LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process Brooks Jensen
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- Arts
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Random Observations on Art, Photography, and the Creative Process. These short 2-4 minute talks focus on the creative process in fine art photography. LensWork editor Brooks Jensen side-steps techno-talk and artspeak to offer a stimulating mix of ideas, experience, and observations from his 35 years as a fine art photographer, writer, and publisher. Topics include a wide range of subjects from finding subject matter to presenting your work and building an audience. Brooks Jensen is the publisher of LensWork, one of the world's most respected and award-winning photography publications, known for its museum-book quality printing and luxurious design. LensWork has subscribers in over 73 countries. His latest books are "The Creative Life in Photography" (2013) and "Looking at Images (2014).
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HT1894 - Postponing Your Art Life
No one begins their photographic journey by immediately leaping into 40-inch prints. We all start small, 5x7, or 8x10. Then somehow we get gripped with the idea that bigger is better. Rather than turn our attention to making more personal, more meaningful, or insightful photographs it becomes so much easier to pursue the greater technical challenges of large prints, thereby postponing the launch of our real art life.
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HT1893 - Dry Spells and Damp Spells
Wouldn't we all love to be creatively on fire every day, every moment. Unfortunately, that rarely happens. Instead, we have times when we are productive and times we are not. We think of those fallow times as "dry spells" which can be accompanied by guilt. But there's also a spell that is neither dry nor productive and can be an incredibly useful time in a creative life. I think of them as "damp spells."
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HT1892 - The Time to Make a Picture
Let's take just a moment to think what a miracle is photography. Before photography, think how long was required to make a picture. Drawing one l line at a time, adding one brushstroke at a time. Pictures were relatively rare and treasured. That way of relating to pictures leaked over to photography in its earliest days. Compare that to the bombardment of pictures that assault us every day! Our pictures aren't special because they are pictures, they need to connect through content to be special.
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HT1891 - Grabbed by Artwork
I suppose all of us have, from time to time, been mesmerized by a piece of artwork. It grabs us, it seduces our attention, it fills our consciousness. Why? What is it about a piece of artwork that gives it this power to influence us so deeply? Maybe not 100% of the time, but most frequently I find this happens when the artwork engages my imagination, when it allows me to drop my normal awareness of the world and to be transported to a world of its making.
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HT1890 - Experiences or Things
A friend of mine is downsizing in preparation for moving to a retirement community. She can't find anyone who wants her extensive collection of sheet music. Another friend is finding it difficult to find a home for her collection of dinnerware and silver. No one wants them. It seems like the younger generation values collecting experiences far more than collecting things. I've come to regard this as the joy and burden of ownership. What are the implications for our fine art photographs?
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HT1889 - A Self-assessment
On a whim, I decided to look back at the entire collection of my work that has been published in Kokoro. So far, that consists of 172 projects containing 2,432 images. I was happy and proud to publish every one of them — at the time. Needless to say, some have not stood the test of time as well as others. That's good.