My work is about seeing - seeing things like they haven't been seen before.
Robert MapplethorpeRead
I like to look at pictures, all kinds. And all those things you absorb come out subconsciously one way or another. You'll be taking photographs and suddenly know that you have resources from having looked at a lot of them before. There is no way you can avoid this. But this kind of subconscious influence is good, and it certainly can work for one. In fact, the more pictures you see, the better you are as a photographer.
Interpretation
The more you immerse yourself in visual art, the more it influences and enhances your own creativity and skills.
Robert Mapplethorpe's quote emphasizes the importance of exposure to various forms of visual art as a means of enhancing one's own artistic abilities. He suggests that the images we absorb influence our subconscious and ultimately inform our creative work, indicating that a rich experience with diverse artworks can improve our photography by providing us with a wealth of visual resources to draw upon.
In practice
During a photography workshop, I shared a favorite quote from Robert Mapplethorpe to inspire participants to explore diverse art.
My work is about seeing - seeing things like they haven't been seen before.
With photography, you zero in; you put a lot of energy into short moments, and then you go on to the next thing.
I went into photography because it seemed like the perfect vehicle for commenting on the madness of today's existence.
My small torrent of words dissipated into an elaborate sense of expanding and receding. It was my entrance into the radiance of imagination. This process was especially magnified within the fevers of influenza, measles, chickenpox, and mumps. I got them all and with each I was privileged with a new level of awareness. Lying deep within myself, the symmetry of a snowflake spinning above me, intensifying through my lids, I seized a most worthy souvenir, a shard of heaven’s kaleidoscope.
None of the films I've done was designed for a mass audience, except for 'Indiana Jones.' Nobody in their right mind thought 'American Graffiti' or 'Star Wars' would work.
I sometimes have a horrible fear of turning up a canvas of mine. I'm always afraid of finding a monster in place of the precious jewels I thought I had put there!
A poem, as a manifestation of language and thus essentially dialogue, can be a message in a bottle, sent out in the –not always greatly hopeful-belief that somewhere and sometime it could wash up on land, on heartland perhaps. Poems in this sense too are under way: they are making toward something. Toward what? Toward something standing open, occupiable, perhaps toward an addressable Thou, toward an addressable reality.
Self-censorship is a lie to yourself; if you are going to be trying to seriously create art, to create literary art, and you decide to hold back, to censor yourself, then you are a fool to yourself and it would be better that you kept your mouth shut and did not speak.
That's the thing about musicians: The priority is to create something new that's never been before. And you put your life on the line every time that you play.
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