The painting above is by Jackson Pollock, an American artist who was a deeply tortured and angry man, prone to severe bouts of alcoholism, depression and violence. Only when he painted did he find a sense of peace and release from his anger and sadness. His way of painting made use of the lucky accident. He would lay the canvas out on the floor and, walking around it, he would use his brushes to drip, fling and fire paint at the canvas. Someone drolly called him ‘Jack the Dripper’, but his work was no joke. At only 44, drunk, he died in a car crash. What’s for sure is that his work was the only place where he could evade the mental torture of his life: art as the ultimate therapy of escape.
In stark contrast to his anguished life, imagine the confidence he must have achieved when painting. He worked in a way no other painter had done before. A friend described it. “A dripping wet canvas covered the entire floor ... There was complete silence ... Pollock looked at the painting. Then, unexpectedly, he picked up can and paint brush and started to move around the canvas. His movements, slow at first, gradually became faster and more dance like as he flung black, white, and rust colored paint onto the canvas. He completely forgot we were there.” All of his most famous paintings were made like this, yet all are very different, each with its own kind of uncanny internal consistency. In 2000 a film was made of Pollock’s life with Ed Harris as the artist. Well worth seeing if you ever get the chance.
Photography has largely replaced the influence that painting once had. Being a somewhat mechanical process you would think it offers little opportunity for the same sort of creative moment that art once provided. With photography how could you possibly do a Jackson Pollock and cut out an island of emotional confidence amid the turmoil of an unstable life. These days, a camera is part of everyone’s mobile phone; and every day millions of photos slosh around social network sites on the internet.
A photo is no more special than a doodle on the cover of a phone book done in a moment of forgetfulness while phoning. The covers of some phone books are literally covered with doodles as the owner has scratched away with a ball-point, filling in letters and making patterns, while engaged in a conversation with a friend or holding the line to a tiresome insurance company. A doodle is art that has fled to the margins.
In the early days the photographer was the inferior down-market cousin of the painter. A painter might be poor, he might live in a garret, but he had the prestige of belonging to a long historical heritage. The Victorian daguerreotype photographer was an upstart, cashing in on a craze that would soon lose its appeal. But it didn’t – it took over the image market and expanded into movies, television and advertising. In my 30s I worked hard for my Associateship of the Royal Photographic Society. The standard was high. I know the rigours of the trade in the days before digital: it was all about cameras, darkrooms, enlargers, developers, films and all the intricate combinations of these. Colour was just coming in and there were a lot of artistic choices.
Photography may not appear to have a fortuitous nature. After all, you press the button when you intend to. Nothing could be more mechanical. But here’s a question: why do you release the shutter at just that moment. That moment delivers a photo that reveals more than you saw. ‘Unintentionally, you caught the subject with a strange expression on his face. It reveals a reality that is not what you or he intended. We were all were laughing, but in the photo there is a suggestion that he is really bored; that strange half twist of the mouth is not how he should have looked at all – but its him ! And you caught it in a fraction of a second.
I take a photo of a child and it reveals whether I ‘look down’ on them or whether I am at their level. A good question to ask is: what effect do I intend to create when I take a picture, what impression do I want to make: family life as one long series of happy holidays? Are they for ‘pretend’ memories? Or do my pictures show the dump at the bottom of the yard, or my absurd reflection in a shop window, or the empty beach on a winter’s day, or Tommy’s face when he is moody? What’s worth remembering, life as a fantasy that it never was, or revealing moments of how it actually was?
Early on I taught classes in creative photography so, if I may now venture, here is some advice for non-professionals:
1. Never pose people for a photograph.
2. If you are among people, never compose a picture. Posing and composing freezes the subject(s)
3. Among people take so many photos that everyone stops paying attention to you.
4. At any gathering take so many pictures and so fast and so nonchalantly that people stop crediting you with anything serious.
5. Take everything and anyone indiscriminately, click, click, click – fast. Above all don’t hesitate.
6. If you want to capture a single subject keep them moving, talking, doing something – and again take so many and so fast they stop posing.
7. Creativity and quality control comes later on the monitor screen. Here be ruthless. Toss out 99% of your pictures. With the two or three that remain compose and crop carefully. You’ll end up with some good pictures. Certainly not the usual stuff.
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