GENERALISATIONS
ENEMY OF CREATIVITY
All photographs Robert Golden
Recently I have been interviewing young people between the ages of eleven and the early thirties for a film I’m making. It is extraordinary that during these last years of increasing cultural polarities which have been intimidating people within the frame of political correctness, these young people have continued to be tolerant, kind, caring, open hearted and willing to live and let live. These qualities are jewels of humanity. In my view, they are a representation of how cultural and ethical pressures work in a society in which young people are subjected to intolerance while witnessing on the news and perhaps in their own lives, terrible violence and oppression, they have none the less emerged with a view that they want to create a better world.
Many of the young artists speak of storytelling, of truth and sometimes of beauty. They mention political corruption, poverty, climate change and the Russian war the against Ukrainian people as threatening conditions. Few though have clear creative or political strategies to confront these things. This is partly due to the obscenely corrupting neoliberal culture which foists upon all of us the notion that we are somehow to blame for their political, economic and social failures. This is one of the main reasons why the dominant popular culture is so hollow, as it is composed mostly of smoke and mirrors.
I ask, why should the young have to develop a life planned around these illusions and confrontations? Have they not suffered enough from oppressive educational institutions, from the years of covid isolation and from the disillusionment they have been led into? It is a sad world in which young people are battered by the vision of a bleak future. Their problem is that if they don’t carefully investigate for whom they might do what, they can easily be absorbed by the wealth and rewards of the prevailing highly controlled media machinery.
When I was a young photographer, I was continually in a moral dilemma about what I should or should not do and for whom. The world was in political chaos, there were demonstrations, marches and counter marches which I photographed, and I made photoessays about the slow demise of the British industrial working class and of the many stories of racism I encountered. My work was misused by editors, publishers and art directors to tell their own version of the stories using my pictures. Not only was I morally compromised, but I believed that the misuse destroyed my unspoken vow between those I photographed and me, that they would be represented with dignity and truth.
I had read that one of my photographic heroes, W. Eugene Smith, fought against his editors because he saw “a whole world view (his) being substituted by another (the editor’s) world view”. In that situation, truth becomes relative. It leaves the photographer few choices about what to do.
I recognised that I needed clarity about concepts, words and phrases which would sharpen my understanding of the swirling political and moral haze I continually found myself in. What was ‘unfreedom’, ‘wage slavery’, ‘false consciousness’? When I said to myself that I cared about freedom, justice, equality, fairness, kindness and empathy, I needed to know what those words really meant and what I was really committed to.
When I said I wanted to tell stories, I needed to define what stories were and why humans seem to need them. Two things turned my head away from my single-dimensional generalizations. The first was that I learned about Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photographic concept of the ‘Decisive Moment’. I came to recognise that I had to release the shutter not just anytime, but precisely when the people were at the height of their responses, reactions or emotional engagements. That would be when their bodies and their expressions suggested that whatever they were doing or reacting to, it was the heightened moment. Further, that the action or content in the frame had to be announced (supported, defined) by the form of the image (composition, tonality, colour, focus and all the other visual elements) that define the look of the picture.
The second was when I began to write seriously, I recognised that I used words while not knowing precisely what they meant, and I asked, ‘what is beauty’ and ‘what is truth’? This has led me to a pleasurable belief that to be precise offers a moral and creative refinement, a kind of delicate beauty while also uncovering greater truth in the intellectual and creative journey.
This meant that I had to discover what beauty is a consequence of. What are its components? I needed to understand because I wanted people to respond emotionally to my pictures. I know that it is via the heart that people will come to be more humane.
When I was working on a project about the destruction of the English industrial working class, I decided to call it HOME, the places being destroyed by the closing down of heavy industry, and thus the destruction of jobs, skills, cultural traditions and habits, the evisceration of communities, neighbourhoods, families and homes.
But I thought the word wasn’t right; it didn’t address the underlying sense of profound attachment people have to their food, their street, their neighbours and the surrounding topography and weather. I searched for other words and came across the German word ‘heimat‘, which means not only ‘the place one lives or occupies’, but also it means ‘motherland’ which implies far deeper, perhaps some sort of spiritual attachment abou one’s place and one’s identity. In the end I settled for HOME but never felt it touched upon what ‘heimat’ expresses. This was an attempt to not generalise but to be specific.
To be an artist, or in my life, a documentarist, generalizations are not only lazy and imprecise, but also misleading. We expect our poets and intellectuals to create beautiful sounds and rhythms, but also meanings, ideas and perceptions that tell us about who and what we are and what life is. I have always expected this of my image making.
When interviewing people I employ this ‘not generalising’ process. I refuse to assume I know what is meant when one says, “Beauty is the absence of ugliness”. Like a child (childlike not childish), I need to say, “You have told me what beauty is not (ugliness), rather than what it is.” To understand, I need those I speak with to be precise, to not evade the answer, with them perhaps hoping I hadn’t noticed they had not thought it through. But there is in this non-hostile process, the creation of solidarity, because my interviewees can recognise I am not judging but searching, as are they, to find answers. Not generalising, but rather being specific is an embrace of truth and of one’s creativity.
*Lisa’s film with David’s music can be seen (and heard) here.
**TCFT or the COMPLETE FREEDOM OF TRUTH is a trans-European project bringing together young people from across Europe and places further to learn leadership and creative skills in an environment of freedom.
I've enjoyed reading this first newsletter, Robert. This is something I've been meaning to do since meeting you in Wellington and watching 'This Good Earth'.
On the spot, Robert . Thank you.