HAND-EYE-HEART COORDINATION

By MICHAEL PERKINS

AS IT WRITE THIS, THE HIT TV SERIES SEVERANCE has, beyond its compelling depiction of a dystopian hellscape, sparked many conversations about what’s come to be called the “work-life balance”, that elusive equilibrium between what we find necessary and what we consider essential about our existence. Admittedly, it would be hard to find a single person alive in these days that has not actively worried about getting that teeter-totter equation correct, or at least close. One corrective force that we should always celebrate in doing so is creativity.

Photography, like any other creative enterprise, is an attempt by the inner spirit to exert some kind of control over our view of the world, or even to actively prescribe for it. Making an image is therefore an affirmation of the self, an insistence that we, as individuals, can order at least a small part of the universe in the way that we desire. To correct not only the work-life imbalance but the horror-delight imbalance. Art is a needed counterweight against despair, and the best thing about it is that adjusting that weight is within the means of anyone.

These are the times that try men’s souls, goes the saying. The phrase always sounds so fatalistic, but, in the work of creating art, we do “try”, and perfect, and refine our souls. We decide, purposefully, to shine, and to imbue other things or people with that selfsame glow. A photograph is a way of resetting the terms under which we engage life, no less than poetry, literature, or music. It is a way of viewing all the hardship, grief and trauma of being alive, in this or any age, and adding two words: yes, but……

It’s a priceless process.

Coordinating the hand and the eye is the way art is executed. Making a photograph concerts that two-way connection into a three-legged stool by incorporating the heart. That’s the solid foundation of art, for survival of any kind. Generate a picture and you generate hope.