
Today I gave a lecture about the role research plays in the creative process. I research creates opportunities for increased awareness of possibilities for new combinations of ideas. Curiosity is an important ingredient for creativity. When I talk about research I encourage students to look at a wide variety of artforms from painting, scultpure, theater, film, literature, etc.
The summary of my lecture could be described like this:

- Look at imagery and ask yourself, “What do I find interesting? What do I like?
- Gather 8-10 exemplary examples together of a style of work.
- Look for patterns in the images. Is there similar subject? similar composition or design? similar light quality? color harmony? similar medium and technique? This pattern becomes new image making rules for a body of work.
- Ask yourself, “What emotion do I feel when I look at this artwork?” Trust your gut!
- Develop a thesis for a new body of work by restating items 3&4 in the reverse order. A simple thesis statement would be, I can create images that evoke __________________ emotion by combining ____________, _____________, and ______________. The thesis is basically a restating of the emotional reaction and the image making rules you have identified from the patterns found in your research.
I then went on to just pull together examples of how cultural artistic references can be connected to photography. When I have given this lecture in the past I have often shown paintings from the Hudson River Valley school and analyzed it and then illustrated how that can be seen in the landscape photography of Max Rives. But today, I wanted to push myself to go beyond 2d artwork so I randomly pulled Alberto Giacometti’s sculptures to mind.

Just looking at his sculptures made me think about the importance of that first step being portrayed in sculpture. Artist first began portraying dynamic movement in figurative sculpture during the Hellenistic period. This is simply amazing to me because the creation of figurative sculpture dates back as early as 32,000 years ago and yet the portrayal of movement didn’t occur for the first 31,000 years!
As I thought about this and looked at Giacometti’s sculptures I was reminded of the street fashion photography of Bill Cunningham.
Within just a few minutes you could see how an idea could emerge for making photographs that emphasize that human first step.
I particularly like Bill Cunningham’s quote, “Fashion is the armor to survive everyday life!” There is an idea there that runs through every image he made in his long and storied career.
Ideas are the thread that strings together the pearls and holds them together.
I had made my own photograph of this movement during a photo shoot back in November of 2004 in Portland Oregon. My sister-in-law Rebecca had just graduated from fashion design school and asked me to do a photo shoot with her. She always reminded me of Audrey Hepburn and I think I was channeling a little of Richard Avedon’s photography style that day. He helped move fashion photography from static shots that made models look like mannequins to images filled with dynamic movement and gesture. He also was the inspiration for the movie Funny Face.

I really enjoy teaching creativity to my students and getting them to think about how an idea can start small and expand. Last week we made pinhole photographs using 1 gallon paint cans. It is the first opportunity to really discuss the concept of a camera obscura. I then showed them a photograph of the walk in camera obscura in San Francisco near Sunset beach so they can see that the concept of the paint can can be expanded to any size light tight chamber with an aperture. I then showed them the work of Italian artist Aberlardo Morrell who is world renown for his photographs of projected camera obscura landscapes on the interior walls of hotel rooms or any other type of domestic or commercial interior space.
Research is really the first step in creativity that allows us to figure out how to connect different ideas together in new combinations and then expand upon them.
