“The merely curious has no right… Zen, like all mysticism, will be understood only by a mystic who… will not succumb to the temptation of obtaining in a covert manner what the mystical experience denies them” (Translator’s note in: Zen in the Art of Archery)
In the talk by Pepe Baeza I learned that Braque had recommended to Henri Cartier-Bresson the reading of the book Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel.
With this article I intend to explain what I call Intuitive Photography. It is the style of photography that I have practiced the most, and since I know that HCB based his photography on Herrigel’s book I discovered that my attitude behind the camera is based on the same principles that HCB used, but with some differences.
Some phrases that could summarize HCB’s ideas about what he called Photography of the Natural, which are closely related to Buddhist thought and Herrigel’s book:
- “To photograph is to put the head, the eye, and the heart at the same point of aim”
- “I was inspired, above all by the desire to capture in a single image what was essential that emerged from the scene”
- “…it is enough to be lucid about what happens and honest about what is felt.”
For those interested in reading HCB’s full articles you can read Photographing the Natural and The Decisive Moment on the blog, but I recommend buying the book.
In Zen the consequence does not require a cause. Unlike Enlightened rationalism and our Judeo‑Christian roots it is simpler: only the now, the moment matters.
Even though I think I can explain it and you can understand it, neither of those things makes sense; you must experience it. And the truth is that you do not need to retreat to a monastery to live it, on the contrary… and you do not need to be a mystic! The moment transcends Zen.
Although I am not a black belt in anything I think my experience is enough to know a bit about martial arts. Practitioners of a martial art train daily by mechanizing movements that synchronize with breathing and an attitude. Easy to say, these three stages (movement, breathing, attitude‑feeling) can give a student a life… a life or an instant. An instant? Yes, but I leave that for face‑to‑face debates.
The ultimate goal of martial‑art exercises is that the warrior, when attacked, does not just think but acts. That act of defense is considered art because it is the combination of techniques learned over years that are chosen automatically by the warrior‑artist and executed without thinking, without effort and without any intention, simply occurring. The chosen combination is unique and irreproducible.
Does anyone think a dancer calculates every movement they make in a performance? Martial arts, simplified, are like dance or music: a set of skills so internalized that “simply occur”… like a guitar solo or dodging an obstacle while riding a bicycle.
What do archery, photography (according to HCB), Aikido, and Hip‑hop have to do with each other?
Using the brain in a non‑linguistic way, as I am not an expert in intelligences, perhaps these three characteristics help explain:
- the cancellation of rationalism, or conscious control, at the moment of action
- the exploitation of the subconscious
- spatial intelligence
There is nothing magical about it and it is not exclusive to the East; it is that the West has swallowed, whether we like it or not, Descartes and his famous “I think, therefore I am.” The East knows that they also exist while sleeping… lucky that some humans did not forget them.
To make it even more pagan, another example: when we are in a space full of people, sometimes we recognize one of them above all, for example someone especially attractive, but we were not looking for them. We tend to think that person does something to be more visible, but it is not really so. Most of the time our subconscious recognizes them and catches our attention. The subconscious recognizes a pattern and “rings the bell,” but we were talking about football, politics or photography. Thus martial arts work. Training turns technique into instinct.
At the moment of taking a shot there are two big problems to solve: the machine and the art. The machine and all its technical details require learning that depends on the complexity of the device; it is not the same to shoot a D300, a film rangefinder or a Lomo.
More or less expensive, with practice any machine is masterable. Practice and a certain degree of knowledge in this aspect are necessary, but only to the point that it does not take our time when we are shooting, when we are in front of the subject.
It is infinitely easier to shoot a camera than to reverse the force of an attacker to make them fly three meters using only hands as in Aikido.
Many times people have asked me how I set up the camera and the technocrats of photography usually do not believe me when I say: in auto. When I am on the street, most of the time my camera is in P, ISO‑auto and autofocus. My D300 knows more technique than I do. If I leave the white balance fixed it is because of an analog habit “day‑light,” romanticism, more than anything else.
The important thing is to breathe, see, smell, listen, open the subconscious letting it guide me and not think about the camera.
Compose? No, breathe. All composition rules come from the study of how we look. They study how our subconscious analyzes an image. Let the subconscious see and we will not need to know how to put reality into the frame. Because that is the first mistake, believing that something must be done. The first thing we are taught when talking about composition is that we are cropping reality and putting it into a frame… a sad pictorial reminiscence. Our eyes do not see the whole universe; cropping is in our nature, we cannot avoid it. We are always choosing what we see, which part of our limited visual field we give more attention to. Our eyes have no zoom, but our brain does.
Returning to the pagan example earlier, when a very attractive person enters a room and our view turns toward them our angle is the same, we do not change eyes, but our attention focuses, and for an instant there is nothing else in the room. Maybe their red shirt, the color of their eyes, their curves or any detail caught us, but at that instant our “eyes” see nothing else.
Getting that with a camera is the first part of intuitive photography and up to here I agree with HCB. But for me the thing goes further. I use the same intuition in editing.
How to choose between three almost identical shots? Without thinking, the first thought is correct. Again I base my decision on the subconscious ability to see more than I can understand.
This does not mean you should not think; you can reflect as much as you want, just until you have to shoot, at the decisive moment the mind must be disconnected.
Jodi Cobb, recognizes that one of her National Geographic cover photos was a reflection; she did not see what she was photographing, it was just shadows in an instant. Shadows in an instant National Geographic cover is intuitive photography, or photographing the natural.
The photo that headlines the article is one of my intuitive photos. I have a particular affection for it because I really had no idea what I was doing, when I shot it, or when I selected it. It was the first time I attended Campus Mac to give a photography class. After finishing I wanted to walk a bit and take some memory shots. I was very struck by the cables and connections. Campus Mac is a gathering of Apple fans who want to learn, meet other fans and have fun, connect, in short.
When I got home I wanted to hang the PDF of the presentation and needed a photo. I was tired and did not want to overthink it, so I selected this photo without paying much attention, in which casually, everything connects. I am sure that if I had wanted to do it I would not have succeeded. Have you seen the speed at which those screen protectors move? What was the probability that almost all the lines of the protector connect with a cable? Is that photo a coincidence? For me it is not. There is no coincidence, it is intuition, letting the subconscious take control and find the decisive moment because it is infinitely faster and capable of seeing what our reason cannot… and you do not need to be a Zen monk to experience it, just let yourself go.
Originally published in Barcelona Photobloggers