Been There, Done That

by Carol A.

Eugene Atget

and me

"Only those with no memory insist on their originality."

Coco Chanel

Inspiration is our business here at FOL. I am happy to be a part of it because I find inspiration so fascinating. The variety of things that catch people's attention is amazingly infinite.  What turns one person on, helps the other not at all. Just look within our own blog and it's followers. Kim is obviously inspired by her bugs and creatures  - Fish girl from fishing meditations - Terri by her flowers. One of my friends is inspired by works  of art from the Dutch masters, one is inspired by stark black and white form.  For me, it's always stories  - whether from a book, a radio show or someone's wayward comment. I never know when or where my blog post ideas are going to appear until they're there.

I found Austin Kleon through a book blog site, but apparently he has had his "fifteen minutes" by going viral on the internet, after posting some unusual poetry  on his own blog.  He blacks out part of the newsprint in a newspaper, to produce a poem of sorts. These "Newspaper Blackout Poems' were such a hit that he eventually collected them for a book. That led to an outcry accusing him of being unoriginal. He then began to research originality, and by extension inspiration. I've attached the link to his Ted Talk about the whole experience.

He explains that as he researched inspiration, he found that virtually all of the great artists "are thieves. " Writers, painters, photographers all learn through early imitation. In quote after quote, going  way back to the 1760's,  they all maintain that they are not original.  Kleon's point is that - NOTHING IS ORIGINAL. Every new idea is a "mashup" of previous ideas. I love his analogy that just as you yourself are a "mashup" of your mother and father, so your art is a "mashup" of all the art and experience you feed yourself. He even makes an art family tree! I also love it when he takes that old adage "imitation is flattery," and makes it "transformation is flattery." Because every inspiration that you use, becomes transformed by your input into something original.

Berenice Abbott                                          me

For my part, I started a project several months ago. I had come across a book by Matthew Bamberg called "101 Master Photographers of the Twentieth Century."  (You can find it here: http://www.amazon.com/Quick-Master-Photographers-Twentieth-Century/dp/1435454367)  He writes a page or two about each photographer, and shows one or two signature images. I bought a little journal. When I have time I will  read his summary about a particular icon. Sometimes I look up more of their works on the internet. Then I go out with my camera and try to shoot a similar picture. It's really instructive - not just for getting ideas, but for the process of learning different outlooks, or shooting things you don't normally notice. It's fun too - sort of like my own private scavenger hunt! There's no deadline on my project. It's just one method I use to stimulate my own inspiration.

Arnold Newman
and
me

Without further ado, you can find Austin here:

 http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=oww7oB9rjgw&desktop uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Doww7oB9rjgw

He explains it all much better than I, and I'm sure he wouldn't mind my citing him here - because he actually instructed me to go out and steal from everyone I was interested in today" - and I was very interested in him!

"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again,

 There is nothing new under the sun."

                 

                                      Ecclesiastes 1:9

                                              (The oldest source of all!)





*Iconic photographer images here were taken archive sites and cropped for my imitation and inspiration. They are not presented full. You can find them on various library site such as this:
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/ images