Transcripts
1. Class Introduction: Welcome to session four. In this session we're
going to what I like to call bathe
in the shadows. In other words, we're going to intentionally move
our creative process into the darker side of our imagination and to the
darker side of our soul. It's hear that so often our imagination has been
squashed, has been squelched. Where aspects of the way that
we think and the way that we are in the world can
oftentimes be attached to shame, or they can fall into
the realm of taboo. So what we wanna do
here is we want to use our photography as a tool, as a means to be able to explore these areas
with creativity, with courage, and
with compassion. So that we can actually reveal
aspects of ourselves and aspects of our photography that otherwise might
never be seen. So let's get right to it.
2. Opening Lecture - Part 1 (pgs. 1-7): I did an experiment one time I had taken a
photograph and I made what I thought was a tragic mistake
with the exposure. And it was a photograph of a
woman who was a performer. She is like a
performance artist. And she performed that this
club called, don't remember. It was a venue for these
bizarre performances that generally only very
wealthy or famous people were invited to see
these performances. And the stage set in this little place was
designed to look like an, like an old-fashioned
living room. Like your grandma's living room. It may be from the 1950s. And in this, in this
very sweet set, We're all of these very unusual
things that took place. And I got permission to
photograph her on that set. And the photograph is of her
sitting in what is it like, a queen and chair. Is that the right word? Right. She's sitting there
and she's she's naked and she's sitting
there in the chair with her arms up like this with a cigarette
dangling or hand like like like like an old
kind of beat up grandma. What's her legs are spread. So she's sitting like this where their legs spread and I'm in the audience
taking this picture, but she's toppling, right? So everything is just like her her face shadows
like come down upon her chest and her
torso shadowed her crotch. But it didn't because
I overexpose it so much that all this
shadow detail was there. So it was film. I remember I remember
getting mad at contact sheets and looking like, oh my god, it's just like
spread eagle, right. Welcome to my ******, right? And I was, I was so upset
because I taught it's like God, this is not the photograph
that I set out to make. I had wanted to make
a photograph that left all that in the
shadows to the imagination. And something in me
just said, print it. So the experiment that I
did was I made a big giant, really cheap printer cost
like 50 bucks or something. Biggest print I could make. And then, then I hung
it up on the wall and I put a sheet or
something over it. And I invited about 15 or
20 people of all kinds, some really nutty, some
super conservative. And I set up all these
chairs in the front. And I told him it was gonna be an exhibition and then it
****, I dropped the thing. Then we had a discussion with her with us throughout
the discussion. And it has so much
to do with what's acceptable and what's not and where my boundaries and is it, and how dare you
how dare I naught? Was it a mistake
or was it meant to be a million and one questions? And even the most
conservative people had the most
interesting questions. And what the photograph that
allow them to do was to ask the questions that they thought they weren't
allowed to ask. But there was such safety there. It's like we were all
she was the one who was ultimately the
most vulnerable. So we were all okay. And then at the end, we had a group thing and we tore it up and just
throw it in the garbage. And that was that. And I found that I loved that
photograph till this day. It's what you call a
difficult photograph. But I felt like in order for me to overcome that hurdle and that narrow-minded definition of beauty in what was
good and what was bad. Why? What's wrong with a ******? You know, it's, it's
a beautiful thing. It's, you know, why is it more or less beautiful
than an ear lobe? So I think that having the willingness to
make the photograph, having the willingness to
confront yourself about your values and your definitions of beauty and talent and art, and sex, and community,
all these things. You can't do it
from the sidelines. You know, like you can't do it with your
daughter in their car. You can just do it. Then. I hope that it was wow. Whatever that means. I mean, you hope that, you hope that, you know, when there's a little scene in the film about
Richard avid Don, where he's talking about the
process of photographing his father in the last months of his life while he's
dying of cancer. And he, he dresses
them up in a suit. When he sits him up in bed in the East, practically
a skeleton. And he made a whole series shooting eight by
ten film of it, of his dying father all
dressed up in a suit and tie. And he says in the movie
that he had to talk to his analyst about this because he had so much angst
about what did he do? It was like the
commit a mortal sin. And I thought I
thought what he said was great is that analysts asked him was anyone hurt in the process of
making the photographs? And he said no. And he said was great
art created as a result. And he said yes. And then he said, So after
that he was he was free. He was fine with it. I'm not saying that
anyone else's criteria, but I think you do get to a point where it
start to ask yourself, how do I qualify the value of this work in the context of, is it good? Was anybody heard? Was it for the sake of art? Did it help your own values? How do your own
values either fit or not fit into that equation? And then move away
from the idea of it's, it's so good or it's so bad. And then what's next? What's next along the line? Is this something that that has the possibility
to move you further along in a trajectory
toward work that is more, as you said so beautifully,
I feel that's me. You know, isn't that the goal? How do I take this
incredibly complex thing called the human being and spit out a two-dimensional thing made from zeros and ones or maybe from little
pieces of silver. You know, how? It is not for
everybody, you know. And how do you know
when you got there? Be ****** if I know. Usually it takes
about ten years. And you're like,
Yeah, I still like that photograph. It's yep. I like it even more. It's still it's still got
a puzzling nature to it. I'm still wondering
what it's about. People who are still
angry about it. People are still envious of it. And I think that's,
it takes time.
3. Opening Lecture - Part 2 (pg.8): This really starts to open up the conversation
about shame. Who has seen Bernie
Brown is TedTalk. Only you can. Okay. That is recommended
viewing for this week. So Bernie Brown has become a household name in the world of vulnerability
as a source of power. And I guess we as a society, we're ready to hear this. And Bernie Brown was the
voice that was going to bring this to our world. And she does a really
remarkable job of differentiating between
embarrassment and shame. She says that embarrassment is when you're made to feel that something that you've
done is morally wrong. Where shame, you're made to feel that you are morally wrong. And it's easy for us all to look back into our childhoods, in our adolescents and adult life and find
those examples where, let's say the classic example, because you're a women at
someone's saying you're a bad girl as opposed to
what you did was bad. And that is That's tough
stuff to grapple with. So when, when you bang
up against the walls and the self-imposed ideals of what is good and what is bad, what is right, what is
wrong, what is moral, what is immoral, what's culturally acceptable
and what's not. And you bang up against those, then you are making a
decision that you're going to actually confront
the sources of that shame. Shame is worthless. It's an opinion.
But I think it's a reasonable one that I don't think anything
good comes from shame. On the opposite side
of shame is freedom, really freedom to say that
I can chart my own course. I can make decisions for myself. I, I can be guided and
I can be informed by things that are,
that are deterred. Doctrines of morality. The Ten Commandments is
the classic example. But what if I don't
agree with that? Or what if I think
there's an exception to one of those commandments and one of those is lying
right in there. But maybe there's a
good reason to lie.
4. Creative Stretch - Part 1 (pg. 9-10): Maybe for the sake of exploring the aspects of yourself that you
don't know very well. Maybe lying is a very
worthwhile idea. And certainly in the
content of or the context of an experiment. And I'm an exercise. And that's where we're gonna go with this exercise
is you're going to lie big and have
fun with line. This is a classic example of
first thought, best thought. You do not want to be
contemplating your answers. You just want to
look at it and you want to write down the first
thing that comes to mind. Do not tell the truth about
anything on this page. This is blatant lies. Let that shadow side be nudged
and tickled a little bit and see what happens when you ask yourself
these questions. It shouldn't take very long. If you're stuck thinking, then just jump up and down or bang your head against
the tree and come back. And just go ahead and
answer these questions.
5. Creative Stretch - Part 2: Let's introduce ourselves
to the whole group. As you're listening
to the introduction of these people who you
haven't met before, just kept pay
particular attention to whoever it is that you think that you'd really like to meet. And then we're gonna
give you the opportunity to meet that person. Martin, from
Louisiana, originally, currently living in an
apartment in Paris, France. I haven't lived anywhere else. I'm 39 years old. I drive I ride a bike
as it might be at home. I live with my dog, Roscoe. I am a banker. Yesterday I strolled the river. Tomorrow I plan on meeting
my love of her coffee. My greatest passions are stealing hearts and
stealing money. I'm ashamed of killing. My breath. Sounds like skydiving is on my bucket list. I admire my grandfather who found his passion or painting. If I could do anything for
one week with anybody, it would be to sail to Greece
with my first true love. My mother was a queen. We had serious Oh, wow. Yes. As Brittany, I just don't care. I just want to go back home
and just sleep all day. That's honest. And just make art. Yeah. Definitely. Wanted to fungi. The most. Loved him and he was
a part of families, so it was good. It was approved.
Parents approved? Yes. So my parents approved. So I was I went along with it. I'm not on
6. Personal Happening (pgs. 11-13): I will drive slash speed. And at 04:15 AM, playing Rage Against
the Machine loudly. I realized today I can do it. But, you know, some of the details obviously
are different. Yeah. How did it feel? It felt good. And I realized
that if it didn't work out, how crushed I would have been even though it
was just simple, was on my way here. I took some like Siri play
play rich kids machine. And she's like, I'm sorry, and I'm like No, not now. It's like no, don't. Let me write it down. A little bit more specific. And a serial killing in the
name by rage gets machine. That she got it. Thank you. And just completely
just floored it. I knew I could do traffic was
not stopped. And I did it.
7. Closing Lecture: There are habitual
patterns fall into, into, into the Groundhog Day, groundhog Day habitual
patterns that are that just happened
somewhere along the way. Then, and then there's
breaking those patterns and creating ritual that has a
really particular intention. What, what might be
in anyone's mind, what might you
perceive as the value of working really hard to go against whatever
is in the way, have it, laziness, discomfort, insecurity, lack
of accountability. So much of what we're
working on is getting out of your head into your body. And again, we're gonna say
that this thing called the body is, is your, is your subconscious and
it, its soul consciousness. In order for that to happen, in order for that transformation
happen from thinking, which is all comparative. It's all, I'm thinking this way because I used to
think that way, but now I'm going to
have some new thinking. It's just a head game at that point because you're gonna fall back into
your tendencies. It's fair enough to say that
your thoughts are going to, if you have a
particular thought, it's going to bring up
a particular emotion. It's a thought of the
past is like, oh, that felt really good when
I did that last time. That's going to bring
up a joyful emotion. That tendency is
for humans is to wake up to your problems. That's the tendency. I wake up. I'm scared, I'm anxious
and frustrated. I am. I wish it was different. This is human tendency
just like boom, right, right into the problems. If you use your mind to
change that, it doesn't work. You can't outsmart your brain
because your body is so substantial that it's going to come back and say, hits it. Cool, I thought, let's get
back to where we were. And the bodies is
gonna be like boom, because the body has
been programmed. It just knows this is
the way we do things. Like shut up, Kim, because you're in my way. We've got things to do here. We got to get back to the words. We gotta get back
to the problems. In order to begin
that shift away from being focused on the past, which is all about these
comparisons about the way that things were and either still are that you wish
that they weren't. We need to introduce
some level of chaos into the equation where the body can actually start
to come to life. The soul and the unconscious
can actually start to churn, shaking things up, it's
like a snow globe. Everything is settled
and it's good. And it's comfortable,
it's predictable. I'm good. All and what that does is that fortifies everything to
stay exactly the way it is. Which means you wake up in the morning and you're
consumed with all of your problems and
your life pretty much stays the same because
your body is just saying, let us know, settled, and then I'm okay. But your willingness to
come to this class is a sign that you're not okay, that you're not okay with things being the
way that they are, that you're interested
in growing, you're interested in evolving. You're interested in
knocking on the door. That says, Don't
knock on this door. The darkness surprises,
unknown, the unpredictable. So the idea of that morning
ritual is it's shaking up the snow globe with face
embedded in the process, which is, and I don't
mean religious faith. But the faith of
understanding from a creative perspective that
there is something else. You don't know what it is yet. And that is really scary. The scary part is subdued
a little bit by saying, let's create a process that just shakes
up the snow globe. Then it's okay. Then you can
call each other and say, Hey, did you shake up your
snow globe this morning? And maybe you like yeah. And it's still floating and
I don't know what the **** I'm doing and I'm scared
and I'm confused. But you're also going to
find that you're alive. You know, that you're gonna
be living in this zone of, I don't know what's
going to happen next and starting to actually
fall in love with that. Which is the hardest part
because the snow globe, once the snow on the ground, I don't want to be stuck. I don't want to be mired in knowing this is what's
going to happen tomorrow, being supported and finding
that trust has taken a huge amount of work to know that whatever
it is that's coming, somehow. It serves me. Not in a way that I can predict, not in a way that is necessarily going to
support the old version of me. But I do truly believe that
it will support whatever this next incarnation
is of my life. And to me that is a
creative process. Like, Let's see what happens. You pick up your camera. If you know what's gonna happen, you're gonna make
the worst photograph you could ever make.
8. Feedback: I've just been drawn to
shooting in the water, like water element and getting
more movement and more not so even though
it's still made. But it felt good. I left there and when I was printing them, I felt excited. I'm getting somewhere.
Yeah. I was working fast and not thinking and just letting it flow
through me. Yeah. It's interesting
because Minor White, who is the god of all
photographic educators, always boiled it down to
always the same one question, which is What is the
photograph about? And it was a photograph with that particular
photograph, Kim. That one? Yeah. What is
that photograph about? So much as meat in it. Just the just the freedom. But yet the way I
cropped it and the way I envisioned it that I
didn't want her fully in, It's like she's just sort of like coming into
something unknown, but she's so much trust me, feel so much trust that
she's just letting go, which is so not me. That's why I just feel like it's still works and
I was trying to work with the water element and getting more movement
into my picture. And it's, to me,
it's so seductive and she is just she's out there. She's going to let
any man come and take her and enjoy it and be okay
with being super feminine. There's so much power to that. It's interesting that in this particular case
that your subject has that seem at least the way that
you're describing her, that she has those
two halves also. And she's got the
intellectual personality. How she displays
yourself to the world. Yeah. And then there's this
other part that's like you'd say that's
just who she is. You know, I think when you
make a photograph that that puts those two things
in the same photograph. That's when things get
really interesting. And so the two parts
of her, right? And simultaneously it's
this other two parts of u. Similarly, that's okay, Got it. Keep everything under control. Got to make it nice. And also, let's just
shake up the snow, go and see what happens. One thing I would like
you to do is download. And it's funny
because when I first saw it, I was like, Oh my God, that's snow globe was but then as I started to
looking at it more, I was like that was just a little one level.
There's more shaky. I would say at this point, Kim, I always feel like when a
good photograph comes after a period of time that things
haven't been going your way. It's always a great
idea to print it and frame it and hang it
and celebrate it. And then you can
always go back and there's the evidence.
I still got it. Yes. Got it. And it will talk to you. Sometimes it's
scary because then the next photograph
you take might suck. Yeah. And then you get
really angry you like, but I wanted to be good
like that last one. Well, that TED Talk
with Elizabeth skill. Yes. Yes. It's interesting because
I felt like I thought I was so strange that I literally like when
I go into a shoot, not this one particularly because this one
was just for me, but I do this whole
little mantra of like calling in my photography
gods to work through me. And I always tell
people, it's not me. It's something bigger than me. So it was really interesting when I listened to
her telling off, yeah, a poet who I mentioned
before, David White. And 11 of the phrases that he uses all the time
when, when, when, when he writes an
incredible poem is, let's say something like
this is what came out. It might pan. Like it's not him. It's just he's got, he's holding the
pen and the pen is being told we're gonna
go like a weedy board. And every artist, I mean, you look at jazz improvisation
is a great example. It's like solid foundation, talking about shaking
up the snow globe. Live in a shake and snow globe. Who knows what's
gonna happen tonight? But there's enough. That's where the
discipline comes in. I'm gonna know my craft. I do find that, that idea of seeing
I'm honing my craft. I'm learning this
thing inside and out. And so that I can
finally forget about having to worry about it then. But there's this so often people they don't realize that you have to
do the hard work. Yeah. Or maybe you don't I don't know. This is only my experience. I was 20 and I had my work on the walls
and museums all over the world and I didn't
know what frequent thing. And yet somehow I'm just channeling this then
so much for my theory. What I wanted, what I
wanted to suggest as sort of a contemplation
for you is the The two sides of the
coin of being alone. The piece that comes along
with isolation and loneliness. And hang on to that for a little while and see how
it does that translate. That. That's when things
get interesting that you're not, it's not melodrama. I'm not capturing it in a photo. I don't feel like you might bring that very clearly
into your intention of your photography so that the elements and aspects
of photography can be intentionally layered
in to convey that. Because it's definitely
starts to happen here. And it's very complicated. And I think that again, that's like, okay, here's a
little clue for you, Kim. It's like the picture
gives you a clue, then you can take
it and run with it. I think that that idea of wanting to wake up
early and get away from everyone and everything
is beautiful and also tragic in it's
not one or the other. Do you think that it
would be okay for you to dive deeper into your lack of passion without
trying to change it. I'd like to figure that out. That's a figure anything out. Just be with it more
except it, love it, embrace it and take care of it. Photographing, I guess. Because there's something that it will be revealed to you. I think that using your
photography as a way to sort about accepting it is just about
hanging out with it. I don't know what fear
the kind of person that maybe you go to a party
and you see someone that's sitting in
the corner That's all by themselves and nobody wants to talk to them and something comes
up and you're like, you know, I think I'm gonna
go talk to that person. That person is your
lack of passion. Just let, let, let
your compassion and your empathy treat that part of you that's having
so much pain. Be kind to it and see how what does that look
like as a photograph? Good. The photographs that are
the most poignant are just screaming, blah, blah. I think it's a great
starting point. But I think that there is, there is the flip
side of the block. And I would ask you
to think about what, what that is like. God is so boring,
there's nothing there. There's nothing happening. I'm so bored and burned out. How do you marry the other half? The desire or the lack of
desire or there is desire, but it's so buried
because you're burned out and you'd like
you can't see it. You could imagine it. You could play, you could, you could fantasize about it. That's legit also. I think that the work
will get more complex and more electrified as you
allow yourself to say, Okay, I got that. But what's this part? What's what's over here? And you don't have to answer
that question. But you do. I think it's fair enough to say that of course there's
something else. Of course there's more to
this than I'm able to see. It's not that you
have to see it. It's just a willingness
to entertain the idea that maybe there's something else that I'm not seeing here. Maybe there's revelation. You know, maybe change
always comes from pain. What might that look like? Just sort of recognize
that the process, even though it hurts, you're on the path
of revelation, because, because you're staying, you're staying with it.
9. Wrap Up: It's hard, it's really
hard to be stuck. And especially when you're
stuck because you're Juliet, Juliet camera and
an artist way she calls it The Ugly
Duckling growth stage. And she says that
you're on a plateau. You can kinda consider that like everything's going
well pretty good. And then you hit a wall
and that phase is over. And then the next part
is just treacherous. And it can last for
a long time or not. Or not. Maybe pray. You're asking yourself, asking yourself to
change your identity. You're asking yourself to express yourself as an artist in a way that you
haven't before. And you don't know
how to do that. So it's all clumsy and you feel like a beginner
and you feel like you're comparing yourself
to other people and other ideas about what
you're supposed to be and who you're
supposed to be and just keep putting it
in the photographs. Yeah. You don't want to make those
same photographs anymore. You're all done. So it's like what's next? Haven't a clue.
Rob Goldman, Photographer & Creativity Coach
