Creativity and emotions

Over the last couple of months I’ve been keeping my emotional self on a tight leash. As November arrived, my father, aged 92, was coming to the end of a long journey of ill health and decline. We all expected that this Christmas would be his last, and we prepared to make it a special one for him.

The universe had other plans, and dad was rushed into hospital in late November with severe respiratory problems. He remained there for several weeks as doctors and nurses fought to keep him alive, draining his chest, rebalancing meds, pumping him with diuretics, draining his chest again - all to no avail. He passed away on the 22nd December.

The weeks spent visiting dad in hospital were emotionally draining, not just because he was approaching his end of life but because of the invasive, uncomfortable and often distressing attempts made to keep him alive. For what? An extra few days or weeks in extreme pain and discomfort? He was distraught, and made it clear that he was ready to die and wanted to be cared for palliatively in peace and quiet. I argued his case but for the medical team, extending his life and getting him back home trumped his pain, distress and anguish, even though his life was drawing to an end anyway.

Dad did not come home. I knew he wouldn’t, couldn’t. At last the palliative care team were called and they immediately recognised that he needed looking after with compassion as his life ended and he was moved to a hospice where he peacefully passed away.

Through all of this I was, at the same time: trying to be calm and controlled as I battled a hospital system entirely focussed on preservation and out of sync with the natural process of dying; a carer, offering dad daily comfort and emotional support; a distressed daughter filled with anticipatory grief; a professional, still at work and going through the motions of running an arts charity. And when the hospice welcomed me with open arms and held a space for me to talk, rest, breathe and spend quiet time with dad, I literally gave myself to them and allowed them to look after me like a small child. I was a wife too, but that role was at the bottom of the list, there was just no room for it.

That’s a lot of people inside one head.

When dad died, the first tears had barely dried when the admin started piling in - confirmation of cause of death, registration of death, needing to inform so many people, organisations, agencies (thank goodness for Tell Us Once), making funeral arrangements, and of course, probate. I threw myself into all of this with gusto. It was a proper project with goals, an endpoint and lots of paperwork to wade through.

I did not take time to breathe, think, process, grieve.

At the end of the year, the 52 Frames challenge was to redo a previous challenge of our own choice. I chose the prompt ‘Emotion’. Consciously I chose it because the first time around I’d ducked the personal and taken a photograph of the moody sea and this time I wanted to be more direct. Unconsciously I think it was more about using the camera as a route into my own turbulent feelings of grief. Thinking creatively opened doors that I’d kept shut and tapped into my deepest self, the one I was keeping on a leash because I was afraid of the power of my emotional response to dad’s death.

My photograph for the challenge was of an old friend, Julia. Dad had called her his ‘second daughter’. The image was of her sitting at her piano playing a tune called Try to Remember. Nana Mouskouri, dad’s muse, had sung it and Julia had learned it in his honour. Emotion filled that room as much as the music and I wanted to hold it, capture it, and stay connected to it. It’s not a perfect photograph but it captured a moment and it means a lot to me.


The next 52 Frames Challenge, the first of 2023, was ‘Self-Portrait’. That really floored me. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that I didn’t really know which version of myself to show, or even which to be.. I realised for the first time how I’d been shifting from role to role, keeping each ‘me’ in separate compartments because collectively my shape-shifting personas were overwhelming, powered by all the messy, sorrowful, angry, overburdened aspects of an only child caring for and untethering from their remaining parent, while keeping so many other plates spinning. I realised too that grief had touched each persona differently, triggering different behaviours depending on which hat I was wearing. I used International Camera Movement to represent this schizophrenic feeling and looking at it now it seems nightmarish and disorienting, but that’s exactly how it was only a few weeks ago. Taking a self portrait to share with my peers had encouraged me to really look at myself and once again the creative process had tapped into emotions I’d be unable or unwilling to acknowledge.

In my work we’ve done a lot of research on the power of taking part in group creative activities, how the process of enquiry, of making, learning and sharing encourages empathy, builds connections, increases agency, shifts perceptions and behaviours. I think creativity can work that way even when you’re just working with yourself. My husband says writing is his oxygen and without it he can’t breathe. For me picking up the camera was like therapy. Looking through the lens I found a clearer view. It opened my mind and my thoughts, allowing memories and emotions to flood out and I leaned into them, letting photography peel away the layers.

I’ve sat with the feelings, let them wash over me, even drown me and then move on. My photo mojo is a bit suppressed after that surge, it’s light has gone out and I’m waiting for the battery to recharge - which I know it will, soon, because as my husband says, it’s oxygen.

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Photo Blog

Creative control

This week’s 52 Frames challenge was ‘break the rules’ - one of my favourites, and it got me thinking about one of our previous challenges, and how much I struggled to stick to its rules.

The challenge was to take a photo and give it someone else to edit. I didn’t enjoy it at all, but didn’t really know why. Since then, I’ve been thinking a lot about why it didn’t work for me, about control and about collaboration - what it means to me, what it is and what it isn’t.

©️People United

At first the challenge excited me. I found the prospect of getting a fresh take on one of my photographs intriguing. I asked my friend Federica Morgan, a brilliant creative with several Guild of Photographers awards under her belt and a real skill in ICM (intentional camera movement). We met when she joined Emma Davies’ Camera Club a few years ago and I was her allocated ‘buddy’, but she’s streaks ahead of me now and also the host of the special interest group for Affinity, a powerful editing programme. She asked what I’d like her to do with my photo - and this was when frustration started creeping in, as I couldn’t give her an answer. We’d been instructed to hand over all responsibility to our editor with no discussion or style guide and I found that very hard.

I really wanted to bend the rules, but one of my personal commitments in this first year of being a 52 Framer was to follow instructions, to not break any rules. How many of my friends will chuckle when they read this and shake their heads? All of them probably! Me, follow the rules for a whole year? If they’d known this in advance they’d have taken bets on me falling at the first hurdle … but I haven’t.

Federica did a fabulous job of elevating my very average ICM shot of beach huts into something colourful and atmospheric, but despite this - and despite my absolute trust in her creative eye and technique- I found the challenge uncomfortable and unsatisfying. What were we doing? Why were we doing it? I thought at the time we were meant to be learning about relinquishing control. But why was that even a lesson? How often does an artist relinquish control of their creation by choice, half way through their process?

On reflection, I think it’s point was to encourage us to see our world from somebody else’s perspective; to see our vision reflected in somebody else’s mirror, to open ourselves to challenge, and therefore to change. I like that idea very much, but the process of completely giving up control felt counter-intuitive to exploration and growth. For me, it felt disempowering.

I know I can be a bit of a control freak, but I can also share, delegate and take a back seat - though I suppose if it’s me doing the sharing and delegating, I’m still in control of those decisions. So is keeping control my default? Is that what my frustration was all about? Did the simple act of stepping back make my hackles rise and skin prickle? Those friends who laughed at the bit about rule breaking will be splitting their sides now. And they’d be right. I’m sure that giving away control was a big part of the issue for me, but it’s not that simple.

What I wanted was collaboration. I wanted to work with a curious editor who saw the potential of my photograph (or it’s lack of potential) and was prepared to explore it with me. I wanted to go on a journey that shared the navigation from start to finish and didn’t ask me to hand the map over at the half way point. I wanted some push and pull, some resistance, some conceding - and then the satisfaction of seeing how the two separate elements we’d brought to the table had merged, creating something that belonged to both of us.

And how brilliant would it have been if what we created together was a little different to what either of us had envisioned at the start, but was all the better for it? I wanted to co-create, to collaborate and so did Federica - but that wasn’t the challenge...

Collaboration is central to my day to day life at work. It’s a much used word. An easy word. But when you unpack it, there’s a lot of complexity folded up inside - listening deeply, paying attention, moving in rhythm with others, taking care, sharing power, giving generously, being open to learning. This takes time and space, and we didn’t have that.

Next week our final 52 Frames challenge is ‘redo’. We get to revisit one of the year’s previous prompts and do it again, do it differently, do it better. I thought I might try the ‘edited by someone else’ task again, approaching it differently this time. But I find that I can’t, because while collaboration is simple it can’t be over-simplified, and a week just isn’t enough. Or is it just that I’m not ready - may never be ready - to relinquish control of the final cut?



Affirmation

After my wobbly reflections in ‘To Be or Not To Be’, I’ve had a confidence boosting few days, with one of my photos being selected for the A Year with My Camera Weekend Challenge and two photos being placed in the Canterbury Photography Group weekly competition, ‘Inspired by a Movie’ - one was Highly Commended and the other came second. These recognitions may be small and transient, but the confidence-boosting power of affirmation from peers and mentors is powerful, and though I probably shouldn’t need it, it fills me with joy.

It also satisfies my competitiveness - which is one of my strongest drivers (despite spending a lifetime trying to temper it). So even though I know that creativity isn’t about competition, when one of my photos ‘GaStratospheric’ was selected as a ‘52 Pick’ in the 52 Frames weekly gallery, I did virtual cartwheels all day because there around 3000 entries each week,

On top of this, I’ve had such lovely affirmations from friends about the blog and the website. Lots of warm glow moments grabbed with both hands and held close. Thank you.