Working the Work

798 Factory Area, Beijing

So we've gotten the ball rolling and bouncing in a dozen ways all at the same time. Classes at NYU, ICP and Parsons are flying now, full speed.

Learning photography often seems to require that you know something while simultaneously already knowing something else, in order to learn some other fairly critical fundamental. I'm familiar with the way it begins to feel overwhelming; it seems to be part of the process, though that doesn't make it easier.

But I'd like to focus back on something that precedes all of that, at least in my mind. Namely the question: what are we doing when we work in photography?

That is, what is the work? And what are you trying to learn?

After mulling it over for a while, and after watching a lot of people surf the learning curve, I want to suggest that the pictures you're making are NOT the work. Or, at least, the pictures are not the entirety of the work.

Here's the thing, I can "teach" you how to use the camera in a few hours (you probably already know what I know about cameras, actually), and I can "teach" you how to use Photoshop in a few weeks (if you practice really hard), but I have no idea how to "teach" you to be a photographer, or an artist. That goal, that end result, is a different kind of learning, a different kind of work. And it's only partly about the pictures.

The best I can do, really, is walk with you on that road and talk about stuff that puzzles me. The work of an artist happens in the conversation between us, and in the resonances that linger in our minds.

The work is an interior thing fired by curiosity, and a desire to connect. The work is your effort to make your life intersect with your world, and your experience embody your ideas. The work is your struggle to attach your body to your feet and your brain.

The pictures you make are the residue of this work. They are the artifacts that get left behind. The work itself goes with you; it continues if you continue; it precedes and extends from the pictures, but it's not merely equivalent with the pictures.

Anyway, let's all try a little patience, a little gentleness. I really do believe the work we're doing is worthwhile and life-changing. I just don't think it begins and ends at the camera or at the computer. So, while we focus hard in class to speak with clarity and conviction, scribbling notes and grabbing answers, let's also try a little letting go. The work is happening, trust in that, though you might not see it in the pictures right away.


Diego Rivera, The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City, 1951 (National Museum of Murals and Mosaics)

I've been meditating on this picture lately, and on Rivera's work and time. Assignment: make a picture of yourself working.

Check out the conversation about this picture on the website of the National Museum of Murals and Mosaics! You can learn more about the mural and about Diego Rivera at the San Francisco Art Institute, and at the Diego Rivera website.