THINKING OUT OF THE BOX

I have written a couple of columns dealing with cliched images and the need to keep current with what is going on in photography, past and present. I don't want to repeat that, but to expand on it. In order to be good in any art, you have to learn to think "out of the box". Any great artist learns first what is being done currently in his art, but then digresses from that and begins to formulate his/her own creative ideas, whether it be for painting, photography, music, literature, dance, etc. They take what they have learned and then alter it and make it their own, and, thus, make it different.

I was just reading an old Life magazine from 1968 and they did a huge article on Georgia O'Keeffe, who was then in her 80's. They speak of her schooling in art (more or less traditional), her discouragement at one point on how she was proceeding and quote her: "I'd been taught to paint like other people, and I thought, what's the use? I couldn't do any better than they, or even as well. I was just adding to the brushpile. So I quit."

After awhile, she hooked up with another teacher who taught his students "to find new ways of expressing a beautiful idea". She later re-examined all of her paintings thus far and found which paintings had been influenced by some painters, and which by others. And then, she determined which paintings represented her alone and knew then what kind of work she wanted to do.

Easily said of course, but hard to do, and even for Georgia O'Keeffe, it took a long time to figure out. But, eventually, she learned what she had to do to make paintings that were different than what she had been taught. Think too of Picasso, of his earlier work when he was just starting his career as an artist, then later of his blue and rose periods, and finally, of course, his abstractions. There is a great Picasso museum in Paris, which shows his work chronologically throughout his lifetime, so you can see how he progresses from one style to another. At each period, he initiated something completely new and different than the rest of the artists of that period, and continued to re-create himself and his painting over and over again.

Maybe there are some creative geniuses, like Picasso and O'Keeffe (and, of course Ansel Adams, for example, in photography), who don't have to be taught to think out of the box. And maybe most of us aren't those geniuses, but that doesn't mean we can't learn (and keep on learning). I see so many "wanna-be" photographers who don't try anything different. They plant their feet and take the shot that is right in front of them. They may even know enough to frame their subject correctly in the camera, but there is nothing innovative about the camera shot. Once they get their one shot, they go on to something else. When I teach, I try to tell people to keep exploring the subject: work around it, take that same subject several different ways, with several different angles, with close ups, and telephoto, with and without blurring of background or foreground. Find a different way to take it other than straight on, head height.

I know a young man who just turned 13 who doesn't have to be taught to think out of the box. He is already experimenting with time exposures and putting himself (in a ghost like manner) 2 and 3 times into one shot. At nine years old, he was experimenting with abstract designs. He saw an old car (probably from the early 20th century) and instead of shooting the car as a whole, he shot different close up aspects of it from different angles, creating an abstract effect.

That is thinking out of the box, because he is and was too young to know what has been done before, but has continued to explore and create new and different ways of expressing himself with his camera, instead of relying on the standard shot.