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.
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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?