When I speak of perspective, I almost never talk about it in technical terms. That’s important too, but what I find even more interesting is the intellectual perspective.
I have plenty of those, and I thought perhaps it could be interesting to sort them out. In my head, I know exactly what they are, but that doesn’t mean they’re obvious to you.
So, to me, the intellectual perspective is all about what colour your glasses have. Compare that to how we look at a person we’re in love with – or another person who we really dislike.
There are certain things that are always in the back of my head when I photograph. These things are very closely linked to my perception; it is what I tend to see, what I return too, regardless of what I have in front of me. Thus, they become part of my visual expression and the reason why it can be so easy to recognize my work.
One does not need to be aware of these things. I am, because I’ve spent so much time thinking about it, and because, for various reasons, it’s important to me. For me, personally, I think it makes me a better photographer, but that doesn’t have to be true for anyone else.
When boiled down to its core, my main intellectual perspective isn’t very intellectual at all. Rather, it’s philosophical and spiritual in its nature, and I take the liberty to claim the entire thing was built by how I grew up. That in itself is irrelevant for anyone else but myself, but that’s where the ground to my entire belief system is today.
Now, you may want to back off when I say philosophy and spirituality, but fear not – it’s not so bad as it sounds. Let me build onto these concepts, and explain how it works for me.
I am a philosophical person. Philosophy is, to a large degree, how I explain the world to myself. Naturally, this becomes a pillar stone in how I function, and – how [eye c] the world. I am also a spiritual person – and let me stress the word spiritual, not religious. There’s a difference, and that difference is extremely important to me.
My spiritual paths of choice are shamanism and animism. I am not, and I don’t want to be a shaman, but I really enjoy the mindset, the approach to life, how the world is c-n, et cetera. It is exactly the same with animism – I really enjoy the idea of the world being animated by life we cannot see or understand. And while I may not be a shaman, I still live by the basic ideas of both of these spiritual paths.
Now; these two pillar stones are the base for two different ideas that I tend to filter my c-ing process through.
- My childhood fantasies of elves, trolls, fairies, and their forest habitat
- 19th century gothic imagery, coming from the sublime in the Romantic era
What we can see is that both the fantastical world of a childs fantasy and gothic imagery, both lead back to – that, which is hidden, somewhat forbidden, a shift in reality, dreamlike mindsets, that which could be seen as insane, memories forgotten, and so on.
So you see, even perspective comes down to perception. To me, everything is linked to everything, in a neverending criss-cross of.. everything. I get that it may appear messy to anyone else, but to me, it makes perfect sense.
…
I can guarantee you that you’d likely not recognize the locations I photograph at, if you’d encounter them after having seen a photograph from any of them. Reality looks rather different than how I choose to present my work.
This, in itself, is a very interesting point to make, since it shows how it is my choices that decides not only what to photograph, but also how to photograph it. This includes everything from exposure, cropping, the editing process, et cetera.
Another interesting thing, at least for me, is that – I am not one of those photographers who strike a “photographer pose” to look cool. I most likely look like I am doing nothing particular at all, perhaps photographing a flower or something else insignificant.
And yes. I mainly photograph the insignificant, that which may be invisible to most people. To me, that’s where I find beauty. I don’t need spectacular landscapes, urban environments, architecture, or what not. The smaller, uglier, less important, the better.
So, what is it that my perception actually does?
It removes clutter. It finds tension and energetic pull. It focuses on creating balance – and this balance may not always be what we traditionally call balance. My perception also works through the pillar stones I described, in such way that I almost always find photographs-to-be popping out of reality, without really searching for them. They just present themselves and allow me to pluck them, should I want to.
Self-knowledge, then – where, how and why does that matter?
When there is self-knowledge, we begin to understand why we photograph what we do, we understand how we photograph, and we can start taking control of our work in a way that I think most photographers don’t. This may not be for everyone, and that’s perfectly fine. We are different, after all.
But for anyone interested in expanding both perception and the actual photographic work, this can be a really interesting way to go. Just sayin’.
This being quite a messy blog post – I hope you found something to take with you, about intellectual perspective, and perception as the end result of that.
Tag me if you want to share something with me.
Thanks!
/Malinka
