Recently, I have been reading about creativity. It’s a vast subject, with such depth that it feels as if I am hardly scratching the surface, that I am burrowing through the topsoil of knowledge trying to understand the complexity of the issues. The few books and academic papers that I have read just seem to be a taster for a banquet of ideas that are presented before me, ready to be admired and puzzled over.
However, with the multitude of concepts exhibited in front of me, one factor that I did not foresee was of how people judge creativity. It seems obvious now, as things always do with the gift of hindsight, that part of creativity, as creativity lacks a singularity but relies on a multitude of elements, is judgement. People assess an object, or as Rhodes would have us describe as a product, to assess how much creativity is imbued within the artifact. In the case of photography, it could be judged to be creative through the use of either black and white or colour. Or it could be the subject matter being arranged in a way to compliment the rule of thirds, or the use of analogue instead of digital photography.
But in my judgement, Dune of Nude No321 lacks creativity. It is not because it is not badly executed, it is a very finely taken photograph. The amount of contrast employed for the sand dunes is sublime, the use of diagonal lines moving both left to right and right to left help to move the eye around the image in a silky smooth fashion. The lines moving in both directions is wonderfully playful, when it follows the direction we read it has a beautiful and harmonious impression, whereas when it travels in the opposite direction, it produces the sensation dynamism, of breaking some unwritten code.
The image can also give an aesthetic experience, in other words I feel something when I gaze upon it. I feel a sense of wonder, it appeals to my sense of taste, and I have an impression of calm and balance. I can gaze at the image for what seems like a lifetime without finding myself wanting to move away from it and the image is truly engaging.
But I do not find the image creative. The reason being is not because it is copying other photographers, many photographers draw inspiration from other practitioners of the art and every time I pick up a camera I try to imitate Bill Brandt and fail miserably. Similar images were being produced by Ansel Adams and Edward Weston in the early to mid-20th Century and this style of photograph has been produced by countless other photographers, all with their own interpretation. But the reason why I think the photograph lacks creativity is because the creative process that made this photograph has been practiced before.
This is the issue with the creative process and why it becomes stale. A process is a series of actions that help to produce a finished artefact. When the process is first devised it is new, exciting, different and creative. Then as the process develops it matures, becomes refined and produces artefacts bursting with originality and creativity. But when the process has been fully explored it becomes consumed into the general ways of working, it ceases being different but instead becomes ordinary. The creativity that once gave it life has now diminished and the process is now just a process.
Comentários