Issue 111 | April 29 - May 20, 2022

In Praise of Leaning Into Photo Cliches

“This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.”
-Marilynne Robinson

I got my first camera when I was 15, a hand-me-down 35mm Minolta film camera from my grandfather, and a couple of rolls of Kodacolor color negative film. I still have some prints from that first roll. There was a photo of my grandmother that I still treasure, but most of the pictures I made on that roll were of nature - a cluster of white lily-of-the-valley flowers surrounding the base of a White Pine, a photo that peered into a fog-cloaked forest, a single summer tree isolated against a blue sky on a hilltop ridge. 

The photos are in an old photo album I recently pulled off the shelf. The age of the pictures is notable - it's been decades since I made them, but the images themselves are unexceptional. There are no signs in the photos of any unique talent or that I might pursue photography much more seriously one day. But I do find the first indications that I had found a new way to engage with the world, especially the beauty of the natural world.

I've always been deeply affected by so the pleasures nature provides us. Obvious things like the annual reawakening of the earth that occurs each Spring, spectacular sunsets, dramatic clouds before or after storms, the intense colors of tulips, the graceful and harmonious arrangements of pistil and stamen at the centers of flowers, or the way a stand of bamboo bends so gracefully in a gust of wind. 

My appreciation of these phenomena is hardly unique. Everyone is moved to some degree by the sight of dramatic natural beauty. That's where the problem for photography comes into the picture. These feelings of awe or wonder touch us all. We respond to these deeply felt emotions by making thousands, millions, and billions of similar photos in a largely vain effort to hold onto some of the unique beauty of a particular moment on earth in our life.

Why make these images when we know so many others have made so many nearly identical to our own? One thing I think we're trying to do when we point a camera at a sunset is to give someone who wasn't with us something of what it feels like to be, for example, immersed in a purple rose gold sky whose glow is so pervasive it changes the color of everything on the ground as well.

That's part of it, but I think it misses my primary motivation. For many years, especially around late Spring and early summer, the second I could leave my busy, deadline-driven job in the city, I'd race to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. I'd wander around with my camera entranced by a giant pink dogwood that blossomed in one section of the garden or the carpet of bluebells unfolding in another. The resulting pictures? Pretty, but nothing close to the experience of being there. I didn't expect too much from the photos, and the images reflected that. But the experience of simply being there delivered rewards beyond compare. Walking around the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, pulled this way and that by the beauty, would almost instantly dissolve the job stress I'd felt so intensely minutes before. I'd quickly fall into a flow state, absorbed by a colorful detail or an arrangement of branches and flowers.

Photography in nature was transporting, lifting me away from my troubles, and pushing me through a portal into a new world of pure visual exploration. I was no longer living in anxious parts of my mind; I was completely present in my wandering experiences.

When I eventually left that stressful job and finally found more time to explore my interests more deeply, I returned to photography. I learned that the flow state experience wasn't limited to flowers and pretty things. I'd quickly fall into the same, rewarding state almost every time I explored the world with my camera, whether on busy city streets, at festivals, or even in quieter domestic moments around friends or loved ones.

When I finally made more time to learn more about the medium, I started to care more deeply about the images I was making. I did want to make pictures that would break through to other people. I trusted the flow state would come no matter what kind of pictures I made. 

My relationship with photography had shifted, and I found myself on a lifelong journey to learn more about photography as a craft and art form. I began to explore many different approaches to picture-making, still out in the world, but now mostly amidst people and our human-built world instead of nature.

When the Pandemic hit back in March of 2020, just as Spring was beginning in New York, I could no longer make pictures on busy city streets. Once again, I went back to nature, into my local Bay Ridge park, a narrow strip of ballfields and wooded paths between a busy residential neighborhood and a six-lane highway. 

Being an urban green space, it wasn't a lot of nature, but it was enough. Enough to calm doomscrolling pandemic anxiety and put me back into that flow state. This time, exploring nature with the benefit of years of experience, I found new ways to approach the subject that did bring real meaning to the images. Those photos eventually became a body of work, Far Apart, that was published and represented a new stage in my work.

Reflecting on my journey makes me appreciate how vital my early attraction to an often cliche subject matter was to my long-term growth as a photographer. It turned out that for me, the subject matter wasn't too important; the pictures didn't have to be so special, but finding the subject that would make me present in the world - that would put me in a flow state - was the first step I needed to take to reveal my more profound passion for the medium.

Trust your instincts. Trust your attractions. Trust the subjects that draw you in, whether they're weird, boring, cliche, or photographed a million times before. Try not to worry about what others think or get you likes on Instagram. The real task is to find the subjects that leave you lost in exploration and immersed in the flow. These experiences, more than the resulting pictures, are the fertile ground that can help grow a lifelong engagement with photography.

Due to some family issues, I’ve been spent this spring away from NYC down in Virginia. Despite the hard times that brought me down here, the beauty of the unfolding season on these familiar streets and woods of my childhood has been an extraordinary and true comfort as always. I plan to publish one more issue towards the end of May before taking a summer break. I’ll keep the Instagram account running as best as possible, so let me know if you have any photo events or talks you’d like me to share.

Be well, and I’ll see you soon.

James Prochnik | The NYC Photo Community | Issue 111 | April 9 - May 20

Want to help out Ukraine? Here are some suggestions from NPR. Photographer Nick Turpin suggested hiring these Ukrainian photo editors for postproduction services on your photos if you have the need.