Finding meaning in Photography and Art
If I knew how each street shot would turn out — I wouldn’t take the shot.
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When I look around myself, I always seem to catch a glimpse of something bright, a crack of light that needs my attention.
You see something happening and you just know that it means something deeper than at first appears. I think it’s that everything around us reflects a moving spiral of life. When we see it, we can never put our finger on it and hold it down, we have to get into the flow of it and discover it as we ride the rapids of life.
It boils down to the act of living. We must be in action to fully grasp how we fit in to what we were looking at. When I take photos on the street, or of my cats, a portrait, a still life, I’m putting myself inside the situation; that’s when things reveal themselves. Life becomes a flow of doing.
Late at night, my cats and I sit in silence together. I watch them while they sleep. They watch me while I sit watching them. Always one eye half open, an ear fully alert. If I move, they move.
Sometimes, I’ll notice how the soft light of the lamp creates a pattern across a sleeping cat. The cat’s body askew, legs and paws in different directions. I’ll quietly get my camera and take a shot.
The action of observing the cat, feeling motivated to take a photo, and feeling it deeply, is a meaningful moment of life. I know I don’t need an answer as to why I would do that. What else would I do?
When I walk along the streets with my camera, I want to see something that catches my attention. A moment of reality that is meaningful.
The moment I stop and believe that I can stand back and think about it, I separate myself, and my thoughts will become distracted by my stopping and thinking, my introversion — I’ll understand nothing about the momentary frames of life.
