A Moment of Quiet

I recently participated in an online presentation on collecting photography and approaching galleries. It was hosted by an active photography collector, not a creator, and she had an interesting perspective. There were a little over two hundred participants, and a vast number, just based on the questions after the talk, were photographers wanting to know one thing. How to be seen. 

Everybody wants their time valued, their work appreciated. Artists maybe more so than some. Billion dollar social media companies have made it their business to get you to show, and to participate in, this very question. They rely on speed of interaction. And so into the social grinder an image goes. Self importance is an affliction of the arts whether you’re the creator, the displayer, or the buyer. How can I compete when all I want to do is be in the wilderness with my camera. So I don’t. I stay hidden, safe, as my mentor once put it to me, in the ideals of my lone studio.

It could maybe be said that at no time in the past has so much media been accessible with so little attention paid. Johannes Gutenberg’s printing revolution of the 15th century ushered in a revolution in the democratization of knowledge and from that moment on the computer, with it’s million million permeations was inevitable and with it our shared technological web. This web provides whatever you want, all you have to do is ask. And within this new arena, have the products of human emotion been too commodified, packaged, presented as bite sized tidbits to be engaged with quickly, consumed, and discarded. Maybe. But that’s as much a byproduct of economics and marketing as it is a response to attention. So, how to be seen? But is that even the right question, because I think what’s really being asked is why should I be seen? What makes my work worth your time. How am I any different than the multitude of other artists all plying for your attention. Maybe you know me personally, maybe you like the images or the words I create. And before you think I’m being negative, merely grumbling about a rapidly changing world and an inability to break through the noise, let me present an upside to all this immediacy.

Choice. Because gone is the gatekeeper, and with that anybody in the world can engage with anybody else; to share space, to share ideas, to shape something new, to reach into once inaccessible corners of this world. I am talking to you because of this interconnection, and when my ask is for you to slow down, engage, ask questions, observe, am I asking too much of your time. That’s for you to decide. That’s your choice, and while you decide I present you with a story.

I walk away from the trail high on an exposed ridge. A thousand feet above me looms long extinct basalt spires lining their broken crater. The slope below me is a steep expanse of loose pumice, the eviscerated guts of the extinct volcano I’m walking on. Looking north I see more volcanoes stretching to the horizon; The Sisters, Washington, Three Fingered Jack, Jefferson, Hood, Adams. It’s late in the season, snow is forecasted later this week and with it the mountain will quiet. I slide down to the base of the slope. A chilled wind blows off the glacier to my left. I turn and head that way into a long grassed meadow and find a boulder erratic to sit on. The weather is building and so I sit and wait to setup my camera. A raven rides the uplift above me, it’s guttural caw as no echo and is swallowed up by the alpine air. Clouds swirl a slow dance around Middle Sister. I keep still, no need to rush, and wait. My mind settles into a kind of unwanting, a vehicle for the present. I watch the scene unfold before me. Layer upon layer of mountain ridges, tree canyons, tired snowfields, all intertwined in a kind of living canvas. No camera comes out, not this time. That’s the way it goes sometimes. I think I’ll stay awhile longer, snow is coming.

So, did I ask too much of you? Did I take too much of your time? In the Tao Te Ching it says, in stillness all under heaven rests, and stillness is what I asked of you. It’s why I named this newsletter as such. I hope your day brings you a single moment of quiet, a single moment of seeing.