I’m reading Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl and I cannot put it down. I am a fast reader and usually I quickly scan page after page. Here I found myself reading and re-reading paragraphs and pages again and again. I wish I have read this book when I was sixteen. I realize now how much we were deprived of books back in the Soviet Union even though we were “the most reading nation”. But that is another story.

Viktor Frankl was an extraordinary man. Like so many Jews during World War II he was cast into the Nazi network of concentration camps. Miraculously, he survived. Later he became an accomplished scientist, the founder of Logotherapy and Existential Analysis, a meaning-centered and humanistic approach to psychotherapy. In his book Viktor Frankl describes his experiences as a concentration camp prisoner and offers his way in finding meaning in life, even it is lived in the most sordid conditions. He quotes the words of Nietzshe: “He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.” The prisoners who gave up on life, who had lost all hope for future, who had lost the Why were doomed. They were dying less than from lack of food or medicine but rather from lack of hope, lack of something to live for. As terrible as it was, Viktor Frankl’s experience in concentration camps had brought him to his most powerful idea: life is not a quest for pleasure and happiness, but quest for meaning.

* * *

What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We have to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life - daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment. Thus it is impossible to define the meaning of life in a general way. Questions about meaning of life can never be answered by sweeping statements. “Life” does not mean something vague, but something very real and concrete, just as life’s tasks are also very real and concrete. They form man’s destiny, which is different and unique for each individual. No man and no destiny can be compared with any other man or any other destiny. No situation repeats itself, and each situation calls for a different response. Sometimes the situation in which a man finds himself may require him to shape his own fate by action. At other times it is more advantageous for him to make use of an opportunity for contemplation and to realize assets in this way. Sometimes man may be required simply to accept fate, to bear his cross. Every situation is distinguished by its uniqueness, and there is always only one right answer to the problem posed by the situation at hand.

When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.

For us, as prisoners, these thoughts were not speculations far removed from reality. They were the only thoughts that could be help to us. They kept us from despair, even when there seemed to be no chance of coming out of it alive. Long ago we had passed the stage of asking what was the meaning of life, a naive query which understands life as the attaining of some aim through the active creation of something of value. For us, the meaning of life embraced the wider cycles of life and death, of suffering and of dying.

* * *

…the story of the young woman whose death I witnessed in a concentration camp. It is a simple story. There is little to tell and it may sound as if I had invented it; but to me it seems like a poem.

This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. “I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard,” she told me. “In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously.” Pointing through the windows of the hut, she said, “This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness.” Through that window she could see just a branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. “I often talk to this tree,” she said to me. I was startled and didn’t quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. “Yes.” What did it say to her? She answered, “It said to me, ‘I am here — I am here — I am life, eternal life.’”

BK: You once mentioned to me, and I think it’s a great term, that you try to make your prints “sing”.

JS: I think a print should invite the viewer to look at it, engage the viewer, and sustain the viewer’s attention. I have seen prints by others - and perhaps a few that I’ve done myself - that have etched themselves into my mind’s eye, and find it difficult to stop looking at the print. Occasionally I have seen black-and-white photographic prints that appear to be illuminated from within, that seem to have a life of their own beyond that of the subject matter, a radiant energy and luminosity. I like to think of the process of photography being as much about “listening” as it is about looking. Not necessarily listening with one’s ears, but being receptive with one’s being.

BK: Not looking, but seeing.

JS: Exactly. Experiencing what is in the image itself, in the light, in the dark, in the shades of gray. Just as music is not only the notes - but the silence and the resonance between the notes - the same applies to a photograph. If you’re lucky and everything comes together there’s an ambience, a radiance, of not just luminosity, but of inspiration.

BK: So do you think a great photograph is about the feeling it evokes?

JS: Absolutely. You can have a piece of writing that tells a story in a concise and compelling way and is quite informational. You can also have a piece of writing that tells the same story, but it’s inspirational. The latter will be the story that will be remembered. It’s not just about information, it’s about the ability to inspire - to expand one’s knowledge, awareness, and understanding. I think that great writing, great music, great photographs, great paintings, have a universal quality. I don’t know that you can consciously interject that into an image - the only way you might be fortunate enough to occasionally accomplish that is to make a lot of photographs.

BK: How important do you think it is in life to be inspired?

JS: I think that inspiration is a positive force in the world and is something that human beings can bring to the planet. Inspiration stimulates hope - it’s hope for a better future, it’s hope that tomorrow I’ll feel like I’ve done something better than today. I think that photography can, in an uplifting way, show us a promise of a better tomorrow. It can also, in a terrifying way, show us the importance of things that didn’t go right - it can inspire us to prevent those things from happening again. In the best circumstances I think we can inspire one another, and when you’re inspired you have the opportunity to do something worthwhile.

An Interview with John Sexton
Interviewed by Brian Klligrew
LensWork No. 46

The path to fulfillment - and every so often to money and to greatness - begins with the realization that the artist has only to please him or herself. This is not to say that the work what you love now will be work that others will love, or will be work that you will love twenty years from now - or will be the work that defines you. Even Ansel Adams reprinted scores of his greatest images later in his life to reflect his own changing tastes and preferences.

The important thing is: It Doesn’t Matter. You build a portfolio best image by best image, or stone by stone, if you will. In photography, the beauty part is that, as you grow better and more confident in you art and in your technical skills, you can edit out the lesser work to make your portfolio an ever-changing, ever improving thing.

In so many fields those who do not work at their best are kidding themselves if they think they can save their best stuff for later.

Later is now.

Building a Portfolio One Stone at a Time
Frank Van Riper
LensWork No.46

Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, rather must recognize that is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.

Viktor Frankl

There is nothing new under the sun, not really. Technologies are new, yes, but the basic human condition has not changed for thousands of years. The same passions rule us that ruled early man. The same questions plague us that have plagued our ancestors from time immemorial. This is, and always has been, the source of great art. Who am I? Where is it? Why? (Or as the philosopher Alan Watts has proposed, there are only four great questions that have plagued man forever: 1) Who started it? 2) Where’s it going? 3) How will it end? 4) Who’s going to clean it up?)

It seems that photography presents us a unique choice in the field of art. We can work to find something new that has never been photographed before and claim it as our unique photographic turf. Or, we can accept the challenge to use our tools as merely tools and come to the realization that the real task of being a photographer is to develop ourselves as conduits for inspiration that creates artwork. One path leads to tomorrow’s cliche. The other path leads to artwork that seems to last. One eventually looks easy; the other looks forever profound.

Photography is unique when compared to so many of traditional art media because it is so wrapped up with this question. Photography is the most technological of all media. The technology of photography is seductive. It’s fun! But if we hope to make art without our tools, the issues that should command our attention most ardently are not the technological ones but rather the issues of wonderment, mystery and depth. We are not making suits of armor. Our tools will never dazzle with technical brilliance, at least not for long. The future generation will look back at our prints, our books, our techniques and our tools with the same quaint smile that we use when considering albumen prints and wet plates. They will never wonder how we did it. They will wonder how we could suffer such primitive techniques.

And this is where the life of the photographic artist begins. Our work will entertain them in its technological coarseness or cultural historicity, or it will engage them in the deeper questions of life. Our work will either show them our world, or ask them about theirs.

This is precisely why I love photography. It is a tool, but it is also a challenge that constantly forces me to think about what I am doing, what I am making and why.

Brooks Jensen
The Magic of It
LensWork No. 38

I’ve learned over the years that usually the first thing that The Photo Gods show you is the cliche - that is, the most obvious photograph. I’ve learned that I usually have to take that picture in order to move on.

I think something that has not been widely talked about is that here is a great deal of self-doubt, and it is a part of the creative process. If you’re comfortable with what you are doing, you’ve been there before. We all fall back on things that are comfortable. It’s human tradition.

Jerry Uelsmann
A Conversation with Jerry Uelsmann
Interviewed by Brooks Jensen
LensWork No.17

Beauty conveys truth, but not the way we thought. Aesthetic significance does not deliver truth about human condition in general: it delivers truth about the condition of a particular human, the artist. The aesthetic features of art make sense mainly as displays of the artist’s skill and creativity, not as vehicles of transcendental enlightenment, religious inspiration, social commentary, psycho-analytic revelation, or political revolution. Plato and Hegel derogated art for failing to deliver the same sort of truth that they thought philosophy could produce. They misunderstood the point of art. It is unfair to expect a medium that evolved to display biological fitness to be well adapted for communicating abstract philosophical truths.

This fitness indicator theory helps us to understand why “art” is an honorific term that connotes superiority, exclusiveness, and high achievement. When mathematicians talk about the “art” of theorem-proving, they are recognizing that good theorems are often beautiful theorems, and beautiful theorems are often products of minds with high fitness. It is a claim for the social and sexual status of their favorite display medium. Likewise for the “arts” of warfare, chess, football, cooking, gardening, teaching, and sex itself. In each case, art implies that application of skill beyond the pragmatically necessary. Anyone who wishes to imply superiority in their particular line of work is apt to style themselves an artist. The imperatives of fitness display allow us to understand the passion with which people debate whether something is or is not art. A claim that one’s work is art is a claim for sexual and social status.

Geoffrey Miller
The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature

The following quote needs an explanation, a preface. Ex-Soviet emigrees Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid are know in art world as visual provocateurs who keep teasing audiences with unsettling artwork at its most satirical, statistical, and commercial extremes. One of their projects was a statistical poll to find out what kind of painting is preferred by average people intending to discover what a true “people’s art” should look like. The result of a professional market research survey was stunning: people from all over the world, from United States to Ukraine, from Iceland to Kenya - they all like a blue landscape. It is a “realistic-looking” dishwasher-size painting depicting an outdoor scene with water (lakes, rivers or seas), clear blue or stormy skies, vibrant blended colors, preferably a fall scene with wild animals (Finland prefers moose and Kenya prefers hippopotamus) and famous or ordinary people at leisure. It is hilarious. It is quintessential kitsch. But people have spoken. Thatâ’s what they want.

Excerpt from “Blue Landscapes, Bewitching Numbers, and the Double Life of Jokes: An Interview with Komar and Mealmid”

QUESTION: So what you make of the fact that the people have spoken for the blue landscape?

VITALY KOMAR: I believe it reflects people’s nostalgia about freedom. It’s very simple metaphor, and very deep at the same time: closed space and open space. The connection of idea of closed space, I believe, it’s prison. And concentration of idea of open space is a landscape - air, no barriers, in other words, vacation, freedom.

You know, we are not free. We do not choose to be born. We do not choose to inhabit this world, this space, this giant room, or, in language of contemporary art, this installation. But if, initially, life was not act of free will, then freedom does not exist in principle, much less in day-to-day life. In search of freedom, of blue landscape, we can at any time open the big door that leads out of this room, out of this time and space, out of this world and this life. But most of us are not capable of suicide; we are afraid to find out maybe behind this door there is another installation, another, different colored landscape. So most of us do not choose to leave this room. Most of us wait for door to open by itself - another, maybe final, violation of our will. Meanwhile, we look for smaller freedoms, open smaller doors, which are so numerous in this installation they resemble some labyrinth of modern offices.

You know, life reminds me of office. Employees scribble abstract patterns in legal pads during meetings and leave office during lunch. Within greater enslavement we discover small freedom - so we think. But if we examine close, this freedom turns out to be a new slavery, with its own freedom/slavery, and so on: our choice of lunch, for example, its price, taste, nutrients, etc.

A concentric structure like Russian matryoshka doll emerges, and we can track this structure down to its smallest particles, to indivisible moments of orgasm and pain, pleasure and suffering. Next installation “People’s Choice” will be like labyrinth of computerized offices. Only question is how to design the “big door” without going to extremes of Freudian interpretation.

QUESTION: All that in a blue landscape.

ALEXANDER MELAMID: It might seem like something funny, but you know, I’m thinking that this blue landscape is more serious than we first believed. Talking to people in the focus groups before we did the poll and the town hall meetings around the country after, I think people want to talk about art, for better or for worse, and they talk for hours and hours. It’s hard to stop them; nobody ever asks them about art. But almost everyone you talk directly - and we’ve already talked to hundreds of people - they have this blue landscape in their head. It sits there, and it’s not a joke. They can see it, down to smallest detail. So I’m wondering, maybe the blue landscape is genetically imprinted in us, that it’s the paradise within, that we came from blue landscape and we want it. Maybe paradise is not something which is awaiting us; it is already inside of us, and the point is how to figure it out, how to discover it, how to get it out.

We now completed polls in many countries - China, Kenya, Iceland, and so on and the results are strikingly similar. Can you believe it? Kenya and Iceland - what can be more different in the whole fucking world? - and they both want blue landscape. So we think that we hit on something here. A dream of modernism, you know, is to find a universal art. People believe that the square was what could unite people, that it is really, truly universal. But they were wrong. The blue landscape is what is really universal, maybe to all mankind.

QUESTION: Paradise: pro or con? Let’s go back to what you said earlier about paradise and the blue landscape. Going up the Hudson River the other day I thought perhaps the blue landscape is the last pure idealization, because with nature, in the instant of contemplation, you can forget that the water is polluted, the air is polluted, that on each side of the river is a strip mall or a faded town or whatever. In the moment of observation, all of that is forgotten, which is something you can’t say when you look at cities and factories, or when you think of communism or of the old idea of progress through electricity all motifs of modernism in one way or another. So maybe when people say they want a blue landscape it’s as a kind of icon of purer reality, the last remnant of faith.

VITALY KOMAR: But you are mixing beauty in reality and beauty in art. They are two different kinds of beauty, two different kinds of aesthetics in art and in life. For example, socialist realism asked artists to represent reality, but it was false reality. Because the basic idea of socialist realism was to depict people as they might be, not as they are. Because we are building ideal society, so we need ideal people. Of course, it was not realism at all, because real people were polluted, real life was polluted. And when people are speaking of blue landscape, I’m afraid they mean real landscape, not painting. They just like to have a reflection of reality in their everyday life; in their apartments they imagine this picture as a window of their freedom. It captures experience of hermits, who go out into desert and so forth. The blue landscape can make people hermits for a second, to meditate. Making people hermits for a second maybe that is the basic idea of art.

Painting by Numbers: Komar and Melamid’s Scientific Guide to Art

The history of mankind in the last three hundred years has been punctuated by major upheavals in human thought that we call scientific revolutions - upheavals that have profoundly affected the way in which we view ourselves and our place in the cosmos. First there was the Copernican revolution - the notion that far from being the center of the universe, our planet is a mere speck of dust revolving around the sun. Then there was the Darwinian revolution, culminating in the view that we are not angles but merely hairless apes, as Thomas Henry Huxley once pointed out. And, third, there was Freud’s discovery of the “unconscious” - the idea that even though we claim to be in charge of our destinies, most of our behavior is governed by cauldron of motives and emotions of which we are barely conscious. You conscious life, in short, is nothing but an elaborate post-hoc rationalization of things you really do for other reasons.

V. S. Ramachandran
A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness: From Impostor Poodles to Purple Numbers

To make sure that we survive in a dangerous world dominated by scarcity, our genes have programmed us to be greedy, to want power, to dominate over others. For the same reason, the social group into which we are born teaches us that only those who share our language and religion are to be trusted. The inertia of the past dictates that most of our goals will be shaped by genetic or by cultural inheritance. It is these goals, the Buddhists tell us, that we must learn to curb. But this aim requires very strong motivation. Paradoxically, the goal of rejecting programmed goals might require the constant investment of all one’s psychic energy. A Yogi or a Buddhist monk needs every ounce of attention to keep programmed desires from irrupting into consciousness, and thus have little physic energy left free to do anything else.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life