It’s In There

I’ve already written a journal entry about Intuitive Photography and how you can learn to be intuitive. But recently the idea of intuitive photography presented itself in a circuitous way during a recent conversation in The Artists’ Collab. And because everything is about everything, it only felt right to process what we talked about in journal entry form.

(Truly. These entries are more just my act of processing things on my mind, and apparently deciding to post them publicly. Enjoy! Or not! It’s for me anyway!)

Our prompt for April is an image by Mexican street photographer, Graciela Iturbide. You probably haven’t heard of her, but you should educate yourself. Her work is inspiring, raw, emotional.

As we tend to do in the group, we have read some articles about her and watched an interview. In the interview she walks through her work a bit and some of the themes. She also insists it’s faulty to place her work in the magical realism genre, but I tend to disagree.

I wonder if she avoids this attribution because she is capturing the world as she sees and experiences it, so for her, the images are just….real. While for the rest of us there is whimsy and mystery, it’s not difficult to imagine these are the lenses through which Gabriela tends to experience the world around her.

We are just fortunate enough that her images give us a peek into this way of living and being.

In this particular interview, she brings up a theme of birds and a specific image of a self-portrait of her holding one live and one dead bird over her eyes.

She claims she doesn’t know why she took the image and that she just kind of….did.

We in the group almost scoffed at this idea that she has no idea why she felt compelled to take this photo. We saw it immediately. It felt so, very…her.

We only know things through comparing and contrasting. (There’s no light without dark. There’s no hope without despair. There’s no forgiveness without fault.) And Graciela’s work is powerful because of its use of comparison. Her work needs to be viewed as a body because of it. The collection is greater than the sum of its parts.

On this call, we had just been discussing the themes of life (like truly living) and death in her art. Her fascination with death came after the tragic passing of her daughter and for a time she was intent on capturing children gone-too-soon.

She also talks about reaching a point of knowing she had to stop capturing death; that she had to finally move on.

She also has themes of being grounded and flying, beauty and decay, young and old, human and fauna.

In this photo we have two animals and specifically two birds who are trapped in her possession. One is unable to fly because of her exerting her dominance and one is obviously just….dead. And decaying.

But they are also affecting her as she is using them to obscure her vision. There is no true freedom in this photo. But the force that binds is common among them all: Graciela, herself.

Her chin tilted toward the sky and the look on her face indicating a sort of “nevertheless, she persisted” vibe. Because so often we are our own worst enemy, and it’s us holding ourselves back the most.

But by pressing on, we will eventually learn to drop the defenses and things that weigh us down, and see clearly. It’s a process that really never ends, so all along we must press on.

For Graciela to just say “I don’t know….I just took the image” is the truest thing.

And also for her to look back on it later and imbue meaning could also be true.

I look back on old images and see something about myself I didn’t see then. And I make new meanings out of them based on where I am now.

That’s the thing with intuitive art. We’ve done the work. We’ve photographed the themes and figured out our story. So telling it becomes almost an act of compulsion.

For people who say “I don’t really put meaning into what I photograph. It’s not a deep act for me.” I think you’ve got it all wrong. I think it’s such a deep act that your intuition is guiding you.

The late day golden light that catches your eye and subconsciously you know it’s telling the story of the beauty of a chapter ending. Or maybe you see a feather stuck and your subconscious connects it to the things we inevitably shed to keep on in flight.

Your conscious mind doesn’t even have to engage anymore, because the stories are ingrained in the fibers of your being.

But because art isn’t stagnant across time and space, it has the power to shape-shift. So revisit old work and find new meanings from then and now.

When you’re making art, let your intuition guide you. Don’t doubt that your subconscious is doing more than you realize. And definitely don’t assume what you’re creating doesn’t have profound depth.

If you’re wanting to dive deeper into the story you’re telling, Self-Portraits With Meaning is a great spot for you. It’s about self-portraits, but also about so much more. Its inaugural run begins on April 17. And it’s gonna be a good one.

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