I heard a rather interesting story on NPR the other morning, a piece from their “This I Believe” series. It was a piece by poet George Bowering that described the connection of music in a way I had never heard or read before. Overall it was about much more, but I liked this part in particular. And it prompted me to think about if this similar connection applies to viewing photographs or other artwork. Here is the key quote;
Sometimes when you are listening to a great jazz musician performing a long solo, you are experiencing his mind, moment by moment, as it shifts and decides, as it adds and reminds. This happens whether the player is a saxophone player or a bass player or a pianist. You are in there, where that other mind is. His mind is coming through your ears and inside your mind. – George Bowering
In my mind, I came to the conclusion that this is difficult to apply to visual art, or perhaps not to this degree. With music I can fully understand it and love this way of looking at it. But in photography, as much as we would like to think we are communicating clearly exactly why we made a certain image, the connection isn’t perhaps as intimate as is being described here.
Perhaps it is because an image is the end result of a series of processes, inclusions, eliminations, and considerations by the photographer are already finished. A viewer isn’t connected to the formation of a photograph like a listener is to music. For that matter, is it really important to a viewer that I paced back and forth on a beach before picking a certain group of rocks to include in an image.? Does it really matter that I applied a curve adjustment here or saturation there? Although it is an integral part of creation of the final piece, I don’t think for a viewer that they feel more connected to a photographer’s mind by knowing these little bits.
I utilize the saying that owning a piece of art is like owning a piece of the artist in my bio. I think this applies to pretty much any artform. But the ‘live’ experience is much different. As much as I love George’s way of describing the experience of music between musician and listener, I only wish the same type of connection could be between photographer and viewer. I think the viewer gets short-changed a little. After all, you don’t get to experience getting up a 4 am, swatting the gazillion biting flies, sinking in quicksand – for a silly picture. 😉
Dan, that is an interesting idea – live photography… hmmm..
Boyd, you perhaps asked the scariest question I have ever heard!
The eternal difference between performance-based art and non-performance art. A friend of mine, who is a painter, dealt with this by forming a group called Zen Bullies that does live performance paintings, in nightclubs, storefronts, where-ever. My former sculptor teacher does public stone sculptures where she’d encourages passer-bys to assist with. It’d be interesting to do something similar with photography….
Very interesting article.
You are right, we can only hope to inspire someone enough with our art and photography to get them to go and experience it for themselves.
You just made me think of something, what if an artist gets thousands of dollars for his nature art but never inspires someone to experience nature?
I think you do connect the viewer with your shots very well. I know it scares me to see how low the water is.
Beautiful photo and the storyline I think is very strong.
Interesting, Mark. The nice thing about music is that you can experience it over time. Music is not about the finished product, but about the journey. When we are listening to a piece of music that we really enjoy, we seem to never want for it to end. We are enjoying the journey.
Photographs, however, are the end product. As you mentioned, the viewer does not get to experience the making of the photograph, only the end.
If a photograph is truly inspirational, the viewer may transcend the photograph and be ‘transported’ into it where it no longer is a photograph, but a window. The borders, if you will, seem to dissolve. It is at this point, I think, that the viewer has ‘mind melded’ with the photographer and can almost, in the case of your picture, hear the susurrations of the waves, feel the sand underfoot, and imagine the weight of the stones.
Maybe its just me, I’m listening to music right now and I’m not thinking at all about the artist. I’m absorbing the sound and letting it make me feel whatever which way it affects me. I think visual arts can do the same thing. That is, let you take it in and make you feel whatever which way it moves you. I do believe that when one buys art they buy something of the artist themselves, but not the thought process as much as the feeling. I’m going to have to give you remarks more thought though 🙂