-2009, He was ACD, then VP/Managing Creative Director at Rockett, Burkhead & Winslow (RBW) in Raleigh, NC, overseeing work and writing for BB&T, Biscuitville, Wavecom, Queens University of Charlotte, CORT Furniture and Old Dominion Freight Line across all media channels.

Building Art - James Powderly

In my research for my post on Banksy I stumbled onto James Powderly, an incredible high tech street artist.  James gives us a demonstration in this video [via The Creators Project]. You’ll be shaking your head by the end.

James Powderly:

[via F.A.T. Free Art and Technology]

James was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, U.S.A. in the year of the dragon, 1976. He has been making technology and media at the fringes of robotics, graffiti, space science, tattoos and rock n roll since 1992. James was a Senior Research Fellow in the Eyebeam R&D OpenLab developing creative tools and media to directly enrich the public domain.    more …

http://graffitiresearchlab.com/

http://robotclothes.com/

http://honeybeerobotics.com/

http://research.eyebeam.org/

Powderly’s CV

What is the street artist’s intent? Anti-social pop art with an extreme satirical point intended for consumption across all socioeconomic barriers, or is it hype driven brandalism by an artistic terrorist bent on pulling one over on a naïve culture?  Tagging is clearly vandalism but the line of intent is vague and does mere intent define vandals as artists?

Exit Through the Gift Shop is an extremely thought provoking film by Banksy, one of the more notorious street artists in the UK. I was no more than tenuously aware of Banksy or street art beyond the mundanely obvious, but the fascination button has been pressed.

My fascination is not as much with the art as it is with its place in culture; it’s acceptance or failure, it’s hype driven value and its democratic canvas. I relate stronger to the street artist than I do with his work.

Street art can be beautiful but from my extremely limited surveillance, so far I see its beauty as mostly unconventionally embedded in the “of the people essence” found in the act. Yet street art crosses over and when it does the artist is there to embrace success in the most conventional way; think Shepard Fairey. Which brings us back to intent; was the original intent to gain lucrative artistic notoriety through cheap illegal stunts?

Shepard Fairey (who has a role in the film), for example, was ready to lie about the origin of his work to bolster personal profit. It drives the innocence of illegal art into the ground like a paper airplane; beautiful in its short flight.

In Banksy too, there is a contradiction to his art: a street rebel but also a gallery artist and book publisher making a strong living and building his brand legacy; he’s a (s)pray-on provocateur seen from multiple angles.

The film is filled with anti-heros but the main character is more like an anti-anti-anti hero; he bites back. I’ll pass on to you the favor from a friend who guided me last week by repeating one of the loudest lines in the film:  GO!

If there is one certain thing in the life of a professional creative it’s the need to push change; change in your work, change in approach, change in results, change in thinking, you name it. Some change is voluntary, some is not but both types command your complete attention.

There is a good deal of validity in tuning your creative radar for discomfort; if you’re not uncomfortable you’re not breaking new ground. The inverse, pushing discomfort to get creativity, could have merit as well. One thing for sure, routine won’t get you there. Anything not demanding your complete attention is not going to cultivate imagination in favor of innovation or new works of art.

My corporate days at Hallmark Cards defaulted with comfort. I was a middle manager with a job description inspired to (not specifically stated but strictly enforced) keep employees comfortable; asking them to achieve in the nicest possible way, and passing them on to other departments – if possible – when under performance could no longer be tolerated. In fact, I pushed change too much so they asked me to leave; I made everyone uncomfortable; routine was discouraged.

Yet there is a balance to be found. When creativity is needed most spending more energy is not often the answer.

“I’m not getting it, I need to innovate harder; I need more discomfort.”

Much more frequently one hears creative breakthroughs arriving during rest; those routine times post intensity. Push, rest, push, rest; that’s the ticket. But how do we measure rest?

How do we know we aren’t just being lazy? 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. It may begin to explain how we may better use our creative energy. At the very least it will encourage you to eat more cookies.

More about Switch can be found at the Heath Brother’s Blog.

Dan is a Senior Fellow at Duke University’s CASE center, which supports social entrepreneurs. He is the co-author of the New York Times bestseller book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. Made to Stick has been translated into 29 languages, the last of which was Slovakian, and it was retired from the BusinessWeek bestseller list after a 24-month run. Dan is also a columnist for Fast Company magazine, and he has taught and consulted on the topic of “making ideas stick” with organizations such as Microsoft, Nestle, USAID, the American Heart Association, and Macy’s.

more…

I don’t know about you, but as an artist I’m never completely satisfied with my work. Yet, I take pride my collected body of work, while at the same time I wait for that masterpiece that never comes.

I started taking pictures because it made me feel more special than anything else I did at 15, but the “special” wore off. I hit Art College (a.k.a. photo college) and memories of average grades and bad critiques displaced “special” with an undefined obsession; an obsession I’ve tried sporadically to rid from my professional life only to have it zealously restored just as often.

From where does the underlying threat of a life under achieved come? The canvas is barely dry and it’s nearly worthless to the artist; boring let’s move on, we’ll appraise its memory later. Art’s cash value to it’s creator is about ½ ego, ½ a need for food. The real value of the art to the artist is what then, pride plus memories?

Great work is memorable; good work is not. Does that mean that to be satisfied with your work it has to be great? Merely good won’t do. Perhaps it’s the memory of how it affects others that’s important and not so much how memorable it is to the creator.

Is it the “doing” that drives your work, or a satisfaction with the result? Is it notoriety? Certainly it can’t be wealth. My thoughts tie it to a pursuit of well-being and a desire to cheat death; the thrill of being “in the zone” and producing memorable works. This may not be true for everyone.

Permission To Suck Manifesto Law #2:    The boss is the problem; the puzzle to solve, the idea to create, the crowd to excite, or your soul to satisfy.  Don’t piss off the boss.

In this thought provoking presentation, Daniel Kahneman explores the complexity and confusion between experience and memory. He draws a line separating happiness in our life from being happy with our life. The connection I made between his talk and artists is the ease with which artist’s trap themselves by distorting the importance of how their artwork affects well-being.

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.

[via TED Speakers Bio]

Daniel Kahneman is an eminence grise for the Freakonomics crowd. In the mid-1970s, with his collaborator Amos Tversky, he was among the first academics to pick apart exactly why we make “wrong” decisions. In their 1979 paper on prospect theory, Kahneman and Tversky examined a simple problem of economic risk. And rather than stating the optimal, rational answer, as an economist of the time might have, they quantified how most real people, consistently, make a less-rational choice. Their work treated economics not as a perfect or self-correcting machine, but as a system prey to quirks of human perception. The field of behavioral economics was born.

Kahneman was awarded the Nobel Memorial prize in 2002 for his work with Tversky, who died before the award was bestowed. In a lovely passage in his Nobel biography, Kahneman looks back on his deep collaboration with Tversky and calls for a new form of academic cooperation, marked not by turf battles but by “adversarial collaboration,” a good-faith effort by unlike minds to conduct joint research, critiquing each other in the service of an ideal of truth to which both can contribute.

“Amos and I shared the wonder of together owning a goose that could lay golden eggs — a joint mind that was better than our separate minds.”

Daniel Kahneman