Getting Unstuck
Starting a new body of work
At the beginning of the year, I was invited to speak to a photography group in Canada and afterwards, during the Q&A, a member asked “how do you get started on a new body of work?” While I did my best to answer - it stuck in my mind and now that I’m back in the studio after a bit of an absence, the question is back.
It’s the space creatives must continually return to: the writer’s blank page, the painter’s empty canvas. “How do I get started again?” is the record that’s playing in my head. So, I asked several photographers, whose work I admire, “how do you get started on a new project?”
Amandine Nabarra
Amandine is a book artist who continually stretches to find new approaches and is in the process of co-writing a book on creativity.
“Finding an idea for an art project isn’t about waiting for a lightning bolt—it’s about tuning into the world around you. Inspiration is everywhere: in conversations, books, travel, dreams, music, and even the way light filters through leaves. Pay attention.”
Sandra Klein
I’m fascinated by Sandra’s photography - she manages to make imagery that feels personal and yet is still open enough for the viewer to want to take the journey with her.
“I often come up with a general idea in response to some experience I have had that I'm obsessing over. I try a lot of different options until I come up with a final plan. For example, during the pandemic I continually photographed flowers in my yard and neighborhood. There were many many iterations to this project. Months of iterations, until I realized that the shadows, rather than the flowers were the best way to portray my response to the pandemic.”
Lori Pond
I love how observational Lori’s photography is - you can sense her thinking as she looks around the world, finding patterns we may have missed in our own spaces.
“Thinking up a new body of work for me has never been a process where I sit down, think of an idea, then get down to it.
What happens for me is rather random. I got inspired to make “Bosch Redux” after I bought a huge book of all Hieronymus Bosch’s works. I stared at each image for a long time, and then decided to celebrate some of the characters he painted by recreating them.
After I read Frank Ostaseski’s book, “The Five Invitations,” I was inspired by a poem in the book. I could instantly visualize an image for each line of the poem.
“As I See It” came about while I was simultaneously playing around in Photoshop and reading neuroscience articles.
Overall, to be an artist for me means observing everything around me, from the plebeian to the sublime—I like to call it deep seeing.”
Like I wrote earlier - I’m back in the studio struggling to get back to the place of welcoming new imagery. There’s an internal sense that I’m tidying up, reorganizing mentally, all the while keeping an eye out for the new pathway.