DEEP LEARNING PHOTOGRAPHY & FILM
Ways to help people understand how to make films and photographs.
(Because so much of what I have experienced is about disunity, I am adding photographs of hands, which often reveal love, care and unity.)
REVELATIONS
When a young teen, I believed I could use my camera as a torch (flashlight), turning over stones to reveal the dark truths beneath. In so doing, my naivety led me to hope that people seeing these ‘revelations’ would help to right the wrongs and change the world for the better.
Sadly I now know this is not to be the case, but I still hold onto that youthful ideal. I do know that there are some people who do care, and far too many self-interested people, unquestioning incurious people, indolent people, intellectually and emotionally trapped people, and those struggling with their own day-by-day existence who not only do not care, but at times actively act against the revelations*.
A result of my considerations is that along with learning about lenses, f stops, or how to organise a shooting day or how to elicit a good response from an actor or create a truthful documentary there are a number of primary questions, or should I say, a self-examination of one’s self that must occur before a photographer or film-maker can actually know what he or she is actually doing besides pointing a camera and hoping for the best?
I taught a wonderful group of young people about storytelling to change the world using film. Since that time I have been constructing what I call, as a working title, A DEEP CULTURAL PATH FOR TEACHING FILM AND PHOTOGRAPHY.
I know, it sounds like a Victorian professor’s title for a book of rigid moral and practical rules…it is anything but that. What it does involve at the very beginning is these suggestions about how this might begin with truth-telling.
A PROCESS
Thinking about moving hearts and minds?
Wishing to give a gift of beauty and wisdom to an audience?
Is it about making photographs/films for oneself and/or for friends and family,
for one’s community or to become famous, rich and admired?
Amongst those questions which need be discussed are:
•What is ‘truth’ and what is beauty, and how do they relate to each other?
•What is one’s duty (if any) to their talent and to their community?
•How does morality deal with the challenges facing the photographer/film-maker?
•How do photographers/film-makers recognise what is vital for them to create?
•How can emotions be introduced into a two-dimensional static image?
•How can photographers/film-makers arrive at the point of pre-visualising images, stories and characters?
and:
•What constitutes a story?
•What makes a story important and appealing to an audience?
•Why concern yourself with the audience?
To paraphrase the great Russian film-maker and theorist, Sergei Eisenstein, “every director (read as photographer, painter, poet, novelist, theatre worker, etc) needs to know everything about everything and to never stop asking questions.”
To help people ask and answer these questions, I will be running a series of workshops beginning sometime in the spring of 2024.
And on the 19th of January my book, TRANSIENT LIGHT, FLEETING TIME will be published and available inexpensively on-line as an epub for all formats.
*Revelations is not meant in the New Testament biblical sense, but as when an artist unveils/shows/releases work to an audience hoping that its perceptions/suggestions combined with its form will help people to understand their lives more clearly while offering, through the unveiling of the revelations some hope for perfectibility.
** TCFT or THE COMPLET FREEDOM OF TRUTH is a youth led programme brings together young people from across wider Europe into a safe democratic setting to engage with the arts as they attempt to discover their own leadership abilities and other skills.