Friday 24 May 2013

When the rhythm changes.



"What is a muse? In its purest form, a muse is perhaps best defined as something that triggers inspiration in an artistic or creative sense. It doesn’t have to be an inanimate object; most artists’ muses tend to be people. 
Creativity is impossible to separate from inspiration.

By trying to photograph someone repeatedly, it says both that there’s perhaps more to capture than is possible in a single frame, as well as all of the past frames being insufficient or incomplete in some way".


It's proved to be a difficult week.
It started with having to close my Deviant Art portfolio (due to them no longer facilitating older web servers, which I have to use) - a link back some seven years to some wonderful comments from other photographers across the world - and it ended with my having to cancel two of my principal outdoor shoots of the summer, as the English weather, after getting on for some fourteen months, is still refusing to deliver something resembling warmer days for more than a fleeting few hours.

It's frustrating, to say the least, but none of that, in a larger context, hardly matters.
What did matter was that yesterday, I was able to sit down with a young lady who has been working with me since last March and have a real heart to heart discussion about the wonders of life and the sheer privilege and delight of being able to be creative in this fashion, and what it really says about us.

The conversation reminded me that what all of this activity is really all about is a 'peeking through the window' to glean a glimpse, catch a taste, of the richness, the fragrance, of what all the beauty, all the grace says about what is at the very depth of us... the yearning to be part of something more than the futility and the frustration of what so often becomes 'life'.

Art drives us to engage with more than the drudgery. When we hear 'that song' or glance a view which stops us dead, we know, in such moments, that we'd give anything  to truly "be" there - not to just be a spectator, but to be transported into all that such a moment holds.

In the conversation Jesus has with the women at Jacob's well in John 4, we see how the intention of what truly matters is to lift our sights from the drag of the monotony of our views (be they practical, relational or spiritual - the women concerned here raises all three) to the real landscape of the reality we are engaged with. There is actual meaning and significance, of eternal stature, Jesus assures her, in this life. She goes away a changed person.

Life rushes us by, and we seek to do what we can to catch some of its wealth, but sometimes, we really need to come aside and listen to the real 'conversation' that is underneath what so often takes our time, because when we do, it allows us to re-orientate our perspective, and see what really counts.

Images: Beneath the Thicket. Model: Vicci.  Daydream. Model: Chrissie. Rainy Afternoon: Models: Magenta, Kari & Loella.