(An unorganized sketch of thoughts. A word-dustbin.)

Fragment I)

The past weeks I found myself (as so often) contemplating topics such as creative process, artistic embodiment and artistic expression. In general it can be said that usually intellectual dispute with any topic brings trouble. Once one starts reading and learning on subjects such as art the “issue” first becomes gigantic and somewhat untouchable, then all starts to fade into blurry confusion soon to result in frustrating nonsense. The more one learns, senses, sees and gathers about things such as art and aesthetics, expression, art history..the stranger the thing itself becomes.

What first is free and liberating when one dives into “artistic activity” becomes the daunting realization that one is part of endless repetition, copying, part of a market, part of taste, of ego, of self absorbed narrowminded constraint, part of rules, history, politics, of ideas which belong to noone but human colletcive. The only way out of it seems to be humour and continuing to work even harder, just to protest against the mind, or better, to unite with it in an unexpected way.

To me, masochistic self destructive doubt is one of the most important factors in creation. Equally important as strong, passionate and unbreakable belief.

Fragment II)

Up to this date I have always found comfort and strength in knowing that I am part of a whole. That nothing I create is completely “mine”. That everything I do is part of a bigger, a whole, a “universal human” ensemble bigger than me and my generation, bigger than time and history. Many artistically active people find the knowledge of not having “own ideas” frustrating. But nothing comes from nothing. Afterall this is how humans connect. One with the other. To understand, feel and touch the world. Find ways to come closer to what is around and within us.

Art – by creating or experiencing it – is a way of approaching and opening the world and ourselves on multiple levels I assume. Its like creating channels and tunnels into the unfathomable universe.

Fragment III)

The good ideas are most of the time the most simple ones and usually the execution is more iportant than the idea itself.

Fragment IV)

Recently I engaged myself with Photojournalism and Documentary Photography. There are people with amazing work out there, from the beginning of photography until now. I have wondered if that sphere, which tickled my interest for a long period of time on and off, is something I could imagine myself working in. The past weeks I realized a few things which answer that question at least for now

Yesterday there was a woman who crashed with her car into an electricity pole down my street, everyone ran to the balcony to check what happened, many jogged down the street to see and gesticulated wildly and talked on their cell phones. My thought to photograph the scene came to me very late. Though the camera lay right next to me. My impulse was to run down with a towel and a mobile phone and interact. as i did a few times in my life already. Only after many minutes I saw the camera lying there. And I tried and took a few snaps. But it irritated me to capture the scene, the woman, the car, the pole, the watching people. It was not my impulse. It was a purely rational move to take photos.

This is by far not moral. Not judging. Not showing myself as a good person. But an extremely authentic moment in which I positioned myself by affect. It just happened.

And indeed was no news to me, just came to the surface all of a sudden.

My relation to subjects I photograph is of extreme intimacy and shyness, which is always surprising to me, that it doesn’t seem to fade but grow. For example when I photograph people or children on the street I feel like violating them and often look for eyecontact before I do it, or prefer not to take a picture at all. Again, this has nothing to do with morals or being good or bad. It is just something that I keep understanding about the way I work and maybe it shows in the images.

(This in no way suggests that photojournalists have no respect for their subject, in fact their work needs to be valued as – at least in the 21st century – a major factor to bring horror and vulnerability in the world to our attention and sometimes to contribute to mobilizing change.)

Fragment V)

Writing things like these, unorganized and imperfect, in public, is extremely dangerous. Anything in black and white text can be used against the author. To change the ideal, the opinion, the idea, the thought – with others accepting that – is hard, once something was written.

L.S.