Turning 💩 Into 💛

The Alchemy Of Adversity

At the recent ICP Book Fair, I struck up a conversation with a fine art photographer and publisher. We were discussing the joys of Maine, specifically a tiny island off the coast where my family spends a couple of weeks during the summer. He then said something that really stayed with me. Although he now lived in Ohio, his new home by necessity, it was a far cry from his first choice. Over time, however, he described how the discomforts there ignited his creativity, inducing an effort to make whole, with his photography, what was otherwise absent.

The next day, reading a new book about the late photographer Larry Sultan, I came across this sentiment - “The school was a great irritant to me. It was really a case of how you turn a situation to your advantage; how do you turn shit to gold? I think that’s a really important thing.”

Coming across the same thought twice in as many days triggered something in me. I wondered, what was it that got stuck in my craw, leading me to a decades long career in commercial still life?

There was once a store named Design Research in Cambridge, Mass. For those who’ve never heard of D/R, it was the greatest store in the history of stores. During my first visit there in the 70’s, some kind of magic happened. Now, I won’t bore you with tales of my oft-troubled childhood, but let’s just say the contrast between my emotional world outside those glass walls and my elation inside that place, was profound.

I realize now, for over 30 years, my work has been an attempt to navigate that difference. Creative work, it turns out, is one way of building a bridge between how you experience the world, and how you would like it to be. The greater the distance, the more rigorous the task.

In no way would I advocate cultivating a miserable life in order to find inspiration, but I do think there’s something valuable here. Namely, if the world isn’t to your liking, creative work can help bring you closer to your ideal. It may not change the world, but it can change your world.

Our world of commercial photography has taken a lot of criticism for its artificiality. And it is artificial for the most part. Advertising represents an ideal that is unattainable for 99% of the population. But it can also represent an attempt to create a more pleasant world, a world that appeals - arguably, perhaps, at too great a cost. This problem obviously hasn’t bothered me enough to stop taking pictures, but enough to stop and think.

Artists create worlds, and if enough people identify with that world, said artist becomes successful. The next time you think, “Life is shit.”, consider what a life that wasn’t shit would look like. What a life made of gold would look like. Then, do the world a favor, and take a picture of it.