Art vs Equipment

[Tompas]

Creativity and state of mind

Creativity and state of mind

(...) To get rid of all this poison. To cultivate my good human sides, to harvest the best feelings - it is only this way I will ever be able to age and flourish at the same time, and input it all in my pictures.

I wonder, Ruben, do your pictures get "better" as you pursue your way to age and flourish (as you call it)?

I noticed that

- I take my best pictures when I'm in love, and

- the by far most creative phase in my life (so far) was one of pain, despair, abuse of (legal) drugs and massive sleeplessness.

How about you (all of you) -- any significant interrelation between level of creativity and state of mind?

 

[Roger Hicks]

I wonder, Ruben, do your pictures get "better" as you pursue your way to age and flourish (as you call it)?

I noticed that

- I take my best pictures when I'm in love, and

- the by far most creative phase in my life (so far) was one of pain, despair, abuse of (legal) drugs and massive sleeplessness.

How about you (all of you) -- any significant interrelation between level of creativity and state of mind?

I quite often get good pics in places I don't like: Istanbul, China...

And less good pics in places I do like: Hungary, Paris . ..

But there are always exceptions: Malta, Greece. Great places, good pics.

Cheers,

R.

 

[JohnTF]

Yeah, I have read that. Interestingly, masturbation in men caused insanity, but in women it cured it!

How naive you are, it is blindness, but some quit when they merely require glasses.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

How naive you are, it is blindness, but some quit when they merely require glasses.

The medical profession in the late 19th century DID believe that male masterbation did cause insanity. i've read some of the medical journals of the time. They believed that symptoms of "Onanism" progressed from mild things like tiredness to more severe like blindness, then insanity and death. Not everyone had all the possible symptoms. People with illnesses that made them very weak or lethargic who died back then actually had "Onanism" or "Self-Abuse" (a euphemism for masterbation, as it was believed to be harmful to do it, thus one abused onself by doing it) written on death certificates!

 

[ruben]

I wonder, Ruben, do your pictures get "better" as you pursue your way to age and flourish (as you call it)?

I noticed that

- I take my best pictures when I'm in love, and

- the by far most creative phase in my life (so far) was one of pain, despair, abuse of (legal) drugs and massive sleeplessness.

How about you (all of you) -- any significant interrelation between level of creativity and state of mind?

Definitely yes.

There is a clear relationship between how rich is my emotional world and my sensibility to what I see around when I walk with a camera. The more richer my emotional world the more perceptive becomes my mind. And of course, what I do "express" becomes much "sharper".

The hammer of this process, in my case, is the measure of my readiness to open my eyes inwards and outwards, without prejudices or fears, as much as possible. This requires from me to look at the mirror and accept the unpleasant.

The anvil on the other hand is in what I can detect with my eyes about the surrounding world. This requires me a constanst state of alert, growing awareness and sincerity.

I remember an incident with a RFF member in which I happened to make him feel offended while in fact I felt I tryed to help. I insisted a bit with him in explaining to me what may I have done wrong and he started his answer with something "Like you Ruben, I too am an accomplished photographer......"

Then I apologized, of course, and explained him that I never considered myself "an accomplished photographer" but a pupil of life, this leading me to a flat mided approach to him. And indeed here was the source of the misunderstanding and my manners to him as from pupil to pupil. Of course I was wrong in my former approach to him, that as said already, it was a flat extension of my approach to myself.

It is not that easy at all to be alert to the fact that at any moment what you all your life believed as white, tomorrow may turn black, proving youself absolutely wrong.

Now, kindly don't get me wrong. This is not THE process or the universal prescription with universal validity. It is MY prescription for MYself, leaning on my own strong points.

Others will have diffeferent strong points to lean uppon them their own process, if flourishing is their goal.

Lastly I count in that it is obvious that when I talk about flourishing, the gravity center is not in making better images, although they should come as a by product.


Cheers,
Ruben

 

[JohnTF]

An intentional unkindness is hard to defend. Always says more about the author than the target.

Regards, John

 

[NDAv]

I talk about art in the USA because I'm an American and its my country. A country whose culture is dying.

Culture doesn't die, it merely changes, or takes on a different form. Cultures have always overlapped with each other and always been in constant transformation. American culture doesn't just come from America, it comes from many different places. After all, not all Americans have aboriginal origins.

In the past art that was regarded as good art by the art world was accessible to most people. It did what art has always done, it documented their culture, history, religion, politics, food, dress, architecture, etc. Art was something anyone could appreciate without suspending disbelief, as one must do about much of what's produced now. Artists didn't starve before the late 19th century, they were respected craftsmen who earned decent livings. Artist starve today simply because no one wants what they produce; it has no cultural relevance to 99% of the people in society, and unfortunately that makes people believe that NO art worth looking at is produced. That in turn makes artists turn even further from their cultural origins, and alienates their fellow man still further.

Basically you are saying:
- artists in America are starving and are not successful commercially unless they abandon culture and become less "American"
- artists in America are separate the rest of American society, and immune to the forces that have changed everyone else in the U.S.A.
- non-artistic Americans have less "culture" than the artistic Americans
- artistic Americans are the "true" Americans, and everyone else in the U.S.A. is not a "true" American
- art is only for documentary purposes, and not just any kind of documentary, but it must be a documentary of a culture
- the works of art that are popular with the 99% of people in American society as less "artistic" than unpopular works of art

All I have to say is I don't agree with you at all.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Culture doesn't die, it merely changes, or takes on a different form. Cultures have always overlapped with each other and always been in constant transformation. American culture doesn't just come from America, it comes from many different places. After all, not all Americans have aboriginal origins.

Basically you are saying:
- artists in America are starving and are not successful commercially unless they abandon culture and become less "American"
- artists in America are separate the rest of American society, and immune to the forces that have changed everyone else in the U.S.A.
- non-artistic Americans have less "culture" than the artistic Americans
- artistic Americans are the "true" Americans, and everyone else in the U.S.A. is not a "true" American
- art is only for documentary purposes, and not just any kind of documentary, but it must be a documentary of a culture
- the works of art that are popular with the 99% of people in American society as less "artistic" than unpopular works of art

All I have to say is I don't agree with you at all.

That's because you didn't understand a thing that I wrote.

 

[Pablito]

The medical profession in the late 19th century DID believe that male masterbation did cause insanity. i've read some of the medical journals of the time. They believed that symptoms of "Onanism" progressed from mild things like tiredness to more severe like blindness, then insanity and death. Not everyone had all the possible symptoms. People with illnesses that made them very weak or lethargic who died back then actually had "Onanism" or "Self-Abuse" (a euphemism for masterbation, as it was believed to be harmful to do it, thus one abused onself by doing it) written on death certificates!

Well, I suppose I'm the case study that proves those old 19th Century docs were wrong! However, I think you mean "masturbation" not "masterbation."

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Well, I suppose I'm the case study that proves those old 19th Century docs were wrong! However, I think you mean "masturbation" not "masterbation."

Yeah, my mistake on the spelling.