Stumbling into Zen
By Doug Johnson
26 Oct 2007
Ray Bradbury wrote a book on the Zen of writing, where he documents how characters take the pen out of the writer's hand and start writing their story. As a writer I decided to try an experiment with William Blake's idea of image and poetry. I stumbled into digital photography by creating broadsides.
As a poet and writer I have applied that standard to my characters and take great joy for the moment when the the character or poem rip the pen out of my hand and start to write the story.
What does this have to do with photography? Although admiring the works of photography from Matthew Brady to Ansel Adams, photography for me has followed the path of other art schools and died. It is buried beneath the discipline of film, F stops and fixer.
My beginning with photography started when I was thirteen. If you grew up around a ranch this will make sense. If not, use your imagination. My first job was to use a rubber gloved box to change film for a print shop. My other duties included changing fixer and toner once a week by dumping the old orange chemicals into a bucket and replenishing the new chemicals so that the blue cross between R2D2 and a floor waxer could produce type for another week.
Back to the ranch. I had to stick my hands in these rubber gloved chambers to manipulate the film. If you have been on a ranch you know that artificial insemination of a cow happens the right way or the wrong way. Either way it happens it involves a rubber glove that fits up to your elbow and the south end of a cow that is going to yell "Moo" about the time you plant the seed. Talk about romance.
Not very romantic. Photography has never been that romantic.
When I was sixteen I took a Minolta photography class from a respected elder and he took us to downtown Denver in December to shoot 400 ASA shots of the night lights. What I remember is almost freezing to death and needing to pee like nobody's business for too many minutes while he explained the delicacy of a tripod, F-stops and lighting in the midnight sky.
For all of you who have experienced the Zen of peeing after holding it too long, that was the long sigh, I breathed after his lecture into the urinal.
Fast foward to jpg. Zen says that the eight fold path starts with our problem of desire. What I realized with the digital camera in my hand is that the shot was in my hand. I just had to empty myself of my pre-conceived notions. I had to empty myself of my education about what made an "educated" shot. Matthew Brady reorganized dead bodies on a Civil War battle field because photography was an art. Ansel Adams reconstructed and reduced life to black and white because the reduction embraced the strength of photography. With Kodak as the latest technology, they were letting the camera take a Zen approach to the shot.
Zen says the reason we have difficulty is that we have desire. That's true. The more full of yourself (twenty somethings' listen up) you are, the less your photograph will communicate. JPG, and digital files allow you the chance to empty yourself and allow the camera to become an empty bowl that offers the world of photography a bowl of food. Let the photograph rip the camera out of your hand. That can't happen if your mentally constipated with your preconceived notions of what somebody else thinks it should look like.
If you insist on maintaining the lines and colors of art school, your professor will piss his pants and be pleased because you comforted him in his laziness, but you won't produce art.
Marchel Duchamp put a urinal in an art gallery. JPG offers you that same chance. Give your professor something to piss in. Piss him off. Empty yourself. Let go of your desire. Take the shot.
Doug Johnson
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