Photography
and Mindfulness
Gerry
Kopelow
A
talk given by Gerry Kopelow to the Faculty of Architecture, University
of Manitoba.
When
I say photography has been good to me, you might automatically assume
that I am talking about money. Of course, as a professional photographer,
I have made some money doing photography. Of far greater benefit,
however, is that it has moved me towards a more wholesome state
of mind.I was introduced to photography through the compassionate
impulse of my grade eight teacher. Seeing a very unhappy little
boy in front of her she shoved her camera at me and said, "Here,
try this, you might like it."
I
took it rather reluctantly and shot off some photographs, and to
my great surprise, they worked out. I exposed a roll of black and
white film and had it processed at the drugstore. When the pictures
came back I laid them out and I had a really strong
reaction to the images, even though I had made them in kind of a
fog. Something about those images caught my attention and evoked
a strong reaction, an emotional response. I could see there was
something going on. There was an element of design; there was an
element of harmony. They seemed a strangely compelling record of
things and events and somehow they hinted that there might be an
antidote to my childhood angst. Just looking at the images I experienced
joy and a lessening of suffering.
I
examined those first images with great curiosity and came to some
conclusions as to what the photographic process was about and why
it was so appealing to me. And then I experimented some more,
and my work improved. Driven by that embryonic joy and the interest
in the world that these photographs inspired in me, I started to
make art......and other people called it art, too.
I
was doing street photography, as it used to be called. I carried
my camera everywhere and I photographed people. I started selling
a few images and I had a few shows. When I was eighteen years old
I received Canada Council grant which helped me hitchhike around
the country and photograph folk and rock music festivals.
My
photography involved collecting evidence of fleeting moments, intensely
aesthetic fleeting moments: Think of time as an infinite continuum
during which things arise, manifest briefly, and dissolve. I was
concerned with creating art through photography, so I watched this
flow of creation, manifestation and dissolution as carefully as
I could in order to identify and extract individual scenes of aesthetic
power. I responded to what my senses revealed to me and to what
my limited worldly experience could illuminate for me.
I
asked myself, over and over, "What is required to this well?" Over
time I was able to answer that question empirically. To begin with,
one needs to understand a particular technological process, and
I began to love the technological aspects of photography almost
immediately. Even today, years on, I love the tools and the processes
of the trade. Cameras and lenses are beautiful to look at, they
are beautiful to hold, and they are beautiful to use. For a long
time, long before digital electronic devices were widely available,
cameras and photographic lenses were the most carefully designed
and
precisely crafted technological instruments that ordinary people
could possess.
The
manufacture and processing of photographic film is an extraordinarily
sophisticated technology. I love the fact that film records imagery
on an atomic level. Lenses are used to organize photons of light
so that they provide a little quantum shove to slightly unstable
silver-bromide molecules. These molecules are organized into little
crystal fragments, which are spread evenly over the surface of the
film. You stimulate the
crystals by your particular view of the world as it is projected
through the lens, and when the crystals are excited enough a latent
image comes into being. A latent image is a temporary electronic
state that renders the affected silver-bromide molecules susceptible
to chemical development and the subsequent creation of a permanent
image. Images recorded on archivally processed black-and-white film
are, for all practical terms, permanent: Composed of pure metallic
silver, these images can
last thousands of years. Just a short time ago films were crude
compared to what they are now, and this amazing technology continues
to progress quickly. There are a lot of sales-oriented people flogging
digital imaging but digital imaging is only recently approaching
the quality of what film can do on a molecular level.
So
to make good photographs I needed to learn how to manipulate cameras
and lenses and to expose and process film and prints. This I did
enthusiastically, though the realization quickly dawned that acquiring
technical skill was just the beginning.
The rest of it can be described quite simply: one needs to be steady
and one needs to be ready. By this I mean both physically steady
and ready, and emotionally steady and ready.
To
begin with, I felt the need to get into good physical shape. Photography
is a very physical activity and I really wanted to be there for
the moment as it unfolded. So I made myself stronger and more physically
comfortable, and I worked on developing the ability to remain extremely
still. Being still and being quiet are important because to be ready
you have to be very attentive and supple in your awareness. The
unfolding of
events, even the most mundane events, initiates a marvelously complex
flood of information. One needs to be poised, calm and still, yet
ready to respond instantly.
I
became so attentive that I began to covet each moment of awareness,
and particularly those precise slivers of time during which a photograph
was to be made. I actually changed cameras on account of this increasing
obsession with precision. The typical
single-lens-reflex camera is a wonderfully flexible tool. It permits
easy lens interchangability by way of an internal mirror that reflects
the image from the taking lens up into a pentaprism, which in turn
projects the image into the eye. When one changes lenses the viewfinder
image also changes: you always see exactly what the camera sees.
But there is a big cheat that goes on inside these cameras. Because
the light has to come through the shutter and hit the film to make
an image, that little mirror must flip up out of the way at the
instant of exposure. So at the critical moment during which a photo
is actually being made, the viewfinder is blanked out. This is photographic
coitus interruptus and it is painful to those who care deeply about
that specific, decisive moment. I started to experience this interruption
as an unbearable obstruction. To
avoid it I changed over to cameras that used optical viewfinders.
An optical finder is displaced slightly from the taking lens, so
the image is only approximate with respect to
perspective, but absolutely direct in relation to time.
I
was getting closer to the perfect state of readiness. Then I rigorously
applied myself to the business of getting really steady. I developed
such a fine state of stillness that I
resented every distraction. Even the simple physical act of breathing
became a big annoyance. I learned how to control the breath so as
to make it very subtle and smooth and nearly undetectable.
As
the calm deepened I began experiencing each heartbeat as a disruptive
physical event which compromised my ability to hold still. With
a little experimentation I discovered that certain very quiet patterns
of breathing make the heartbeat slowly and
smoothly, and I added these to my repertoire of photographic techniques.
As I did all this the making of photographs became more and more
joyful.
And
then something happened, something that radically changed my understanding
of what I was doing, what I had accomplished.
I
have called this talk Photography and Mindfulness because at the
exact peak of my abilities as a photographer I came to the realization
that you don’t need to be a photographer to experience reality
clearly. I can remember the precise moment
that this realization occurred: I was living at that time in a typically
nineteen-sixties communal household. The building has been torn
down now, but my flash of realization came just at the moment I
was making a portrait of two friends who were sitting
on the steps of that house. I was concentrating deeply on what I
was doing, concentrating deeply on them and experiencing what sort
of people they were, their emotional state, the subtle interactions
between them and between them and me. I realized right then
that I had a very full appreciation of that moment and, curiously,
that the camera itself was a mechanical separation that was preventing
an even more complete understanding.
For
me this experience was in some sense the end of art. From then on
I cared only about two things: mindfulness - the ardent application
of disciplined awareness - and compassion. It may not be immediately
obvious, but compassion is a corollary, or a
consequence of mindfulness. Cultivating mindfulness can be seen
as a valueless act, a technical act. But when mindfulness is applied
to the human condition, to our own lives and the lives of others,
we come to a deeper understanding of the nature of
human life, of joy and suffering. Photography took me exactly to
that point.
