An Exercise in Non-Intentionality!

I belong to a small group of committed photographers who meet regularly to discuss their work and all things photographic.  As a challenge, we set the objective that we engage in a session of “pointless” image-making or as I interpreted the task, taking images without intention, which in itself seemed to me to be a tautology.  I was extremely sceptical of this task, and I have to say not very committed.    As I discussed in a previous blog, Thoughts about Intention and Attention in my Practice (29 August 2023) it is difficult for me to conceive of taking photographs without intention as I had already made decisions about my location, what route to take for my walk and then what to photograph and what settings to use.

Having said this, ordinarily, an intention or driver in my photographic practice is to avoid intention by drifting into a creative flow that I call dwelling.  I do this by engaging in attentive and meditative techniques to enter a zone of non-conscious awareness where my practice becomes intuitive and the pressing of the shutter can be driven by a sense or feeling, rather than conscious intention.

As I tramped along the path, I had taken three years before, at the start of my PhD, I began by taking record shots of the flora and fauna en route.

Then to keep my attention, I began using intentional camera movement.  I am finding the exercise pointless, unrewarding and unfulfilling.

I pick up the pace feeling that apart from thinking again about intentionality I did not see the point of this “pointless” exercise.  I clambered up a gravelly path that had been damaged by recent heavy rain and towards a part of the forest I had used for my practice early in Year 1.  Here are a couple of images from March 2021.

I was surprised that since my last visit, further felling had taken place and a particularly dense area of forest had been destroyed.  The hilly topography now apparent had been lost under the canopy of trees.  The sense of a clinical clearing job having been done hangs over the scene  I clearly had no intention of recording the scene when I left home, but I was now driven to take some spontaneous grab shots, in a less mindful and engaged manner than I would normally have.  I did not sit and absorb the scene in front of me nor did I take my time over the images – I feel present and pressured.  My emotions however are heightened by yet another scene of destruction, close to the felling of the forest I had spent so much time getting to know and was felled in winter 2021.  The feeling of despair is raw rather than contemplated.  I feel like an opportunist spying on a crime scene.

I am not sure to what extent I met the brief.  I certainly did not intend to photograph a felled forest when I left the house.  I did not have much time to take the images and I spent limited time framing the shots.  Rather than being deeply engaged with nature through dwelling, this was an opportunistic and unplanned shoot and largely without purpose.

An interesting exercise!