Traversing an N-Dimensional Aesthetic Space

I've been musing lately about a problem that has stubbornly resisted my attempts at solving it for quite some time; indeed, I sometimes wonder if I've made any headway at all in all the years I've spent reflecting on it. Perhaps I should pay heed to the title of my own blog - namely tao - and plumb a bit of tao's timeless wisdom. To wit, maybe I ought to treat my problem not as a "thing" that needs solving, but as a transient stepping-stone on a timeless path toward gradual self-enlightenment.

"What is beauty?" I [S Nachmanovitch] asked him that night. He [Gregory Bateson] said, "Seeing the pattern which connects." (quoted from Old Men Ought to be Explorers, by S. Nachmanovitch)

My "problem" is to find the "optimal feature space" in which to describe the aesthetic sensibilities of particular artists; that is, essentially, to find an objective language (or, least as objective a language as possible) to describe the subjective propensities of, and differences between, individual painters, musicians, or photographers. We all "know" the difference between, say, Mozart's music and that of Beethoven; or the difference between a painting by Matisse and another by Picasso. Sometimes the differences, as in these "obvious" cases, are striking. In other cases, the differences may not be so clear cut: if one was, a priori, unfamilar with the works of Minor White and Brett Weston, for example, some of their respective abstracts may appear - superficially at least - as aesthetically indistinguishable.

Somehow, perhaps in the way that Malcolm Gladwell calls "thin slicing" in his book Blink, we all make quick, largely unconscious, assessments about makes one work different from, or similar to, another. We can sometimes analyze - after the fact - why we made the decision of similarity or difference that we made. But (as Gladwell also points out in his book), we are not always able to articulate the precise feature-space decomposition we used to make our rapid-fire decision (because our subconscious thought-process does not always percolate up to the conscious level); nor can we really be sure that whatever feature-space decomposition we are able to articulate is an accurate reflection of what our unconscious information processing. Of course, often our thin-slicing attempts are also simply wrong.

The larger question, even if only as a thought experiment, remains. Let's start small, and not yet all-encompassing - a bit later I will generalize the question from photography to all forms of creative expression - and confine our analysis to photography alone, as an exemplar of a broader class of "art" and its associated larger class of aesthetic possibilities. We ask: what is the optimal set of "features" (to be defined shortly) of "photographs" such that - in the N-dimensional abstract aesthetic space defined by these features as (roughly) orthogonal axes - two conditions are simultaneously satisfied: (1) the differences among photographs is maximized (with respect to sets of photographs produced by individual photographers), and (2) the differences between photographs produced by the same photographer (i.e., between any two images within a given photographer's own oeuvre) are minimized? In a sense, I want to perform a "simple" exercise of mathematical pattern recognition, but without any (or little) initial sense of what space I'm performing it in, or even what I'm setting out to "recognize."

What do I mean by features? Well, any reasonably well-defined "parameter" that can be used to describe a photograph (which may, implicitly, involve both its physical attributes, as a print, and nonphysical attributes, such as subject matter or other contextual primitives). Of course, many different features exist (indeed, the set of possibilities is enormous); but not all features are as important in describing a work as others. More precisely, different sets of features will be better, or worse, at simultaneously identifying the works that are produced by a given photographer and distinguishing among bodies of works produced by different photographers.

Thought Experiment #1. Schematically, we can imagine a 3-dimensional space (in general, the dimension D can be very large) consisting of the features f1, f2 and f3. As a thought experiment, imagine we have the collected works of three of photographers (A, B, and C; that we "code" using the colors red, blue, and green). We classify each photograph, of each photographer, according to where in the feature space in lives. It does not matter whether the "points" in this space are cleanly defined or not; the only thing that matters for this thought experiment is the fact that every work by each of the three photographers is classified according to the values of the three features we have used to define this particular "aesthetic space" F = {f1, f2, f3}. As a concrete example, the three features might be: f1=average hue, f2=degree of local constrast, and f3=number of triangular shapes. And, indeed, as we might expect of such a loose (random almost) set of parameters, we would not be surprised to learn (if we actually went to the trouble of performing this experiment) that these features do little to distinguish among our three photographers. Our plot of their respective oeuvres might look something like this...

But now, suppose we are a bit more clever than this. Suppose, after carefully studying the works of these three photographers, we discover a new set of features - {f1', f2', and f3'} - such that, in this new aesthetic space, F', the same body of work now appears considerably more tightly clustered:


Here we see - by direct visual inspection - an "obvious" distinction among the photographers A, B, and C. Moreover, we see that work produced by a given artist is itself clustered around a relatively small volume of the full aesthetic space. "A" is obviously confined to one region, separate from (in this case) the volume of space occupied by "B," and both are distinct from the volume occupied by "C."

My point here is not that a feature space within which such a decomposition is possible exists - it may, or may not, for a given set of artists; but only that it suggests an interesting and deep question about what such a set of features - that simulataneously minimizes the differences among a given photographer's works and maximizes the distinction among the works of different photographers - might actually look like! I suspect it may not be like anything we would intuitively expect; if our intuition is anything like what we learn in the standard art and graphics design books. I doubt very much whether the "core features" would include such standard-issue measures as "contrast" and "tone" (though they may very well these). I wonder, too, at just how far separated the artist's "oeuvre clusters" can be made to be, while the spread of each artist's own cluster of works is simultaneously minimized.

One can play other thought games too, of course, For example, having defined some aesthetic space, and having plotted a given artist's current oeuvre - say, what the artist has produced during the last five years of work - we can trace how the artist evolves, using the first plot as a reference. Does the work remain more or less in the same "cloud" of points, so that the artist does not stray too far from his (possible innate?) aesthetic? Or does the cloud slowly dissipate, and reform in another region of the same aesthetic space? Or does the cloud diffuse outward to fill most, or all, of the "old" aesthetic space, thus suggesting that a new feature space - some F'' - exists, and in which the same artist's evolving oeuvre again assumes a cloud-like form?

Thought Experiment #2. Here is an even deeper question; and, truth be told, the real object of my rambling quest. Suppose we have managed to find a special "core aesthetic" space that does precisely what our thought experiment imagines. That is, imagine we have an aesthetic space defined by a special set features (whose relevance, for the moment, is confined solely to photography) that both maximizes the difference between different photographers, and - simultaneously - minimizes the differences between individual photographs of a given photographer. Suppose, further, that we carve out of that space a special set of photographs (and, by association, a special set of photographers) which maximize - for lack of an objectively better-defined word - photographic beauty. Now, imagine we do exactly the same thing (i.e., play the thought experiment as described above) for all of the different kinds of creative endeavors that exist: music, sculpture, literature, mathematics, physics, ... The analog of (generic) "beauty" in art or photography might be - in the case of mathematics, for example - "truth" (as in the truth of theorems); in physics, "beauty" may be aligned with "physical laws" (the "truths" of nature), and so on. What is the underlying meta-pattern that connects the patterns?


Here is my question (and I'll stop at this point): might there be a "universal aesthetic meta-map" that transforms the set of features of one aesthetic space (that describes art, say) to another set of features that describe a different aesthetic space (mathematics, say) but which leaves the measure of "beauty" that is appropriate for each kind of space invariant?

"We do not want merely to see beauty...we want something else which can hardly be put into words; to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it." - C. S. Lewis

"Beautiful" art or music, "physical laws" in physics, and "theorems" in math may be - in a truly fundamental sense - indistinguishable, but only if the analog of "beauty" is correctly defined , and interpreted, in each respective space. Indeed, I suspect that if only we were clever enough creatures to be able to simultaneously apprehend and reflect upon vast multidimensional features spaces, it would only be a matter of "shifting our perceptual / aesthetic axes" (so to speak) for us to be able to transform our endeavors from one creative space into another. Imagine being able to "prove a mathematical theorem" by working on the problem as though it were an art project (and the object of which - in the art space - is to produce a "beautiful work of art"). But whatever space we happen to find ourselves in at a given moment, the object of our quest (and the ultimate arbiter of our creative progress) remains indefagitably the same: truth.

Postscript #1. The way I presented my thought experiment, a (God like) external agent is needed to view the universe of artists and their work to construct (and plot the creative progress in) a D-dimensional aesthetic space. In fact, one can argue that each artist (indeed, each living being) is doing precisely that, ceaselessly, tirelessly, throughout its existence. We are all seeking to be as distinct as possible from all other living beings, even as - at the same time - we desire to be be as integrated into our local cultural / creative fabric as well. It is this insoluble yin-yang tension that drives all self-motivated dynamics; and perhaps all creativity. This fundamental idea of the universe consisting of simultaneous and seemingly antithetical tendencies of integration and distinction (or assertiveness), at all levels of a multidimensional hierarchy, was introduced by author / philosopher Arthur Koestler in a book called Janus. He called all such creatures that strive to do this holons.

Postscript #2. The idea that there is a core universality that underlies all forms of art - all life - is certainly not born in this humble blog entry. In fact, much of my thinking on the subject derives from, and has been shaped by, a magnificent four volume work called Nature of Order by architect / visionary Christopher Alexander (about whom I've written before on my blog).

Postscript #3. A similar idea to the one presented above as thought experiment #1 (but in the context of cosmology) - and developed more completely on a semi-rigorous mathematical level - was proposed a few years ago by physicists Julian Barbour and Lee Smolin. They called it extremal variety. Barbour has published another article on this subject in the Harvard Review of Philosophy.

Unconscious Influence and the Creative Process

I am about half-way through a superbly illuminating biography of Ludwig van Beethoven by Edmund Morris. Though short for a biography, Morris' writing style is so wonderfully succinct and poetic that reading this work is the linguistic equivalent of fine (though perhaps not quite Beethoven-esque) music. Highly recommended.

But the point of this blog entry is not Morris' Beethoven bio per se, but rather a brief muse on an interesting observation he makes on pages 72-73. By this time in the book, we are in March of 1798 (Beethoven's life spanned the years between 1770 and 1827), and Beethoven is already a young up-and-coming composer / musician. Importantly, his life intersected with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (albeit extremely briefly, in 1787, and but for one reported meeting) and Joseph Haydn (1732 - 1809). After hearing the 17 year old Beethoven play, Mozart was reported by a latter 19th century biographer (Otto Jahn) to have said, "Keep your eyes on him; some day he will give the world something to talk about" (though the veracity of this account is questioned by Morris). Beethoven, for his part, was said to have later commented on Mozart's own piano playing style as "choppy." But all of this is still an aside, as we move on to the grand'ole "papa of music" at the time, Haydn and one of Haydn's own performances in 1798 (which may, or may not, have been attended by Beethoven).

After a short self-imposed "retirement," Haydn reappeared on the public stage with a performance of a new composition (one destined to be his last work, and truly an inspired masterpiece by all acclaim) called The Creation. Morris notes that in this remarkable work, Haydn apparently presages several tonal and musical structures that the modern world would one day associate with Beethoven. Morris hypothesizes (and quickly dismisses) the idea that Haydn had consciously imitated some passages in a cantata Beethoven had shown him about eight years earlier, but speculates that perhaps the unconscious seeds of inspiration were nonetheless planted by Haydn's association with Beethoven. Since there are only twelve basic tones in the Western musical scale, it is inevitable that coincidental and otherwise similar use of harmonies and repetition will exist. But outright plagiarism is rare, on a conscious level (except in cases where it is blatantly obvious, and is a sad event when it happens of course).

So that started me thinking about the appearance of similar "unconscious seeds of inspiration" in photography. While the "tonal range" (here I am thinking more of subject matter and general expression rather than traditional black and white tones) in photography is obviously much larger than the dozen tones in music - after all, the number of things that photographers can take pictures of are essentially endless - nonetheless, the number of aesthetically meaningful core subjects (or more precisely, core subject classes) is much smaller.

How many "things" (or classes of things) can we really take pictures of? There is the general landscape, portrait, still-life, and photojournalism (among others). Each class, of course, contains many sub-classes. There are landscapes of deserts, of seascapes, of forests, and so on. Portraits may be of individuals, couples, artists, children, weddings, etc. At some point, however, either a true "novelty" is found - and remains just that, a novelty, either because it was done so well (or badly) that others are loathe to repeat it, or the subject matter was perhaps not as interesting, and/or of as lasting a value as first believed) - or a sufficiently unique perspective on an old subject is taken and the novel work thus serves to refine aesthetic meaning and boundaries. But similarity of approach and subject matter, if not downright repetition, is - in the long term - unavoidable. Just how many pictures of a mountain (or rocks, or lakes, or butterflies, or broken glass, ...) can one take? And at what point will one picture of a canyon look any other picture of a canyon?

Brooks Jensen, editor of Lenswork, published excerpts of a roundtable discussion with photographers on this subject about a year ago (in issue #76, May / June 2008), entitled "Fellow Travelers." The discussion was inspired by Jensen receiving a portfolio of grain elevators (which was subsequently published in issue #76) just as issue #75 was going to press with a portfolio of grain elevators by another photographer. Since the "new" portfolio had just as much aesthetic merit as the portfolio being published, the basic practical question was: "What is a publisher to do?" The deeper philosophical question, taken up by the photographers in the roundtable discussion, was / is: "Is there such a thing as parallel creative vision?" And, when does inspiration cross the line to become plagiarism?

A well known example of a "parallel creative vision" involves no less a figure than Ansel Adams. In 1942, Adams took his celebrated shot of Canyon de Chelly (in Arizona). Only later did he learn that it was essentially the same photograph - both in terms of composition and lighting - that 19th century photographer Timothy O'Sullivan took in 1873. We know that Adams knew - at some level - of O'Sulivan's image, because, in 1937, he lent an O'Sullivan album to Beaumont Newhall for the landmark exhibition on the centenary of photography. Adams' "reproduction" of O'Sullivan's photograph of Canyon de Chelly was entirely unconscious, and resulted from being in the same environment and executing the photographic process according to a similar aesthetic.

There are many examples of this ilk, of course; and "parallel creative vision" is certainly not confined to music or photography. In my own case, I recently discovered a similarity of vision with - and, in hindsight, not unexpectedly, a major artistic influence on me - British photographer Fay Godwin. It was Godwin's book Land, published in 1985, that was instrumental in my becoming as avid a photographer as I've become.

While in the process of selecting a set of images to exhibit at a local photography coop for our current hanging, I ran across one of my personal favorites from last year, which I call "Luminous Boundary" and you can see in small size at the top of this blog entry. Well, after the hanging, and while I was reareanging my shelves of books and journals in my study, I ran across Lenswork issue #48 (Aug / Sep 2003). Lo and behold, there is a photograph by Fay Godwin that is a virtual doppelganger of mine (or is my photograph a doppelganger of hers?) You can see Godwin's image on page two of the preview. While I can honestly say that I was not consciously aware of Godwin's image (which I had known about previously, and was reminded of that fact when I saw it again in Lenswork only after taking, processing, printing, and hanging my own shot), I cannot help feeling that I was also unconsciously motivated to "see" this particular shot when the opportunity presented itself.

The question I am asking myself is, "Would I have taken this shot, in this way, had I never known about Fay Godwin?" (Then again, in that case, the question itself may be moot since it is entirely possible I would never have decided to pursue photography!)

Postscript: While I was trying to find a direct link to Fay Godwin's image I was discussing above (I could not find it, but it is available on page 2 of the pdf preview of Lenswork #48), I ran across another "parallel vision" image, but this time it seems I have anticipated Godwin's discovery. The image is of Devastion Trail on the Big Island, Hawaii. Here is my image, taken (in color!) in 1983: I used slide film back then and this is a digitized image I made about ten years ago). And here is an image that Godwin took in 1988. Of course, in this case, I am certain that Fay Godwin had not one inkling that some unknown photographer named Andy Ilachinski was taking pictures in the same spot in Hawaii ;-)

Featured Comment (by Cedric Canard): "Good post and interesting question. Interesting in the possibilities it brings up. As you know Andy, I wrote a post which turned out to be very similar to one of yours and while I've only become a regular reader of your blog since, I have a vague recollection of coming across your blog some time in the past even though I do not recall reading the post that I covered prior to my writing it. Anyway upon reading this latest post of yours, some thoughts or memories came up and I'd like to explore these, with your permission.

I was reminded about the so called 100th Monkey experiment I read about many years ago. Where monkeys on one island learnt to do something and then monkeys on another island seemed to be able to do the same thing without the time lapse that it took the other monkeys to learn the same thing. As you know I too question the nature of thoughts. While thoughts appear to be mine I do have reservations. I can only speak for myself but many (if not most) of the thoughts that come into my head are uninvited and I do not know where they come from but I do know I cannot, in all fairness, call them mine. And though I will accept responsibility for any actions that stem from such thoughts including what I am writing now, I have to say that I have problems with claiming ownership to these writings or, for example, of the images I create. Perhaps what we call "my mind" is in actuality just a mind which is shared by all of us. So where a thought occurs to one it could just as easily occur to another especially when faced with the same circumstances. The fact that it happens in different times is most propably irrelevant when it comes to mind stuff.

In all likelyhood, you have probably taken more than one photo which has strong similarities to another photographers work but you may simply never know it. But I guess your question is asking whether a photograph (or mucical score) that we create has to be "seen/heard" first in order to be similar to another's creation. In other words if we create something unoriginal without the conscious intent of copying, is it a pre-requisite for us to have at some point, viewed/heard the original?

Advertising kind of counts on this premise. Adverts on billboards, television, magazines etc do not really brainwash us into wanting something we didn't even know we wanted or needed. Adverts simply aim to be captured by our subconscious so that when the time comes to make a choice between products the advertised product will come to the forefront of our memories and we will "choose" that product. Relating this back to photography, we may well "store" images we see in our subconscious which emerge when the opportunity presents itself and we are fooled into believing that we have done something original.

We'll never know if your "Luminous Boundary" would have existed without Fay Godwin's influence and I suspect it makes little difference. For me though, your story and your image have poked another hole in my belief that we are separate, in my belief of "me". And I sense that's a good thing because with that hole, seeing seems a little clearer."

Learning to See from the Blind

Fine-art photography is first-and-foremost a visual language by which otherwise hidden truths and meanings - of the world and self - are revealed by the observer / artist. As such, it is rarely the case that what a photograph shows on its surface is the complete "message" that the photographer wishes to communicate. Indeed, philosophically speaking, one can say that fine-art photographers use images to provide glimpses of a reality that lies behind (and beyond) what the images represent, as things-in-themselves. Just as letters and words provide the basic units of grammar for literary artists to communicate essential truths that have nothing to do with letters and words, so too do light and form provide the visual grammar by which photographers reveal fundamental truths of nature (and our relationship with it) that have nothing to do with light and form. Art transforms the abject banality of sterile rules, internalized through years of rote memorization and practice, into an intimate expression of the ineffable.

So it should come as no great surprise (though, undoubtedly it will) that the blind - yes, the blind (!) - have much to teach those of us who are sighted about what real "sight" means. The image at the top of this blog entry is of the cover of an extraordinary book called Seeing Beyond Sight, lovingly put together by visual artist, Tony Deifell, and published by Chronicle Books in 2007. The book collects the works of visually impaired children during a five-year program of teaching photography to students at Governor Morehead School for the Blind in Raleigh, North Carolina, from 1992 to 1997. The book has a dedicated website; and an interview with the author has recently been posted on YouTube.

Mr. Deifell quickly addresses the most obvious question: "How can you teach photography to the blind?" On a practical level, even though most of the students involved could not see light, all of them were able to feel the heat due to light. Moreover, blindness does not preclude anyone from achieving a technical understanding of how a camera works, nor of learning the rudiments of good imaging technique. The more difficult question to answer - and what the book so beautifully explains by showing - is "How can the blind take pictures?" In a conventional sense, of course, they cannot; but only if by "taking pictures" we mean using the camera to record what they see visually. However, photography, in its purest form, is so much more than that.

Alfred Steiglitz, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Minor White - among many other great "photographic seers" - teach us that the finest photography occurs when we are able to (recognize and) capture that special sliver of time during which the boundary between inner and outer experiences vanishes. Steiglitz called such photographs equivalents; Cartier-Bresson referred to the sliver of time as the decisive moment; and Minor White talked often of the profound role that spirit plays in photography:

"Be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence." - Minor White (1908 - 1976)

But whatever one chooses to call it, the underlying process - for the photographer - is always the same: the camera is merely a mechanical device (and certainly not the only such mechanical device, nor even necessarily the best one to use for this purpose!) that serves to focus our attention (to pressing the shutter) at precisely the right moment when our inner and external experiences align.

"I was thinking that it would be sort of hard for a blind person to take pictures, but it's not very hard. You've just got to listen." (John V., student, quoted on page 48 of Seeing Beyond Sight).

When the "feel is right" - when everything is in its place, when all the compositional elements have snapped into their positions, the shadows and forms are just where they all must be, and when, for the blind, the warmth of the sunlight on the wall is just so, the wind has quieted down, and is no longer heard, the reverberations of distant footsteps are no longer felt, and the texture of the floor is just the right mix of smooth and rugged against the palm of the hand, then we hit the shutter.

In truth, the sighted photographer responds no more to purely visual stimuli than does the blind photographer. All photographers, whether they do so consciously or not (and whether they are aware of it or not) depend on all of their senses to reach that wonderful instant when the shutter goes "click." One can argue that blind photographers, precisely because they do not respond directly to visual stimuli, are actually closer to the core truths and realities that lie beyond the light than photographers who must work their way through to truth (by brute force, so to speak).

Anyone can take a picture of a tree; because that is what is in front of the camera. It takes an artist to use the image of the tree to show you something else about the tree, or something else entirely that has nothing do with the tree per se. Since the visually impaired photographer has difficulty seeing the tree as a tree - indeed, the blind photographer does not see a tree at all - other associations and meanings must necessarily arise that, ultimately, result in some inner train of thought / intuition that concludes with the photographer making the camera go click.

Just as I consider color a "distraction" to the purity of forms and tonalities I try to reveal with my black and white photographs, I can see how light itself can be a distraction if what I am really after is illumination of what light reveals to me (but which I cannot take a picture of directly). It is a great irony - paradox even (!) - of photography that it so deeply but mechanically depends on something (i.e., light) that is, in fact, rarely the focus of its intended message. Even if the light itself is the message (as exemplified by, say, Galen Rowell's lifelong artistic pursuits), the photograph can only capture the effect that light has on whatever environment the photographer has selected to take a picture in, not the light in situ.

There is a touching - or, better, an illuminating - story about a blind student named Leuwynda, who captured a series of wonderful "abstract" photos of cracks in the sidewalk; which she clearly "saw" with her walking cane but which most people are oblivious to. She used her photographs as documentary "proof" of the danger that blind students face in what most would consider uneventfully "short walks" to class, and sent her images along with a letter containing a plea for help to the superintendent. Mr. Deifell muses, on behalf of the rest of us "sighted" photographers, about how many "cracks" there are in the world that we are essentially all blind to?

"If the lights are off, I can see what I'm doing." (Dain, student, quoted on page 138 of Seeing Beyond Sight).

Another student, Josh, produced some soulful photographs of dark, blurry stairs that he used to communicate - via metaphor - a dream he had about being lost and wandering aimlessly in a snowstorm. Other students started using their growing collections of photographs as a means to develop otherwise under-developed communication skills. Merlett, for example, was both blind and learning disabled, and found reading and writing akin to torture. Photography provided a new - and joyous - language in which she could express herself and, as it turned out, tell all the stories she had always wanted to tell others but could not do so in a conventional way.

The book contains a short introduction by the author (and teacher), followed by a selection of student photographs organized into five sections: (1) distortion, (2) refraction, (3) reflection, (4) transparence, and (5) illuminance. It concludes with an afterward, a short FAQ, and a summary of where the students who participated in the project are today.

"How do you not cut people's heads off in a photo? Just ask the person where they are." (Frances, student, quoted on page 112 of Seeing Beyond Sight).

For me, the book (and the project on which it is based) is a revelation. Were it not for the context in which the images in this book were captured, and the accompanying stories of how individual images came to be, one would be tempted to "dismiss" many of the photographs as "amateurish" and merit-less as fine-art. And that would be sadly unfortunate; for these images go to the heart of human experience and artistic expression. They show us what lies beyond the light that illuminates what we take pictures of, and what all photographers - with and without the gift of sight - are trying to reveal with their photography.

Anybody with a decent camera can take a picture of a crack in the sidewalk - and have the image met with blank stares and mutterings of "Yeah, it's a crack in the sidewalk., so what?" It takes a blind photographer to so effortlessly use a physical symbol - i.e., a photograph of some "thing" - to represent the deeper, inner experience of how "difficult it is to walk to class" on a campus built by people who can see. By not being able to see things, the blind photographer naturally focuses on using the things that the camera is able to capture to show what else things are. And that is what the very best photography has always been about.

While I have focused mainly on the philosophical end of the spectrum in this short commentary, I would be remiss in not mentioning that I was just as struck about how powerful a general learning tool - about self, about world, about learning (!) - the project was for the students involved. In some ways, though not quite as "obviously" dramatic - the results of the project remind me of Oliver Sacks' Awakenings (though here the "awakenings" are more spiritual than physical).

The blind obviously have much to teach us sighted photographers how to really see. They teach us to pay attention to all of the little "invisible cracks" in the world, and to not rely exclusively on our eyes in doing so. There is no better place to begin the first lesson on this journey of illumination - which takes the form of a gentle admonition to just "close your eyes" - than to savor the examples in this magnificent book, Seeing Beyond Sight. Highly recommended.

Postscript #1: There is recent evidence that suggests that "blindsight" - i.e., the ability "see" even if completely blind to visual stimuli - is real (and is due to previously unknown ancient evolutionary sensory pathways). See Blind Man Navigates Maze.

Postscript #2: A few days after posting my blog entry, I ran across another review of Seeing Beyond Sight very much in the spirit of mine; which is to say, philosophically infused and considerably more about "seeing" than seeing.

Postscript #3: There is a similar, but unrelated, book about photography by visually impaired photographers, called Shooting Blind, published by Aperture. An associated website also contains some extraordinarily haunting photographs.

Discovering the "Himalayas" in a freezer-full of ICE

The autumn is over, work is piling up at my day job, the administrative side of joining the Lorton Arts Photography Workhouse is beginning to borrow from my "photo safari" time on weekends, it's cold and miserable outside, and my muse is either sleeping, disinterested, or just out taking pictures somewhere without me ;-) So, what is a photographer to do?

I do not know who first said it, or was the first to express a sentiment similar to this, but an often repeated photographer's adage is, "If you can't find a photograph in your home, what makes you think you'll find one in the Himalayas?" Thus, paying homage to this wise adage (and with the Himalayas very much on my mind, if only because I recently finished re-reading Jon Krakauer's extraordinary personal account of the 1996 tragedy on Everest called Into Thin Air), I turned my attention to the ice in our freezer. My muse (who made an unexpected, but most welcome, last-minute appearance!) and I soon started searching this make-shift aesthetic landscape for any "mini-Himalayas" that might catch our attention.

The result is a small, but growing, portfolio of abstract images that I call - with uncharacteristic brevity - ICE. Although it is very much a work in progress, I already feel the healing power of its primal forms, tones, and textures. Perhaps a few photos in the series even manage to show the ice both as "it is" and - echoes of Minor White - what else it is. Regardless, my muse and I are just happy to be back together again and exploring the beauty and mystery of the world with my camera; even if that "world" (for the moment) consists of nothing more than a few chunks of ice from our freezer. Of course, neither truth nor beauty cares anything about what others call the place that is their home.

A Powerfully Moving Photo Essay

I normally wait until my muse gently nudges me from sleep or slothful inattention to post some thoughts on my blog. And when I do, I typically show some recent work of mine, or merely jot down a few stray philosophical thoughts about what occupies my mind at the time I post my entry. But sometimes, as now, when I stumble across something on the web that makes my jaw drop with admiration and awe, I just have to pass on the link to those of you who might otherwise have missed something I think is very special.

So...stop reading, and just click here to experience one of the most powerfully moving photo essays I have ever encountered. It is entitled Days with my Father, and is by photographer Philip Toledano.

It is an intensely personal, beautiful story about, and homage to, Mr. Toledano's aging father. But it touches - brilliantly and eloquently - the very core of family, family relationships, caring, and love; and of the Buddha-like impermanence of life and everything sacred. Indeed, in may make you cry (as it did me). It is, in short, an extraordinary work of art; and a testament to what words and pictures can do when the instruments of their creation are in the right hands and creative spirits. I have never met Mr. Toledano, nor have I ever met his father, but through this magisterial work I feel as though I've touched both their souls.

The Click of the Shutter Button...and A Deep Mystery

Physics is replete with "revolutions" in world-view that emerged after someone was brilliant enough - and brave enough - to question the foundations of "common wisdom." Witness Copernicus and his assertion that the Earth was not the center of the universe; Newton and his realization that the same force that binds us, as physical beings, to this planet is the same one that keeps the planets in their orbits; James Clerk Maxwell and his curiosity about the relationship between electricity and magnetism; Einstein and his stubbornly persistent analysis of the deep meaning of simultaneity; and Louis de'Broglie (along with a handful of others, including Einstein) puzzling over the difference between particles and waves. The list goes on and on, of course. In each case, a seemingly mundane - but sincere - questioning of an "obvious" fact (as Tommy Lee Jones says to the Will Smith character in the movie Men in Black, as he tries recruiting Smith's character to join MIB: "Everybody knew the Earth was flat...") led to a radical conceptual reordering of how we think of the universe, and our role in it.

While I do not propose any such radical reconceptions of our world in this humble little blog entry, I am going to suggest that the "creative act of photography" affords us an opportunity to ask a disarmingly trivial question (that may indeed alter how we perceive and interact with our environment, and ourselves). I will preface the question by first positing that one of the deepest mysteries confronting science today (apart from questions pertaining to the standard model of physics, string theories, or loop quantum gravity) is the nature and origin of consciousness. Consciousness is something we all, presumably, possess; yet is something about which - apart from knowing we possess it, and guessing that our experience of it is "pretty much the same" as that of any other humanly conscious creature - we have little or no real understanding.

Three of the more cogent (and often widely disagreeing) discussions of consciousness are (1) Consciousness Explained (by Daniel Dennet), (2) The Conscious Mind (by David Chalmers), and (3) I am a Strange Loop (by Douglas Hofstadter). None of these, of course, "explains" consciousness; but all are great at stimulating further discussion.

My particular interest, at least for purposes of this blog entry, is that aspect of consciousness that has to do with intentionality; i.e., the (apparently) willful decision to "act" (such as when we decide to "press the shutter" of a camera). Before I ask that question, however, consider this "simple" experience: I am holding a ball in my hand, which, at some point in time, for whatever reason, I decide to throw up in the air a few inches, and catch again. A trivial everyday act. Yet an utter mystery, as far as both fundamental physics and our understanding of consciousness is concerned. Just as there is no "physics" (of which I am aware), no equations or simulations, that accounts for why a small sphere located at some space-time position (x,y,z,t) suddenly "decides" to move against the gravitational field; there is no theory of consciousness that "explains" why I chose to throw up a ball. Oh, I certainly register the fact that the ball has been thrown - i.e., I am "conscious" of having done so after I've done it - but I have utterly no idea why I chose to throw it at the time I threw it. Bejamin Libet has studied this fascinating phenomenon in the laboratory (see Mind Time), and has found that consciousness is actually far from a vehicle of willful intentionality; indeed, its real purpose may be to negate possible actions, not - as we have been taught by convention - to create them.

Why am I choosing the words I'm typing now, and not others? How are they forming in my mind (and, while we are on the subject, what is mind?) I am aware of having "written", but I am at a complete loss as to explaining why I chose the words I did; nor am I able to "explain" why they emerged when they did. They "come out of me," as if by magic; and I have little, or no, "control" over what they are or when they will form. My conscious self reflects back on their existence, but appears blissfully unaware of the process by which they were created.

So what does all of this have to do with photography? Everything, really; the creative act of photography is a microcosm of our general state of conscious experience. In my previous blog entry ("Experiential Flow in Photography"), I wrote of how the best photography is usually done when the photographer is in a state of flow; in which many of the attributes of "self awareness" - or consciousness itself - vanish. In truth, though, every single photograph is a result of (at least an instant's worth) of a "lack of consciousness." When I press the shutter, at that instant, I am completely unaware of why I have done so. It is important to understand exactly what I mean by this. I do not mean that I have idea of what I am doing. Clearly, I am out taking photographs, and I am fully aware of this, even as I press the shutter. But when my finger physically moves down on the shutter button to initiate capture, I have absolutely no idea why that act did not occur a microsecond before or a microsecond after. Indeed, if Libet's research is to be believed, the best I can say is that I become aware of having pressed the shutter button only after I have done so, but in no other way has my consciousness been an active participant in the process that led up to pressing the button.

The act of taking a picture thus presents the photographer with both a puzzle (about who we really are, apart from the role we play in helping the universe take a picture of itself) and an opportunity to learn something about the universal core of the creative process and consciousness itself.

What I sometimes do (when I can retain enough of my self-awareness to remember to do this;-) is to try to minimize the time between which I have pressed the shutter and at which I become conscious of having pressed the shutter. This is not at all as "easy" at it may sound. It requires a razor-sharp Zen-like focus on the process and the moment; and is, at heart, obviously antithetical to the "photographic flow" process, as described in my earlier blog entry. It harbors a bit of a paradox: the deeper one is immersed in the "flow," the less able one is to "reflect" on the process and "understand" the unconscious instant of capture; on the other hand, the "easier" it is to reflect on the process, the less likely it is that the process being reflected upon is the one of deepest interest (i.e., "flow"). Paradox - unavoidably it seems - always lurks around questions about consciousness; and just as mysteriously, it lies at the very heart of the creative process.

Experiential "Flow" in Photography

I am often asked, "What do you think about when you do photography?" To which I typically respond with something like, "the less the better." An answer which, unfortunately - more often than not - only leads to a protracted discussion (that my deliberately "short" reply is usually meant to avoid).

However, the truth is that while my reply is curt, it is far from flippant. Indeed, it conveys the very essence of what I love about photography. Apart from the signature theme of my blog ("Tao" / photography), and my lifelong predilection toward mysticism and spirituality, the one word - the one idea - that best describes what the "I" that the external world calls "Andy Ilachinski the photographer" experiences during (the most memorable moments of doing) photography is flow.

Here I am thinking of the word "flow" as defined by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, director of the Quality of Life Research Center at the Drucker School of Claremon Graduate University, and author of (among many other books), Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. In this book (and in his multi-decade long examination of the subject), Csíkszentmihályi describes the supra-conscious state (sometimes called the "groove" by musicians, or the "zone" by basketball players) that people "awaken" to and experience when completely absorbed and immersed in an activity. For me, of course, that "activity" is doing photography; or, more precisely, when I am out "shooting with my camera" (and eye/I).

When I write, as I do in some of my blog entries and Blurb books, that my best moments as an artist - as a human being - are those when I entirely lose a sense of self, I do not mean this to be interpreted as poetry or metaphor; I mean this literally. If I come home from a day's worth of a photo-safari, armed with 10 or more GBs of RAW files, and know that I was totally aware of what I was doing the entire time (consciously thinking of f-stops, filters, and compositions), I will also know that there will be little chance of finding any soulful art in that huge digital pile. I was not in the flow. On the other hand, if I go out for a walk with my dog and camera, and come back with but one shot of I know not what because my mind was lost while I was taking it, I stand a good chance of savoring that precious gem of an image that is likely to emerge on my computer screen. Not always, of course, but the chances are usually good, if I lost myself in the process of capture.

This experience, and my interpretation of it, is far from unique. It is experienced by everyone, at some point in time, though not everyone is always attuned to when (or why and how) it happens, nor appreciates what needs to be done to maximize the chances of it happening again. This is where Csíkszentmihályi's books come in handy, as they describe the nature of this experiential flow; how it comes about, what the tell-tale signs are, and how one might better prepare for the "ride."

Hereis a wonderful 20 min long TED presentation by Csíkszentmihályi. A short excerpt from his book is available here.

Csíkszentmihályi identifies 8 conditions / dimensions of the flow experience: (1) clear goals every step of the way; (2) immediate feedback to one's action; (3) balance between challenges and skills; (4) focused concentration; (5) sense of potential control; (6) loss of self-consciousness; (7) time distortion; and (8) autotelic or self-rewarding experience. Critically, in order to maximize the potential for experiencing flow, one must eliminate (as much as possible) any anxiety or boredom, and strike a delicate (and typically dynamic) balance between the challenge of the activity and the available skills that one brings to bear on the required tasks. The purest - or deepest - states of flow are achieved when one is able to apply a maximal skill set (which can itself, of course, be achieved only through long study and practice; i.e., a total immersion to craft) to the most highly challenging activity. This is rare, but is a spiritual prize well worth pursuing.

Among the several wonderful quotes that Csíkszentmihályi includes in a 2007 presentation ("Flow and Education") are these three: one from an anonymous rock climber...

“You’re so involved in what you’re doing, you aren’t thinking about yourself as separate from the immediate activity. You’re no longer a participant observer, only a participant. You’re moving in harmony with something else you’re part of.”

...one from a surgeon:

“You are not aware of the body except your hands...not aware of self or personal problems….If involved, you are not aware of aching feet, not aware of self.”

...and one from poet Mark Strand:

“You're right in the work, you lose your sense of time, you're completely enraptured, you're completely caught up in what you're doing…. there's no future or past, it's just an extended present in which you're making meaning…”

These sentiments pretty much express my own experience of flow in photography. When in the flow, I do not know my name, I do not know where I am except for the "feel" of my immediate surroundings, I do not reflect on my problems or station in life, I do not worry about what "I need to do" after I've finished my photography. I am one with my camera, I am one with what my camera is pointed at, I have no conscious sense of self or awareness of being, apart from a pure primal joy in experiencing total immersion in what I am doing. I am focused, strongly and deeply, but not at all actively engaged in thinking about anything. There is no sense of time, not even as I press the shutter repeatedly or take long exposures and somehow, though only mechanically and utterly devoid of conscious reflection, tick off the required seconds. I know the flow has vanished when I hear myself ask, "What now?"

Interestingly, Csíkszentmihályi's research suggests that it is highly unlikely that individuals will attain a sense of flow - in any field or endeavor - unless they've immersed themselves in it for at least 10 years. I can attest to this being true in my case, though (being a bit slow perhaps;-) it took me nearly twenty to reach this state. But, oh how I look forward to that precious, wondrous experience when it comes! Alas, when I am one of those (much, much more frequent) non-flow states, the best I can do is recall having the flow experience, not the flow itself. But I know it will come...

So, "What do you think about when you do photography?"