By Marilyn Bridges, Rochester Institute of Technology, NY, student of Richard Zakia

5
Creativity Education

“Conventional education makes independent thinking extremely difficult.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti, Education and the Significance of Life

Techniques are the tools of photography and creativity represents the desired outcome of photography…the implement and the object. It becomes important that we define the difference between how we will make a photograph—the technique, and why we will make a photograph—the creativity that goes into the image. In the last chapter we discussed the idea of assisting learning of the techniques of photography. In this chapter we will concentrate on ideas of helping others learn about creativity and how to be creative.

We must understand that creativity is not the sole province of fine art. All problem solving, communication, and concept development can be creative. Therefore, there is as much potential for creativity in engineering, science, mathematics, journalism, and teaching, to name just a few, as there is in art. When the Apollo 13 spacecraft was on a disastrous return flight from space, it was the creative problem solving of NASA engineers that saved the lives of the astronauts. Albert Einstein's great leap—relating energy, mass, and the speed of light in a “simple” formula, E = mc²—was a creative leap. Charles Babbage, who originated the modern analytical computer, the forerunner of what we have today, was creative. Alfred Eisenstaedt, who spent most of his life photographing for LIFE magazine, was called “the father of photojournalism.” Many of his photographs have become icons. Teachers also can be creative in their approach to teaching. But art is often reduced to being synonymous with creativity even though it is both limiting and inadequate to define creative activities.

In approaching a concept of learning in photography we must recognize that there are two distinct parts of what we will teach and how those ideas will be used. Learners need an understanding of creativity and becoming creative. If there is a difference between creativity and being creative, then there must be a difference between teaching creativity and teaching learners to be creative.

First we must see a slight learning difference between what can be confused as the same thing, creativity and being creative. Educationally creativity is the verbal expression of the creative activity. We can address creativity without the learner being creative. Being creative is active, while creativity can be passive.

With this small difference in understanding within creativity, the concept of aesthetics works its way into this discussion. When we wish to use aesthetics we are looking for the answer to one question, “What is art?” Ths question is about art and aesthetics, not about creativity. Looking at the question allows us to view creative activities only through the artistic approach. There are no preconditions within art that make creativity something that is only involved with art. Though the area of aesthetic study normally resides at a higher level of education, the pursuit of the answer to the aesthetic question incorporated in this academic area can be useful in transitioning from creativity to being creative.

“Teaching creativity is knowledge-based, being creative is studio-based. We can know of creativity but being creative takes effort. Creativity can be expressed and discussed while being creative must be done.”

Jack Mann

Wittenberg University, OH

Aesthetics, Perception, and Meaning

“What is Art?” This is an adaptation of the classic question of aesthetics. Since photography is an art, this is also the basic question of the meaning of photography. In endeavoring to answer that question, certain ideas need to be addressed. These are the threads common to all art: how art functions, the involvement of the audience in the artistic event, and implications of the artistic intent.

These three threads, common to all art (in our case how photographs function and implications of the artistic intent of the photographer), lead us to the answer to the aesthetic question. Art, including photography, does not exist in a vacuum and must affect a viewer beyond the moment when the viewer is simply viewing the art. (What if you built a website and no one visited?) This effect of/on the “audience” is the involvement with the artistic event, and the way the viewer perceives the visual stimulus involves us in discussing how art works. Assisting learners to understand this relation between the audience and how the audience will process and use artists' photographs is a big step toward learners becoming creative by finding unique ways to communicate to the audience.

“Only an individual can imagine, invent or create. The whole audience of art is an audience of individuals.”

Bn Shahn

Within this approach, cognition of images needs more than attending to an image. The visual art that has been produced within the digital environment (we now see) is the basic level of art. It is important to realize that there are controlling factors for dealing with the art, and those factors are the perceptual constructs of the audience.

Since the audience takes charge of the art, understanding the art is mediated by perceptual systems. Whether from external perception (psychophysics) or from the other extreme of internally manipulated perception (subjective phenomenology), the actions of the percept are controlling factors in the appreciation and understanding of visual images. To a certain extent the photographic art is the province of the audience, whether it is viewing a monitor or seeing a printed output. The first two parts of the aesthetic equation are both found at the viewing end of the art.

“After three years of experimentation, ‘The Bathers,’ which I consider my masterwork, was finished. I sent it to an exhibition and what a trouncing I got!”

August Renoir

The third idea mentioned above is the importance of artistic intent. This is the sole province of the artist. The assumption that any knowledge of artistic intent allows for better understanding of a visual image is fraught with problems. When asked, learners will often reply, “that's the way I wanted it,” and then, if able, intellectualize the aspects that the audience had not perceived. While intentionalism has its place in the discussion of art, it can only distract from understanding how art works.

“Most of my photographs are compassionate, gentle, and personal. They tend to let the viewer see himself.”

Bruce Davidson

The mind is in control of both aesthetics and meaning. As we will see, the concept of meaning becomes central to being creative. With the effects of mind on the aesthetic as well as the encoding and decoding of photographs to become meaning, aesthetics and meaning are mediated by the perceptual system. This is not far from the original meaning of aesthetics, from Greek, denoting “sharp to the senses.” Esthétique Scientifique (1865) by Charles Henry and Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Arts (1889) by Peter Henry Emerson further the reliance of art on perception with dialogue about the importance of perceptual understanding in the creation of art. In his pamphlet, Emerson presents understanding perception as one of the parts of study for successful education for the photographer. Within this approach, perception of images needs more than just attending to an image. The photographic art that has been produced, the image we see, is no more than a representation of things without meaning. It is given meaning by the viewer and it may not be the meaning the photographer intended.

“Art is not an object but an experience.”

Josef Albers

It is the addition of meaning that moves the photograph to its artistic level. This is also where the creative energy of the photographer shows through most clearly. Artists have something to say and we must assist others in finding ways to put meaning into their photographs.

Though artists often do not consider their audience or art's nature as they create, obviously these considerations must be dealt with when considering teaching creativity. Understanding perception enables the photographer to communicate meaning and thus their art to the viewer. Controlling how the perception functions for the viewer allows the photographer to be more effective and more creative.

“Memory images serve to identify, interpret, and supplement perception. No neat borderline separates a purely perceptual image—if such there is—from one completed by memory or one not directly perceived at all but supplied entirely from memory residues.”

Rudolf Arnheim

Whether teaching creativity or aesthetics, while important, these are not teaching how to be creative. Teaching creativity, perception, and aesthetics are guides for the learner to see creativity. However, we want the learners to be creative.

“I try to give a sense of curiosity…questioning as to why. It is often about asking the question ‘What if?’ When successful I see people not accepting the standard fare that is put in front of them. I see people questioning more, asking more and see people exploring images more than they would otherwise, they approach things differently if you get through to them. It is like they make a jump from one state of reality to another kind of reality, or let's say a reality that is not real. When they realize that the world is not concrete, that it is flexible and malleable…that you can have a number of realities depending on your perceptual perspective.

The real teaching happens one-to-one, it's the ‘Ah Ha’ experience that happens one-to-one. And often that ‘Ah Ha’ experience comes very stressfully. What you see is very interesting, you see them struggling with what they have always felt to be true and they see that coming unstuck. There is a sense of internal confusion and then this clarity comes. When the clarity happens it all just falls into place.

I think that we kid ourselves if we think that there is a mass production way to do this, you can do your mass lectures and get people excited, but it is that little bit of finishing that gets people over the edge where they become fluid thinkers rather than concrete thinkers that happens one-to-one.”

Siegfried Marietta

Griffith University, Australia

Communicating a Unique Voice

At a lecture in Tornio, Finland, the audience was asked how many languages they spoke. Because Finland is a small country with a unique language and a sizable minority lingual population, multilingual speakers are the norm. Most said that they spoke three to five languages. Then they were asked, “How many languages do you need if you have nothing to say?” When we look to teaching people to be creative, we are looking at how we will help others find and use their own unique voices…how to help them find the ways to communicate things that they want or need to say through their photographs—and perhaps even to encourage the learner to find a passion that requires voice to illuminate their desires and meanings.

“I have nothing to say and I have said it.”

John Cage

The power of the visual language to communicate beyond the verbal is key to teaching creativity in both its active and passive forms. Photography, as many other arts, can give meaning to things that are beyond words. As was discussed in the previous chapter, in photographic language the techniques are the syntax and grammar of this visual language and the creative process provides the meaning (semantics). It is not an issue of the tools but it is what the tools allow and help you say.

“For young learners, my role is to make them see what is around them and try to their best to show us what they see. I tell them that everyone sees around them but many times there is more to their stories if they don't include every single thing in the picture, to get up close and take parts of things and those parts of things would give a better view with more imagination. Pay attention to the small things.”

Emily Stay

Gilmour Academy, OH

Though design elements are sometimes presented to exemplify creativity, they are only tools for the communication that is important to be creative in photography. Design elements give a style, look, and dynamism and become the underpinning for successful communication.

If design elements and the tools only present the pieces of meaning, what drives differentiation of the creative? The unique voice is what we then see as the definer of the creative and art. “Originality, then, is what distinguishes art from craft. We may say, therefore, that it is the yardstick of artistic greatness or importance.” H.W. Janson states this in his book, History of Art, and goes on, “Unfortunately, it is also very hard to define; the usual synonyms—uniqueness, novelty, freshness—do not help us very much, and the dictionaries tell us only that original work must not be a copy, reproduction, imitation or translation.”

“Shall I tell you what I think are the two qualities of art? It must be indescribable and it must be inimitable.”

August Renoir

If creativity is to be linked with a unique communication value of photography, then teaching people to be creative is about teaching people to find things to say that communicate what they see and/or feel. For younger learners, many times our most important job is to assist learners to understand how they will find something to say as well, but we will be successful in helping others to be creative when we help them find “their” voice for their views.

That is the real path to being creative and teaching others to be creative—expressing uniqueness. This can be stressed through lectures, examples, assignments, and critique. However, it is an issue of freedom of expression and we must admit that the uniqueness is not described in difference but in individuality. People can and do see and say things in similar ways. In assisting others to learn their own voice, many times we need to direct people to see the difference between following fashion and following their feelings.

“You can teach creativity by teaching habits of the mind, taught to be fluid in their mind, to search for remote relationships between subjects. You have to set students on a pathway seeking information and constantly striving to do their best.”

Betty Lark-Ross

Chicago Latin School, IL

As we can consider any journey through learning and knowing to owning for technique, we can also approach the same journey for creativity. Similar to technique, we can see a method of learning to be creative as a somewhat linear process of steps that ultimately resides in the learners' understanding of how they will communicate through photography and finally going out to just be creative.

Ruth Foote, photography instructor at Owens Community College, Toledo, Ohio, has a nice method to help her students find their voices. As is true of most of photography, she uses the tools of technique to bring her students into seeing their unique visions. Her approach, as she teaches basics of imaging, is to have her students take their contact sheets and cut the individual frames apart. At this point the students are asked to arrange the pieces to create groupings of similarities. This is repeated using differing filters for separation and association. The outcome is that the students start to see that they have a way of seeing and a preference for other visual structures. They will also be able to see how they migrate to similarities in subjects.

This can be done in a computer through any of the “contact sheet” enhanced programs, though it tends to be less instructive for the students. The physicality of separating and moving the images allows the students more time to realize more about their visual language as parts are realized. For some, it will even allow kinesthetic learning to assist with finding language. Also, because the pieces are loose, they need not be linear in any way.

“An association is often said to be a matter of contiguity, which means a neighborhood of two items in space or time or both. We know that this condition, a short distance between objects, favors their unification in perception.”

Wolfgang Kohler

Technique versus Creativity

The technical ability to easily reproduce the world realistically came to fruition with the introduction of photography. The introduction of photography meant that artists did not need to struggle with realism but did need to find a unique point of view that would give voice to their ideas.

“One of the challenges in teaching photography is balancing technical and visual instruction, especially regarding digital technology. Though it may seem obvious when a compelling image is poorly printed, it is often less apparent when a beautifully crafted print has little meaning.”

Terry Abrams

Washtenaw Community College, MI

From a visioning assignment; by Howard Call, Owen Community College, OH, student of Ruth Foote

While teaching others to be creative in photography tends to be at a higher intellectual level than photographic technique, it must be seen that the creative is not necessarily tied to technique or vice versa. Too often, particularly with younger learners, the success exhibited in technique is misconstrued as being creative. It is natural for learners to see their triumph in photographic technique as accomplishing a creative act. It must be clear to the teacher as well as to the learners that technical aplomb and being creative are two distant and separate concepts. As a new teacher, Barbara Houghton, of Northern Kentucky University, was challenged by students about imaging technology that was outside her expertise. Being a new teacher at the time, she asked her friend, Robert Heinecken, what to do. He said to “tell them that you don't know and you don't care, because that is not the way you make art. You don't need to know everything.”

If we must look for messages to encourage creativity we must look for ways that do not solely stress the technique. While the technique is important in successfully communicating meaning, techniques alone seldom provide the meaning of a photograph. Therefore, teaching creativity is not about how to make a photograph but about why we want to make a photograph.

“I live in my own world. I go about looking, seeing, studying, observing, but the world I create is my own.”

Thomas Wolfe

Technique can be objectified, while the creative problem resides outside the technique regardless of how different the tool is that is used. Thus teaching others to be creative is more an extension of the persona than of photography itself.

Breathing in Photography

At a recent lecture, photographer John Sexton shared a concept of inspiration. He stated that the meaning of the word “inspiration” comes from “breathing in.” Breathing, of course, is a naturally occurring event for healthy humans—bringing air into the body is how life is sustained. As John went on, it was clear that to be inspiring is to help others learn to bring in the concepts of life. For learners, “breathing in” life experiences becomes the source for being creative.

Teaching others to be creative is not magical, but it is inspirational. Inspiration is what teachers must give to the learning photographers that will enable them to make images that go beyond technique to include meaning.

One of the best ways to show technique is by looking at examples of technique. This can also be said for creativity: examples of meaningful images can inspire learners to see avenues that they might be able to use to express their creativity. The same can be said for dealing with creativity. Examples of successful photography illustrate as well as inspire learners to find their voice through photography.

Different or Creative

Too often creativity is approached by telling learners that they must strive for difference and that this is the maximum method to express their creativity. This has little validity or at least in the parlance of design, “There is nothing new.” Being different for difference's sake does not exhibit creativity or communication, only difference. The mere fact that the work takes a different technique approach does not automatically provide the communication that is needed: it just makes the work technically different.

Learners need to realize that their quest is for uniqueness and not difference. This may be an issue of looking at their subject differently but this is not a priority of being creative. Within photography there are many instances of people working in similar ways and still giving the viewer unique communication. Artists working in what is called “straight photography” have always had different approaches to their visual world. Uniqueness is an issue of vision and style, not technique. Most often difference and novelty show in technique, and uniqueness is exhibited in point of view.

Uniqueness may be “outside the box.” Many times, thinking outside the box is easier if a person is kicked out of the box—the role of a teacher may be pushing the learner out of the box of their comfort level. A method that can be successfully used to assist learners is to have them look in a different direction as they photograph—away from the direction they normally use to make their photographs. This may be accomplished by having them look down as they shoot, instead of looking through the viewfinder, or by having them hold the camera at arm's length. However, this type of project only touches on the major emphasis that must be used. Normal camera use can lock conventionality into the learner's process. Looking askance is one approach to making photographs, just as differing techniques are also approaches to using tools. Creativity may need to be a different view, but difference must give the unique voice to the photograph to qualify as creative.

The idea of looking in a different physical direction becomes a metaphor for approaching the creative concept from different points of view. We need to assist learners in approaching their concepts by taking views that do not necessarily correspond to their previously expressed ideas or concepts. This approach is not novelty for novelty's sake, but is meant to assure that the idea of communication uses the best avenue to reach an end result. The reason for novelty is that it has an effect on the audience, attracting their attention and thus allowing better communication from photographer to audience. Photographs need not look physically different, but it is important that they communicate in the unique voice, representative of their maker's creativity.

“I do not photograph nature. I photograph my vision.”

Man Ray

Technical creativity is most often found as an expression of experimentation. To make technical creativity a valuable imaging tool, experimentation needs to be replicated to achieve a purpose. While this type of creativity can be encouraged, it has to become clear to the learner that technical creativity is short lived. Creativity expressed by manipulating a technique can quickly become only a tool and can lose its communicative impact. If learners spend a majority of their time on creating new ways to produce photographs, they have limited their voice to the technical and have stifled their ability to present issues outside technique.

Using Art

“I don't show my own work in an intro class because I don't want the students hung up on what they think I expect. I tell them outright that I will never give them an assignment to make a photograph that you have to make. I want you to figure out how you want to address the assignment. I make my own photographs…I don't need you to make my photographs. I want you to figure out how to make your photographs because it is not about what I like.”

Rebecca Nolan

Savannah College of Art and Design, GA

Looking at photographic art can have a major impact on learning to the creative. As learners mature in their photographic skills, looking at bodies of work can help clarify what is meant by a unique voice. Though it is interesting and informative to view single images, a body of images presents the learner with more information about how to

While it is important to learn the history of photography this is different from purely looking at and discussing images. The chronology of photography has much to say about how artistic movements and genres interrelate. It is the process of looking at images, with a concentration on the images in front of them, that provides learners with the best potential for using other photographs to inspire creativity.

It is important, along with looking at art, that learners discuss, interact, analyze, and derive meaning from the images. For the most part, this restricts this type of learning to promoting creativity for more mature learners. The choice to look at and analyze bodies of work pushes this type of activity into a more structured educational interaction. Whether through the use of books, slides, exhibitions, or artist presentations, this tends to promote dialogue about images. The outcome of this activity should not be seen as promoting the copying of the stylistic constructs of the images, but rather as the way of coming to understand artistic communication.

As discussed earlier in this chapter, this type of learning activity is somewhat passive. The effort needs to center around the concept of creativity as a stimulus to being creative.

“There are two ways you can be influenced by other's work. You can go after the work and allow yourself to be influenced by it as someone who loves that work, emulates the work and works in a similar way. And you'll work through it if you are honest with yourself and you keep challenging yourself… Or you can go at someone else's work as a frightened insecure person who doesn't know what in creation you are going to do but…you ‘kinda’ like this, and that will let you get the assignment in…and you will be in trouble.”

Barry Andersen

Northern Kentucky University, KY

Photography may be the art that is being taught in a class, but it need not be the only art that is used to teach creativity. A broad understanding of communication techniques within various artistic disciplines gives learners a better grasp of the potentials of photography. By bringing into the class examples in the performing arts and the musical arts as well as in the visual arts, the instructor can help learners relate to and understand communication, meaning, and passion while making strides toward being creative with the photographic tools they are learning to use. It is well to remember that art is not limited to the visual, nor is creativity.

Learning Creativity from Nonlinearity

Frederico Fellini said in an interview, “Every one of my films starts with confusion.” On the advanced end of the discussion of creativity, and ways to engage the learner in creativity, is the area of nonlinearity. Being creative, the event, at its most astounding level, is often nonlinear. It does not come from logic in Cartesian scientific methods, continued directional research, work, or experimentation to solve problems, but many times the greatest impact of creativity appears serendipitously.

Part of nonlinearity is the concept of chaos. Chaos is often defined as randomness and lack of discipline. It is neither…instead, chaos can be defined by rigorous mathematics and creativity resides at its boundary.

Within chaos and thus creative activities that use nonlinear dynamics, close inspection shows several factors, including similarity or reoccurring structure. Similarity, not copying, is an important point in the nonlinear world. As iterations control the development of a system, reoccurring forms emerge regularly. Just as this happens within nonlinear systems, it is a method of working photographically. By including nonlinear aspects into the creation of photographs we develop a dynamical system. As this creative system continues, we can see the individual images as fractals that move from one image to the next, growing and passing the creative emphasis and further delineating one photograph into a series.

“You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

Dynamical systems can look as stable as granite or as fluid as magma. Creativity can also tip from stability to chaos, and this can be either very good and reinforcing or destructive to the photographic process. When we wish to understand a dynamical system, we try to identify the changes from stability and the initial condition. Our goal is to assist learners to push the system to the boundary to find the point just short of instability to maximize the creativity.

By Aaron Abram, College Poole and Bournemouth, United Kingdom, student of Roy Winspear

Regardless of a system's structure, there is a force that holds creative patterns together. These are called “attractors.” The attractor in learning creativity is an idea that will dominate the passion of the photographer. For our purposes in this discussion, an attractor is a concept that affects all parts of the mental and physical processes of making images. Like a string that restricts the path of a weight moving on the end of the string, within post-modern photography the concept of the intellectualized narrative became an attractor promoting differing aspects of a written dialogue in the photograph, rather than having the image tell the story.

Different interpretations of a scene, the “initial condition,” lead to differences in images of the scene, and this is a way to see non-linearity in image making. The uniqueness of the artist's voice allows different photographers to approach the same scene and come away with dissimilar images. This divergence of expression needs to be exploited to increase the creative learning potentials. Learners are provided with a creative way to look at making photographs, not by reducing the scene (reductionism) but by defining their unique reaction to the initial condition. That reaction becomes the attractor in the dynamical system and the means to communicate from the scene.

“One of the concepts I introduce to my photography students is that they are learning a new language; it is another way of communicating. In the Peace Corps, while in Turkey, we were told by an old gentleman a proverb that said… ‘Bir dil, bir adam…lki diler, iki adamier’…One language, one man,…two languages, two men.”

Lex Youngman

Wingate University, NC

Observing a learner's photography for a period of time and within the structure of a class might indicate that a style of picture making has developed, yet a completely different way to make pictures could be just as natural. It is at this point that an instructor can “bump” the learner, or encourage the view of a changeable “intransitive” structure. A system can stay in equilibrium successfully, maintaining only one of many ways of looking at an idea of making photographs, until an outside force encourages a change. Bumping is a role to help others to be creative. Turbulence is the reality of a system reaching a critical point where the forces within the system can no longer easily allow calculation that predicts action. When you look at the system near chaos, you can see the turbulence…that is creativity.

Creativity must start somewhere, and order is a reasonable beginning point. Order is the background that creativity happens in front of. It is very important to acknowledge the history and linearity provided by the status quo. The quiet order of normality the structure of the common, the regimen of history—all permit the creative process to extend beyond expectations and to project its turbulence against a stable structural background.

Within nonlinearity are several other areas beyond chaos. Two of these areas bear on this discussion of creativity. These are self-organizing criticality and coherent structures. Both of these structures relate to life cycles of art and creative endeavors.

The easiest way to define self-organized criticality is to describe an avalanche of sand. As individual grains of sand build up in mass, the load settles and shifts to find equilibrium. At a critical point, equilibrium disappears as one or more grains slide, changing the balance. This causes more grains to lose their stasis until an avalanche occurs. The trauma of the avalanche returns the system to equilibrium. Conditions in the organization of the grains determine the size or duration of the slide.

We need to look at ideas as self-organizing in the way paradigms propagate. Earlier we mentioned that paradigms were a method that can be applied to solving groups of problems. When a paradigm becomes strong, it is because it has used this same characteristic to start an avalanche of followers.

Solitons (a word introduced in the 1960s to describe a solitary wave motion) are nonlinear structures exhibiting a unique one-time concept. A tsunami is a soliton. A tidal wave gets started by a disturbance of small consequence on the ocean bottom, far at sea, and as the sea moves the soliton is created by the shape of the bottom. As the disturbance reaches shallow waters, the force of the bottom pushes the wave up. The 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean created only about a 1.5 foot (0.5 m) rise in the ocean's surface at sea, but 40 or more feet (13 m) at various locations on the coasts. The unique thing about solitons is that they move in a coherent form until dissipated through entropy or until they crash into something, such as the shore. Regardless of the cause of the wave, it moves across the sea as a single force.

These two nonlinear effects, avalanches and solitons, are mentioned in this discussion because they define the way creativity becomes part of our history. Movements in art tend to be self-organizing and either create an avalanche or slip to equilibrium. In photography we saw this with “Pictorialism.” A movement takes hold and similarities of creative thought emerge because there are similar “attractors” working within the structures that are solving visual problems…being creative.

If a movement organizes itself in a way so that it can continue, then we can see the soliton as a genre or school. Fads in fashion or art movements are flashes in the pan. In neither case is creativity responsible for the effect. Formalized creativity can be seen as an attribute being dragged with the avalanche or riding the wave.

Embedded within the walls of an institution are the local conditions that make creativity possible. Of all the factors that lead to understanding creativity through nonlinear thought, foremost is the idea of the “local condition.” Within nonlinear development the local condition, the starting point, determines the end. It is more than just where the creative process starts, but also what is around when it starts influencing the outcome. Abraham Lincoln said, “What has once happened, will inevitably happen again, when the same circumstances which combined to produce it, shall again combine in the same way.” While the same attractor is at work, the results will be different if the initial condition is not the same.

The influences—faculty, community, the availability of equipment, fellow students, and space—will affect the outcome of the creative process. It is within the learning process that the creative energies can start. What is present will act as an attractor around which creativity can emerge. What is present becomes the algorithm, and as a group we can self-organize, perhaps to the critical point. These are the things that can develop creativity.

Watch Out! They're Stopping Creativity

It seems strange that institutions that are self-acclaimed as the stronghold of creativity, schools, colleges, universities, and departments of art have a difficult time in accepting true creative behavior. This is a critical issue facing those in the education of photographic artists. What many art departments teach is not an increase of creative output, but rather improvement in current acceptable aesthetics. Just as being an artist takes commitment, so teaching can take on an aspect of that commitment and it becomes a commitment to aesthetics rather than to the learning of others.

“I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truths if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”

Leo Tolstoy

As a discipline, criticism is also culpable for the poor state of creativity in both education and production. While critics talk about expanding the horizons of the art, the genres and schools of thought prevalent in artistic criticism of the day hold off inroads by other emerging or practiced directions. For many, the vested interest in continuation of any current artistic direction outweighs acceptance.

“Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training.”

Anna Freud

Even something as seemingly benign as using faculty art in the creative lessons might appear as if it can stifle the desired outcome of helping others find their creative energies. The problem with using examples of faculty work as instructional aids is that learners will often wish to impress the teacher by doing work that looks like the teacher's, and thus having altered their own voices. This can mean that learning to be creative is sidelined by the wish to impress the instructor with “the most sincere form of admiration”…copying.

“Speak the speech I pray you as I pronounce it to you…”

William Shakespeare, from Hamlet

Building Outhouses

Creativity in and of itself means the act of creation, and the creation in this sense is as easily a snapshot as a narrative documentary photograph. Frequently an artificial divide is erected between creative photography

By Matthew Drake, Lansing Community College, MI, student of Ike Lea

and other forms of photography. This is misplaced and can stunt the growth of the learner in the approach to becoming creative.

Within artistic endeavors there is an intellectual battle to create differences among types of creative photographic utilization. Normally the distinction uses terms such as “high” or “fine” to separate “higher art” from a perceived lower form of art or craft, and particularly from commercial pursuits. It is not uncommon for those on the “fine art” side of photography to view creativity as in their domain and not part of, or as accomplished within, the applied side of photography.

Creativity exists in engineering as well as in photography, and of course even in building outhouses. Being creative is the major tool of all problem solving. The creative tool splits two ways—as applied creativity (commercial photography) and as expressive creativity (fine art photography). The Focal Encyclopedia of Photography, 3rd edition, lists about 100 different kinds of photography/photographers. Here are some of them: Aerial Photographer, Advertising Photographer, Biomedical Photographer, Fashion Photographer, Fine Art Photographer, Food Photographer, Forensic Photographer, Landscape Photographer, Military Photographer, Photojournalist, Portrait Photographer, Scientific Photographer, Sports Photographer, Wedding Photographer. These categorizations do not mean that any one title is restricted exclusively to commercial endeavors or that any one title inherently represents a higher level of self-expression. Rather, these are nothing more than titles that can be used, or misused, to classify, because they both have a place in both worlds. Many successful commercial photographers, such as Duane Michals, Joyce Tenneson, and Annie Liebovitz, exhibit and are recognized as artists. On the other side, recognized artists such as Michael Kenna and John Sexton have their art used for commercial ends. Once when Bruce Davidson was lecturing he was asked by a student if he considered himself a fine art photographer; he simply replied that he considered himself a photographer, period.

Viewing creativity as a tool and art as a step leads to a simple understanding—there are just three differences between the “fine” art photographers who revel in their self-expression in art and the applied photographic artist who works for mass consumption and commercial use. First, applied photographers know that they will use their creative energies in the pursuit of money. They know from the beginning of the job how much they will get paid for using their creative energies. “Fine” art photographers hope that when they finish the self-expression that they will get some money for their efforts. Second, applied photographic artists freely admit that they use their creativity to provide sustenance, while “fine” artists rail against that fact. Last and most important, applied photographic artists solve other people's visual problems, while artists working on self-expression must define their own visual problems. Beyond these three differences, all photography uses the same tools, and universally all use creativity. This has been true from the beginning of photography. Thus photographic art is creative problem solving for the eyes and mind.

“Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self.”

Erich Fromm

Understanding this difference between these two areas of photography is the realization that photographic art is not an end but merely a step. The creative energy used to make photography is a tool to give voice. Education often tells us that art, whether photography or another medium, is a zenith experience, but it is just another step of the life experience—a method for our unique voices to communicate.

Creative Success

Regardless of how learners arrive at their unique vision and voice, this alone will not sustain them to continue to make photographic art. At its most basic, the underlying differentiation between those who make it as artists for the long haul and those who do not is the passion they bring to their photography.

“I take the philosophical point, your edge as an artist is what you are passionate about. It's the only edge you've got. It is the teacher's obligation to help the students discover that. If they can find one pathway to passion for a limited time, that is enough.”

Kim Krause

Art Academy of Cincinnati, OH

In concluding this discussion and this chapter, it needs to be noted that critics often find it difficult to appreciate creativity in its first moments. In an article in Art News, November 1999, the following quotes were listed, revealing the way artists or art movements were described at the beginning of their career or at the start of the genre:

“Degas is repulsive.” (Comment by a prominent art critic over 100 years ago)

“Matisse is an unmitigated bore.” (Chicago Tribune, 1913)

“The Dada philosophy is the sickest, most paralyzing and most destructive thing that has ever originated in the brain of man.” (Art News, re: 1921 Dada show)