Beauty Embraced Me
-understanding engagement-
I have seen people I have taught photography and film-making shy away from choosing content that involves people.Often this is because:
*they are uncertain who they are;
*or because they do not know why they have a right to invade other people’s privacy:
*or because they actually don’t know what they have to say to the rest of the world about what they experience and witness.
It only began to work for me when I recognised several things:
*often an individual (or a group) are pleased by the serious attention of another person wanting to know their story;
*that my ‘right’ is based on the principal that I have no wish to injure the individual nor take anything from them (their privacy, their dignity) but I do wish to tell a part of their story that is as important to their consciousness as it is to others.
*that is, I believe that they represent not only a particular story – their story – but a more universal story which may be of value to many others.
* And, being driven by the belief that photographers and film documentarists are messengers, often making the invisible become visible, often providing a representation if not a voice to those who would otherwise be ignored by history.
Thus my entry into other’s private worlds is for me a moral and political act.
Is this a justification, a self-serving excuse? I do not believe so, if for no other reason than that so often people have seen what I’ve done and literally embraced me, because they have understood that I honoured their existence and struggles and created a shard of truth about their existence. They have intuitively understood I meant them well.
None the less these are the things that concern me in the middle of the night.
***
Although I am thrilled by facts, in my film and picture making I reach beyond facts. I am drawn by the emotional meaning of things within the context of storytelling, which uses the surface of reality (the seemingly factual) to communicate the inner meaning. I have learned from my work around the performing arts and with artists that there is an inside and an outside (see below about the film: INSIDE/OUTSIDE to be connected in the making of things.
It is this search for something archetypical – for things buried deep within us, which, when exposed, provide profound truths than facts on their own cannot reveal.
***
One time I was gazing at a Brancusi sculpture, called Bird in Flight. It is at once a fine sculpture - elegant and thrilling, which, as I gazed at it became a bird in flight. But in its reductive distillation, it becomes the essence of Brancusi’s idea of a bird and its flight. It describes for me an aesthetic perfectibility which affirms, for a brief moment, that we humans are not only capable of astounding cruelty but of embracing knowledge, fostering love and seeking purity as a profound truth. Also, as it shows only that which is essential it reminds me of the sense I have watching the sea or sitting in mountains; that the essential encourages a calming sense of the eternal. This is one of the ways art embraces our souls.
PHOTOGRAPH OF THE WEEK
I have left this in front of the pay wall this week as it is so telling of what is going on in Ukraine where they are bravely, doggedly fighting and dying to save European ideals from Putin and his war mongering bully pack.
This is a photograph of paintings by recovering Ukrainian soldiers in a hospital called Unbroken,devoted to helping the wounded overcome trauma and their injuries by encouraging them to engage in the arts. The exhibition in Lviv was overwhelming.
*Behind the paywall is an interview/discussion with the artist and now PHD awarded activist for Ukraine’s freedom from oppression, Dr. Lisa Glybchenko.
*Also behind the paywall is the 13th chapter of
TRANSFORMATION TO THE NEXT SYSTEM
A PROCESS DEPENDENT ON CREATING AND WINNING CULTURAL STRUGGLES
called ARTISTS AND REALITY by Robert Golden
*And free viewing of my film INSIDE/OUTSIDE about the extraordinary theatre movement director Monika Pagneux.
