Dissection 013
Éoliennes. Re-processed for The Shoebox Project.
Behind Cézanne’s Mountains and the need for uncertainty.
Original essay: Cézanne’s Mountains
“I’ve been thinking about how certainty is becoming our nemesis. How doubtlessness is killing our ability to expand as a society and as individuals.”
The discussion that followed the original essay led me to revisit the above quote. It’s from an article I’d linked to in one of the first issues of These Traces. But while Swinton’s text was clearly aimed at social divisions and the ongoing polarization of political discourse, there was a personal note added to my entry in Craft:
Certainty is also the death of invention and creativity. Once we know, we stop searching, and we become still. It is the opposite of new eyes.
I couldn’t help thinking of this as I was reading the comments thread. Because there is also, in my mind, a correlation between eschewing certainty and the concept of iteration or, as we discussed, repetition. The truth is, we're much less likely to revisit what we consider finite.
Doubting is a creative engine.
I’m reminded of Ansel Adams’ multiple re-interpretations of his photography through prints, sometimes to the point of deeply altering the perception of an already well-known subject. It’s no wonder he compared printing to a musical performance—these, by their very nature, are meant to be unique, despite the fixed nature of the score. A tempo may be altered, speeding up or slowing down. Emphasis placed on one note or a particular passage, may transform a piece to the point of revealing an entirely different emotional palette. Jazz, historically, built on this notion and immersed itself in uncertainty, leaving only faint markers to provide a framework, a vague sense of direction, a core serving only as a foundation to build upon; a pretext for continuous explorations.
In photography, our foundation is the subject: as it presents itself to our lens, in the field, unfolding within a moment. But also AFTER the capture—as an image ready to be shaped.
There are two acts to our play.
There’s a tendency, in our quest for the look, to expect an ultimate solution. Especially when we shoot raw, faced with files that necessarily require our input. Processing becomes an equation to solve, and while we might get lost in dozens of different paths along the way, we’re often only searching for that oneanswer—thinking anything else might be wrong.
In fact, our work is fluid. There is no single solution, and nothing preventing us from revisiting past images, applying new answers to the same equations.
Bullet Train. Found image.
Behind Cezanne’s mountains—or Warhol’s silkscreens or Pollock’s endless drips—we find the inescapable impulse of the seeker; where the only certainty is a need to keep searching.
And where doubtlessness is really a small death of the soul.
