Art is a struggle; art is a process.  Art takes time to learn, to create, to appreciate.  Creating art is not like making a cup o’ soup, or maybe it is, if you have the eyes and talent of Warhol, Hockney, or Picasso.  Most of us have to work at it, and work hard, employing a disciplined work ethic, commitments, and goals.  Some say if you do not have a struggle within you or around you, you have to make one.  Create some chaos, put yourself at risk.

It is important to enjoy the struggle, the time spent, the journey.  The actual end result can sometimes be disappointing not because we are dissatisfied with the achievement, but because “it”[the process] is over.  What it took to get to the end result is often more important, more rewarding than the final art piece itself.  You do not dance to see where you end, you dance to enjoy the dance.  So, listen to the music and enjoy the struggle to find your art.

“Making good work is supposed to be hard.  It requires learning your craft and working harder than anybody who isn’t a photographer/artist can possibly imagine.”  Keith Carter

 “Complacency in art breeds nothing but redundancy.”    Ken Merfeld

Will you be making New Year’s resolutions, things you are going to try to do, or plans for creative revolutions in your journey as an artist?

Resolution is a decision to do something; revolution is radical change.

Decide to do something different, and do it.  And have a prolific New Year.

These are not rhetorical questions.  If you understand and identify how you actually work, then and only then, can you change your methodology.  We must learn ourselves, who we are as an artist, and how we creatively function. Exactly what and how do we do what we do that we call our art?   If you don’t have a creative palette, you have no place to begin, you might not have anything to put into the middle, and you are going to have an extremely difficult time finding an end, a creative solution to your art.  If we have a bit of a handle on how we approach things, then we can make a decision to go to another place, a different challenge, a new approach.  If you don’t have a clue, then you don’t have a palette.

If you are always flying by the seat of your pants, if you are always trying to pull your art out of thin air – think about it.  What are you relying on?  Not your experience, dedication, persistence, or education; you are relying on chance. Chance will find some art, but even chance favors the prepared mind.  An artist must have a personal, creative palette built over time, through tears, frustration, mistakes, failures, and successes.  It becomes who we are and defines our persona as artists.  We must wear it out, exhaust it, and then construct a new one … or at least flip it over and try the other side.

I talk more about black and white than I do about color.  I love black and white, the traditional darkroom, and the smell of hypo in the morning!  I guess that makes me a black and white guy.  I really do appreciate and enjoy color, don’t get me wrong, but I get more emotionally involved in the worlds of tonality and contrast rendered in black and white.  I see color but I feel black and white when I look at a photograph. Color gets in the way sometimes.  It is like one design element too many.  No distractions in black and white.  Got to have guts.

If you do shoot color, do something special with it, be different, find your own palette.  Shoot definite, powerful color, like La Chapelle color or Pete Turner color.  Make a colorful “statement” with your color, USE your color, or why bother?  De-saturated color is big these days via the computer.  A hint of color, I guess.  A little bit like toning a black and white print in the past. It looks nice, is subtle, but is not really a commitment to a color palette.  Gonna use color these days, grow a pair!  Rock the world and show them they were color blind before they saw your world of color!  Otherwise, color is good for food, fashion, birthday parties, and sunsets.  Black and white is good for your soul.

“Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment.”  Claude Monet

“Black and white are the true colors of photography.”  Robert Frank

Fear takes on many forms: fear of being wrong, of being foolish, or in changing the way something has been done in the past.  Fear can be reluctance to deal with the unknown.  Fear can be brought about by lack of preparation and is the major block to getting new ideas.

Why not be fearless ?  What is to be gained by holding back ? Nothing. What are you afraid of ? Not being good enough, not being creative enough ?  If you are not out doing, you are only going to hear about it.  As automated as photography is these days, you still need to push the button.  Images do not get into your camera when you are sitting on your couch thinking and worrying.

Nervous ?  Don’t bother, get over it.  Your camera is a tool that gives you license to be other than you really are.  Use it.  Open doors with it, initiate conversations with it, become more of a dynamic personality because of it.  Our personality and energy are our most powerful tools on the street. Being shy gets you nothing and nowhere in the art world.  Being afraid gets you even less.  Be fearless with your art !  Go home and be shy.

Many people believe that art is not a thing, and it is not your job; it is a way of life.  Others feel that their art is their entire life.  Is art what is new – as in vision, point of view, or voice?  Is art what is old but is now appreciated?  Is all art about love [Hockney]?  Can it embody hatred, prejudice, propaganda? If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, is art in the heart and mind? Is pornography art ?  Is nudity?

So, what is art?  Everyone seems to have an opinion but definitions are all over the place.  Maybe art cannot be defined?  Maybe it is an illusion!  I don’t know. Personally, I FEEL something when I see art, or create my own art.  It is a “rush”, like all of a sudden there is carbonation in my veins, accompanied by a myriad of emotions [shock, awe, horror, envy …].  I respond, my body and mind react, question, scrutinize.  Sometimes I am changed by art and some art I remember.  Picasso said that “art is art, and everything else is everything else”. I like that.  He also said that art is a lie that makes us realize the truth. Now I am confused again.

What is art for you?  How do you decide?  How can you create it if you don’t know what it is ?

“What is the difference between art and a twinkie?”   … Blue Man Group

“Fuck art, let’s dance.”   …  Lawrence Ferlinghetti

To find rhythm in chaos and turmoil and to create from the resulting energy is exhilarating, rewarding, and leads to other than safe and sound banalities.  Do not let your mind or your process be rushed.  Be aware of the frenetic energy.  Harness it, dance with it, play with it, yield to it and put it into your work.  Slow yourself down, but react fast, in this whirlwind and you just might end up seeing and using more.  Embrace a little more crazy in your life and let it fall into your art.

“Enjoy this world, even as it decends into chaos.  In fact, especially enjoy the chaos.” Bob Dylan

The truth is that the world tends to forgive and even overlook transgressions because the inspiration found in the art outweighs rude behavior. Still doesn’t make it right.  Alongside these selfish tendencies comes hurt.  In their blindness, tunnel vision, and self-fulfilling focus, artists often hurt and neglect the ones who love and support them.  This hurt is expected to be pushed aside in the quest for creativity, process, and production.  But hurt is hurt.  It is the acid that eats away relationships, deteriorates marriages, and destroys friendships.  To hurt or be inconsiderate of someone in the name of your art is selfishness at it’s ultimate.  It really has no place in the creative process as it always destroys part of it or someone.

Think about it.  Be more considerate.  Do not take out your support system.  It is important and needed.  Slow down.  Do not become a dick just because you are trying to become an artist!  Do anything and everything you can not to be a selfish artist.

It is our responsibility to help others understand a little bit more about our unreasonable demands of time, energy, and heart. People involved in our lives know that we are possessed but they need to understand that we are possessed with honest energy and heart, not the devil incarnate! We need to stop thinking of ourselves once in awhile and think about and spend quality time with others.  Communicate with passion, educate with love, or they will go away.  And you will be left with just your art.  For some, it may be all you need.  For most others, take heed.  Be forewarned.  Alone may not be your art, but may end up being your destination.

A journey takes time.  It takes time to learn oneself and then re-learn oneself as an artist.  It doesn’t happen overnight, it doesn’t materialize from a dream as nice a thought as that might be, it doesn’t come from reading a book, turning on a computer, or taking a pill that also makes you feel ten feet tall.  It is in the doing.  It is time spent.  If you are lucky as an artist, the time spent is more creative and challenging than not.  It is reason to live, it is your life, your life’s journey.

If you think you have arrived, you’re dead as an artist.

Be very forewarned. While passion is an absolute necessity in art, out of proportion passion can be the undoing of an artist.  If an artist gets to the point of totally being out of sinc with his work, if he hits that dreaded wall of “burn out”, the resulting confusion can destroy and disintegrate the creative process.  One can be left in a formless mass of nothingness with no energy, no creative thoughts, no free flowing ideas, and no more love of the medium.  Dissolution, disintegration, confusion, anger, a sense of abandonment can replace what was once abundant, spontaneous, and productive.  A sense of total loss, like a gutted trout – if a trout could indeed be creative to begin with !

We must learn to do something before our artistic spirit, our creative drive, the engine that moves our art sputters and dies.  For me, the answer lies in short term goals, working on projects within a certain time frame, short-to-medium bursts of creativity and energy.  Define a challenge, give your self a time frame to explore it, produce the resulting body of work (!), then move on to another. I call this working in a “series mentality”, something I have explored my entire career.  A sense of completion and/or accomplishment does something positive for the creative process.  It is rewarding in a very personal way, not requiring public gratification or recognition.  It strengthens the artist as a creator, a producer, a maker of something that did not exist before your involvement.  Isn’t that one of the reasons that we became, or are trying to become, an artist – to make stuff, and to enjoy the process ?

To have a release other than your photography, but within the arts, will also help your longevity and your sanity.  Josef Sudek said, ‘If you take photography seriously, you must also get interested in another art form.”  For him, it was music and he felt that his listening to music “showed up in his work like a reflection in a mirror.”

One other suggestion to safeguard the dissolution of your artistic passion is to have another form of release that is outside of the arts completely.  Use your body and relax your mind.  Get out and exercise, dance, do Yoga, climb a mountain, ride a bike, take a walk, swim a mile, whatever gets that other drug into your blood and makes you feel alive !  Make your body work and relax your thinking process.  Sweat a little bit and extend some energy other than what comes out of your mind.  Get too tired to think once in awhile.

The bottom line is each of us must learn how to live with, control, provoke, entice, relax and then revitalize our passion without numbing our creative process at the same time. Wake up and be very aware of your feelings, monitor and learn your energy, and have an appropriate release or two that will help you maintain your creative balance and how much passion you literally extend.  Learn your passion levels, do not drain yourself dry.  Learn when to tread water and resuscitate a little bit, learn when you need to dive deep again, and learn when you need a new creative body of water to dive into, period. Guard, protect, and nurture your passion.  Do not be controlled or defeated by it.  Pay attention.  Learn yourself as an artist.

“There is no passion to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.” …  Nelson Mandela

“I am still hungry.”  … Andre Kertesz, at age 90

Photographers must be able to let go.  There should be an open – ended, brainstorming, free flowing mentality to one’s work.  Do not misunderstand.  An artist must be the master of light, technique, process, and subject matter.  The photographer must be the technical expert of “how to do” what he is doing, knowing the rules, guidelines, expectations?  Now, have the guts to break the rules, do the opposite, “cast it to the wind”, free float, do a technical “bungee jump”!  See what happens.  If it is not perfect, perhaps it is not supposed to be.

Dance with recklessness in your art.  Go to the edge, your “limit” and do a tap dance on it.  Obliterate your edges, no boundaries.  Embrace the unexpected, the unusual.  Take a second look at what you consider a mistake.  Often mistakes are gifts in your art, a direction you might never have thought of, or an artistic deviation from the path that you thought you were on.  You will not be receptive to the unexpected, to change, to anything new in your art without letting go of perfection.  Question less, accept more as a possibility in your art.  Adapt. Let go.  Let your art be free.

Has Vogue Magazine jumped the shark in these ‘anything goes’ economic times or has K-Mart shot up the ladder?  Is money the all-important “green” in this green conscious society we live in?  Do you really accept that?  Is everyone crossing over, dropping down for a dime?

Where are you in this picture?  What do you stand for as an artist?  Are you K-Mart or Vogue ?  Or are they now the same?

Who said you had to grow up?  Artists should gain wisdom, experience, and technique over time while remaining forever young at heart.  Uninhibited.  Free. No rules.  Fearless. Crazy. Chaotic.  Always playing.  Like a kid again.  Creating with reckless abandon.  Kids don’t hold back, they know no boundaries, they have endless energy, and they produce until they drop.  Then they get up and start in again.

How do you do this as an adult, as you grow older as an artist ?  What do you do to nurture your creative soul while main lining a constant flow of energy that keeps you alive and productive?  How do you not grow old of mind, body, and creative spirit ? The answer is simple to say, another thing to do.  One must create no matter what, to constantly challenge yourself to grow, to never feel you have arrived as an artist. The key to not growing old is to continue to work on your art. Period. The energy of the finished work ignites the next body of work keeping you alive and productive.   It’s like a drug, creative adrenaline. A daily fix.  Good for your soul.  Keeps you young.

Refuse to grow old.  Do your work. Two other hints: lay off the chili cheese fries and get some exercise once in awhile.

“Every child is an artist.  The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up”.  Picasso

“If you succumb to age your creativity can become clouded, you slow down, and you do not produce as much art.  So, what’s the purpose ?  I refuse to grow up or old.”

Ken Merfeld

After you have researched, explored, experimented with, and played in the box, you must construct your own version. This is your your vision, becomes your voice, and is your interpretation and/or translation of subject matter we may have thought we were familiar with, until you and your creativity came along.  New point of view?  New way of seeing, feeling about your subject matter? Evolved technique?  Inhabit your new world.  Own it, and the technique and personal process involved. Then go outside of it!  That’s the part we always hear about, but how do you do it?  Find how you are limited and then create over, around, and through any limitations. Limitations are nothing more than doorways to creativity.You just need to open them, kick them down, move them out of your path. Figure out a new way! Make your version more emotional, more powerful, more exaggerated, more surreal. Make it undeniably beautiful or incredibly bizarre, impossible not to look at, and even harder to forget. Push yourself out of your own new box and take a look.  You must see it, de-construct it, see it differently, re-interpret it, and build it again.  It is no longer a box, it is YOUR box, your voice, your approach, as the result of insight, interpretation, invention.  You are outside of everyone else’s box.  Now they must figure out how to go outside of yours.

Make the round world square.  Give it a new box.

We live in the age of electronic everything. and we can access more information than ever, yet we can lose the same information and more in record time.  So, we are supposed to back up our information on external hard drives two and three times, and then migrate all of that info to new technology as it evolves, to continuously protect ourselves and our information.  While sitting at my desk one morning, my external hard drive turned into cereal.  Snap – crackle – pop !  No more information, files, references, IMAGES !  Empty bowl of cereal.  Hundreds of images are with Peter Pan in Never-never Land.  Are we in the beginning of the age of non-information or will these be known as the “lost information” years ?

The fact is electronic devices fail.  They eat our stuff and vomit it into oblivion.  I put information into notebooks, idea journals, creative diaries, technical notebooks, darkroom journals, books of quotes, writings, and thoughts. I have never lost any of my notebooks (or negatives, either, for that matter.)  I have a personal library about myself as an artist: my ideas, my work, my experiences and experiments, my influences, my dreams, my “crazy”. A reference library sitting on a shelf, waiting to stimulate, remember, springboard from. Have you ever seen a Peter Beard diary ?  It is a thing of passionate beauty with a shit load of daily information, art, and personal experience.

Write stuff down.  Collect information in books.  Use pencils. Your information just might last.

Mediocrity is being hailed by some as the new genius.  A sign of the times.  The quick message, the instant news item, the paparazzi snap shot, a cell phone video.  Just the image, no matter what, no matter how.  Technique ?  Naw, don’t worry about it.  We’ll fix it, or do something with it, later. First, feed the frenzy, quench the thirst of the media and the part of the world that has nothing else to do and doesn’t know the difference.

I saw some of Hockney’s I-Phone art recently.  Art made by Hockney’s fingers on a little electronic device.  It was good.  But then again, I think most people would agree that David Hockney is a pretty damn good artist.  Basically, he put something good into an electronic device and it gave us art.  Hockney uses electronic devices as a tool, another one of his paint brushes at the end of his fingers, to creatively express.  How do you use electronic devices? Do you put good imagery in, help it a little bit, and spit out some art?  Or do you put mediocre in and try to make it something more ?  Mediocre in, mediocre out.  And that is a polite twist on an old adage !

How do we stop mediocrity ?  By not accepting it in the first place. Say no to mediocrity, by not allowing it to proliferate under the guise of ease of expression and the accelerated pace of our times.  We must be more critical of ourselves as artists and much more critical of what art we do put out into this world.  Mediocrity is not the new genius.  Mediocrity is average.  And who wants to be an average artist ?

“You can’t polish a turd.”    Anonymous

“If you put a good image into your camera in the first place, you won’t be drowning later, grasping for an electronic life-saver.”  Ken Merfeld

“An artist entering the world of photography today must be careful not to fall through the thin ice of technology and electronics that yields a ‘fix-it’ or ‘change it later’ mentality.” Ken Merfeld

Dark is important in our art. Dark is both the absence of light and the result of light .  The absence of light and subsequent subtraction of information creates mood, mystery, and drama.  The result of light is found in shadow, texture, contour, and form allowing depth, richness, and guts in our imagery.

No darks, no chiaroscuro. Dark can be a simple defining additive supplying texture in a jacket, pleats in a dress, or the soft curve and delicate space of a breast. Darkness can lead to mystery as Josef Sudek maintained, “the charm of everything is in the mystery” and Frances Bacon reminds us, “the job of every artist is to deepen the mystery.” The dark can also take us into the realm of the grotesque.  Mortensen warns us, “those who turn away from the grotesque are losing the richness and completeness of artistic experience … as everything exists through it’s opposite.” The dark can take us to the “other side” of our work, if we do indeed have another side to explore.  Basically, if you cannot manipulate, exaggerate, feather, blend, or interrupt shadow, if you cannot dance with the dark per se, then you do not know light.

Shadows can also be your friend. They provide elements of design and contrast, facilitate exaggeration and drama, and give ways to hide what you don’t want seen. We all need to spend time in the dark.  Appreciate the richness and mood of a Brassai or a DeCarava print.  Experience Ingmar Bergman, OrsonWells, Alfred Hitchcock, film noir, German Expressionism.  Feel the deep shadows, get lost in the shafts of light. Nothing safe. Definite emotions.

So, what can you do ?  You can light with less light.  Could you live a month without a softbox, umbrella, or an Octabank ?  Turn your subject away from your light source, a small light source perhaps. How little light can you use and still maintain the emotional impact of the photograph ?  If we light everything, then we have presented all of the information leaving nothing for the fertile imagination of creative minds !  Feel the dark, invite mystery, and inject more mood into your work.  See what happens when you ask your viewer to engage his mind a little bit more when experiencing your image making. Don’t be afraid of the dark.

“You can’t have a light without a dark to stick it in.”  …  Arlo Guthrie

“Dark is the next best thing to light.” …  Ken Merfeld

An artist must see, appreciate, totally understand, own, control, manipulate, manufacture, embrace, tease with, bend, direct, develop a personal feeling for, and become a master of LIGHT !  Nothing can exist without light; with light, everything becomes real.  If you are lazy about lighting or think it doesn’t matter, you are wrong.  Without light, we have no emotion, texture, contour, information, illusion, or interpretation in our work.  What does that leave ?

Do you see light every day and are you thankful every single day for that awareness ?   Do you appreciate whatever quality of light is available?  Can you alter it if you need ?  Do you notice how the light changes during the day and the resulting feeling ?   Natural light is the greatest teacher of all.  If you are a master with natural light and are able to reproduce all qualities of it inside as well, then you might actually know light.

Light is inspiration.  Think about that.  Think about what light makes you relate to because of how it makes you FEEL. Sometimes it is like you must begin with light before subject matter.  Light will show you the way to play with feelings, define space, introduce psychology, and envelop in mood – all of things that make one think, feel, and react when they look at your work.

Light is energy.  When reflecting on his life as a film maker Ingmar Bergman wrote : “I do mourn the fact that I no longer make films.  Most of all. I miss working with cinematographer Sven Nykvist, perhaps because we are both utterly captivated by the problems of light : the gentle, dangerous, dreamlike, living, dead, clear, misty, hot, violent, bare, sudden, dark, springlike, falling, straight, slanting, sensual, subdued, limited, poisonous, calm, pale light. Light. “

To which I would humbly add, “A day without photography and some kind of light is not worth getting out of bed for.” Notice the light tomorrow.

…  Ken Merfeld

I will offer the following :

I am and have been a darkroom fanatic since the first day photography entered my life.  I highly value the not-so-current trend of being well-versed in photo history.  I have been a commercial photographer (www.merfeldphotography.com) and have earned a living with my camera for 25 years.  I have continuously explored personal portrait and fine art projects via film and traditional silver printing. I have been a photographic educator, editor of portfolios, and designer of personal projects for photographers and artists for the same time period.  I continue to teach and also extend a critiquing service (“Photo Soup”) from my studio offering project, portfolio, and design reviews, and career direction / advice for students, grads, mid-career artists, art therapists and psychologists.

I still shoot commercially.  I still shoot film.  I look forward to the return of Polaroid.  I put images on glass and tin.  I also shoot digital and, in effect, combine 21^st. Century technology with 19^th. Century process, to create current bodies of work for reproduction and exhibitions.

Photography is my life, which I am fortunate to share with an incredibly supportive wife and two amazingly stubborn cats.  I do things other than photography, which will be discussed in future writing.  As Josef Sudek said, “… if you take photography seriously, you must also get interested in another art form.”

What won’t be happening on this site ?  I won’t be discussing what I had for breakfast, when I brush my teeth, how many friends I have, nor how much weight I have gained or lost for whatever godforsaken reasons.  Let’s avoid politics, religion, and sex as I hate to discuss the first two and prefer to keep the third personal – unless, of course, these topics are powerfully reproduced in visually compelling, inviting, emotional, communicative pieces of art !  Then we must chat.

My desire is to inspire yet question, motivate yet provoke, communicate yet challenge about our art.  Point our minds and employ our hearts in our work, sometimes actually having a thought or concept to spring from, other times shutting off your brain and relying on intuition, chance, spontaneity, even mistakes !

To those of you who have asked me to do something like this for years, I thank you for your persistence and your patience.  I will try to write as often as possible although an every day entry would probably be an unrealistic expectation.  Welcome to my Blog. Let’s see what happens and where we can take it !

Ken Merfeld      Sept. 14, 2010