What is a "Creative Life" and how do you live it? I can't define this for others, I can only speak from my own experience in trying to lead a creative life of excellence during my lifetime.

I know people that have picked up creative pursuits and artistic disciplines, worked these through to completion and then moved on to others, time and again. I am far simpler, for, when I "picked up" art in my early twenties I stuck with it and am still in it. Initially, my introduction to making art was as a painter, studying under the enigmatic and frustrating Tauno Kauppi and later at RISD with Mike Ashcraft. Soon, photography took on more prominence studying under Harry Callahan and a little later, Aaron Siskind. It didn't take long for photography to win me over completely. Photography became my life. 

Did I know, almost 50 years ago, that photography could sustain me, provide an income working as a university teacher, or that I could maintain a consistently high creative output all those years? No idea. But a creative life involves just that: the requirement that new ideas, new approaches, and new projects spring forth time and time again, over a whole career. 

A creative life needs to be more than just a person's vocation and/or avocation. How challenges are faced, how difficult times are handled, how problems are solved or managed all are part of the larger concept of a creative life. I once watched Frederick Sommer cooking hamburgers on the stove at his home in Prescott, AZ and understood that he was making art then just as much as he was when photographing with an 8 x 10 view camera in the desert. Or my brother-in-law, industrial designer Marc Harrison, long gone now almost twenty years, walking through an old home my wife and I had just bought, seeing its potential if walls were knocked down to let light in to our new home in Cambridge in 1982. Or Ezra Stoller, setting up lights at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire one autumn day in the 1970's, to color balance the interior lighting with the daylight outside on assignment to make a cover image of a new library for an architectural magazine.

I wish I was more flamboyant and more creative in other disciplines. Although I play the keyboard and think of this as a part of my creative pursuits, I am not so very good. I admire those that seem to be able to do anything and I admit to the narrowness of my efforts. I am all photography, all the time. While grateful that I chose a medium so difficult, elusive and challenging (and fulfilling, I might add) I recognize the sheer obsession with just one, while hopefully making good work, has meant I have excluded a great deal else from my life. 

"Put art into everything you do", is something I have said to myself and my students over the years. This involves ritual, largely, or the kind of totality of existence a dancer displays when running to catch a bus. How we move when photographing, or approaching a subject through our extreme fluidity with the act, leaning on our intuition and muscle memory to feel what's right, when to change settings, focus or a lens. Practice, practice, practice, as the saying goes. Good art benefits from discipline, a strong work ethic, and a questioning spirit. 

"I wonder what it would look like if I...?" has been another constant companion for many years. This is armchair philosophizing, of course. Thinking conceptually, trying to put this with that, a location in a certain light, a tool with a certain method, an approach with a way of printing, handling the file, or using this developer, this toner, this paper in the analog and darkroom days. 

My creative life has been long and productive, for I have proven to be prolific, an endless challenge for curators and gallerists who would be happier with less to choose from.  On the other hand, I don't know that I would feel as good about the work had I made less. At least for this artist, immersion into what I do seems to have been crucial. That's not to say that parenting, friendships, relationships, a family haven't loomed large, for they have and still do.

Ultimately, as a professional artist, I can't separate what I do from my work, nor should I. The way I choose to live my life affects my art; everything is input, whether we know it or not.

I believe that a creative life does not allow much for complacency, apathy, a lack of energy or drive, being uninquisitive, lazy, or unmotivated. "Garbage in, garbage out" applies here and is what separates those who really do versus those that are posers and trying to look like they do. This is an oversimplification but it is frustrating and demoralizing to see those that are new, brash and lacking in knowledge and experience speeding ahead, receiving acclaim and recognition for work that is clueless and uninformed of the history of the medium or current practice. A "Creative Life" implies longevity, a long track record of accomplishment and a significant contribution. 

I've used this before but perhaps it can stand seeing the light of day again. This was the last paragraph I wrote in 2003 when applying to be a full professor at my university:

Thirty-five years ago, when the concept of being an artist for the rest of my life first dawned on me, I had little to show; no skills, little education, no ability to define what it would be like to be an artist and few mentors. But my job seemed clear: I needed to learn my chosen discipline and produce work. This I proceeded to do, learning as I went, adding a series of photographs or a group of pictures that were an idea, concept or an interest on top of a stack of others that would grow over a whole career. This program entailed life-long learning. Parts of my process would change: my understanding of the medium would grow and evolve during these years. Photography too would change; movements in contemporary art and society would affect me in obvious and subtle ways. However, the requirement was to make the best work I could, to stay active, to produce work that was qualitatively as consummate as I knew then how to make it. This I’ve done. As I grew and understood more about photography as an art form, and worked to master my technique and refine my aesthetic, I became more comfortable with my place in the discipline. I no longer was aspiring to be something. I was heavily engaged in the making. Finally, I have sought, quite simply, to make a contribution to the medium of photography.

A creative life? Well, yes, I  believe I have.

While I readily admit that photography has expanded and progressed technically, I am not so sure about its sophistication, nuance and subtlety. I believe that with more photographs being made, and more photographs being made as art, there may be less to see, less to hold your attention and more pictures made for their shock value than for their true worth.

Hershey PA

Case in point: look at contest winners, the photographs that win in photography competitions. Besides often being judged by people that seem to this observer unqualified, the top pictures are inevitably ones that judges haven't seen before. Substance? Intricacy? Commentary? Usually not so much. 

Thompson Springs Utah

Let's face it, with more photographs being seen on screens rather than in print form and the attention span of someone looking at work online being seconds instead of minutes, a shocking image has got a far better chance of increased exposure than one that is a finely crafted and made to be a lasting experience. So here's the big problem. For if we switch from screen to a print on display a shocking image won't last, won't hold yours or anyone else's attention. Which one would you rather have on your wall as part of your art collection? Which one would you respect more over time, which one would you come back to again and again, marveling at its ability to keep on giving? Not the one that slapped you in the face, not the one that surprised you but that only that made that one point.

Yountville, CA

Raise the bar, go for depth in your work. Say something with it. The hell with the shock value photograph. Would you rather trade in Stravinskys, Rothkos and Picassos or McDonalds, Bob's Big Boy and Chinese sourced plastic goods at Walmart?

At my age I want to make pictures that convey my intention in intense, sublime, intricate and contemplative ways. I want to extend the range of things like landscape photography to new levels and unique approaches. Or to draw attention to the masks we make in our own image. After all, part of art is about looking at the world differently. I want to look at things that are both beautiful and abhorrent and seek to display both with subtlety, compassion and perhaps  humor.

Monsters

Many would say that my Mutter Museum work , or the pictures from Reggio Emilia are shocking. They may be, but I would counter that there is great value in understanding the commonality of the human and animal condition and to understand just how fortunate we may be. I would hope that is evident in the pictures. "Shocking " with those pictures is not front tier for me.

Reggio Emilia, Italy

Do not seek to impress, do not make the pictures because of a calculation of perceived effect. Do not aspire to something: a place, a show, an award, a book. Do not spend time wishing for, or hoping you can, or thinking that if this person just sees it, everything will change. Just make the work. The result will be truer to you and the work itself will ring true. Your confidence in the work you have made (no small point) that you carry under your arm as prints to show someone in a key position will be self evident and flow easily from you because the work is, yes, terrific.

So, shock ....or substance?

He packed up his gear along with a tripod and headed out to make pictures. Nothing specific in mind, nowhere to go, just driving and looking, as he'd done throughout his now long career of being an artist using a camera. 

It took him awhile to get out of the city he lived in, stopping for coffee along the way. This was a day trip so he knew his "range". Like spokes on a wheel, he would drive out, explore and photograph and drive back late in the day. He felt he was in the business of "making miracles". Not really, of course, but the metaphor held true in that he would work to imbue ordinary things with something special, to endow his pictures with infinite care and respect for the placement and content contained within the frame. No accidents here, or at least that was his intention, to find subjects that resonated with his sensibilities.

Often on those day trips to photograph, his mind wandering while behind the wheel, looking, thinking about various unrelated things he would find himself pulling over and stopping without the idea fully formed in his head what it was that he was going to do here. Was this years of training doing this hundreds or even thousands of times, the behavior ingrained now? Or was it somehow more instinctual, his intellect being superseded by his genetic makeup and biology? At any rate, getting out of the car, looking around, hauling his camera out, deciding which lens to use, whether he needed to use a tripod or not, what ISO to set, all practiced and repeated movements for over 40 years. And yet, knowing too that this was a genuinely odd thing to do, to commit attention to something like the back wall of a warehouse, the woods at the edge of the railroad tracks, the bridge going over the river, the stone wall after the last headstones in the back of a rural graveyard. The sheer audacity of the premise that one could drive or walk around, randomly find things to photograph, ascribe significance by the sheer fact of clicking the shutter, pour time, effort, training and expertise into making the print then put it in front of a curator or gallery director and assume they would be impressed and want to have it, show it, acquire it.

By now, he was too much the veteran to assign ratings to these and other approaches. He was just working, that's all. He had learned that qualitative judgment was premature at inception and far more appropriate down the road, after working the image in the darkroom or the file in the computer. And even then, this was not fixed as reactions to the work were invariably different than his own. 

Amongst his colleagues, his photographer friends, there was the universally held belief that "making the work is what's important", meaning, of course, that even though the gallery or museum shuns you, even though the publisher won't print your book, even though the press preview is bad, it doesn't matter. This is implied nobility, that the work you make in complete anonymity is a gift to the world. That your public (sic) believes in the inherent superior quality of your work and that you are doing the world a favor, suffering multiple rejections in silence. As if there were a "your public" because, for the most part, there wasn't one.

He looks back at his earlier years, effectively distanced now that he is so much older. So much simpler then, it was the making of the pictures, and that was all, and enough too. Now, infinitely more complex, not only due to his age and having so many years of experience but also as the discipline of photography is so diffused, and yes, sad to say, diluted. He believes that no image has great force and weight, no picture shakes the foundations anymore as it is hard to find in all the noise, in all the clutter of our inundation of imagery. Would we know it when we saw it? Doubtful.

As he puts the camera and the tripod back in the car, settles himself behind the wheel and drives off he is acutely aware of the fact he's done this countless times and also that it is an increasingly meaningless thing to do. Sigh. While his methodology has changed little, his discipline has been completely transformed. He realizes, as he confronts this reality, that he is at the same time looking for the next place to make a picture and where to pull over, for the hunt never stops. This is habit pure and simple, just as his hand knows where the razor needs to go as he shaves his face in the shower, no mirror needed.

Tired and pleased with the day, he pointed his car back home, looking forward to downloading the files to see what he got. This is really no different than 20 or 40 years ago when he would look forward to developing his film to see what he had. Bodies in motion tend to stay in motion unless acted on by an external force. He is no exception.

I think the first time I actually met Richard(Chip) Benson was at Wellesley College in the 80's. It was at an opening reception and Chip and Lee Friedlander were being honored as they had both just received MacArthur grants. I knew the Bensons were from Newport, RI and were friends of my sister and brother-in-law Marc Harrison, an industrial designer and chair of the ID Department at RISD.

Richard Benson died June 22, 2017 at the age of 73.

From time to time I'd hear that Chip had done something extraordinary and knew he was printing his 8 x 10 negatives on aluminum with the result being these incredibly flat prints that seemed to go on forever. He was friends with John Szarkowski, the photo curator at MOMA and I remember seeing his work on display once at the museum. During those years Chip was heavily invested in making separations for photo books. An example is the four volumes on Eugene Atget produced for the Museum of Modern Art.

By the late 80's and early 90's digital was beginning to be the hot topic. Kodak built a research center for all things digital in Camden, Maine called the Center for Creative Imaging. I wrote grant applications to allow me to take classes and do research and found, of course, when I arrived, that Chip was already there. I was struggling to understand how to move a mouse around and what this thing called  Photoshop was all about and Chip was scanning his 8 x 10's with a drum scanner and writing back to 8 x 10 film in a special restricted "cold room"on the Center's single large format LVT.

A large format LVT (Light Valve Technology) recorder

By 1992 or 93 I had asked for and received "special status" at the Center, which gave me free reign over all the Center's operations.  I had also been given a show the next summer in the first floor gallery. That year I was up there every time I got a chance, hanging out in classes, now scanning and film writing my own 8 x 10 negatives and occasionally running into Chip, who was always doing something incomprehensible, reinventing photography. 

In the early summer of 93 (I believe) I loaded up the car full of framed prints and drove up to Camden to install my show at the Center. We hung the show over a weekend. Chip came to the opening and invited me to a lecture he was giving the next day on the "History of Photography". I decided to hang around.

I thought I knew something about the history of photography myself.  After all, I was teaching it back at my university, along with a course in contemporary directions every other year. 

But Chip changed all that, as his lecture, given without notes, to a mostly Camden summer tourist crowd, was a revelation. I came from the Beumont Newhall school of the history of well-off western white guys inventing the medium, with an occasional Dorothea Lang or Bernice Abbott thrown in the mix for good measure. Chip revealed that, amazing as it seems, photography was taking place in the mid 1880's in places like India, Asia, South American and Africa. Of course, much of it was brilliant. His perspective and the depth of his research and knowledge was mind blowing. I have never quite looked at my chosen discipline the same way since that day.  It was clearly evident that I was in the presence of a genius as well.

I wanted more of Chip's brilliance but by this time he was regarded as a real resource.  Most years at Northeastern I taught a view camera course and inevitably we would head off in a school van for field trips. I would tend to head us toward Newport, RI where Chip lived.  I would call up Chip a couple of days in advance and ask him if he could join us for lunch. Mostly, he would dodge me as he had some fierce deadline for something and didn't want to be diverted but I convinced him a couple of times to meet with us.

I remember one day. We'd been out at Fort Adams in Newport in late March in spitting snow and rain trying to take pictures. After, we piled into a restaurant and Chip arrived. There were probably 8 of us. We sat at a big table in a mostly empty restaurant in the late afternoon. Me, these students who didn't know who Walker Evans, Diane Arbus, or Alfred Steiglitz was, let alone Richard Benson, and Chip. We settled in and  Chip said, "well, Neal, what do you want me to talk about?" Oh my God, caught speechless. Then I thought, selfishly, this isn't going to be such an important thing for the students because this is way far above where they are, but it could be for me. So I asked Chip to talk about what he was working on right now. That's all it took. I got another blast of genius. All you needed to do with him was to prime the pump. Separations, masking, and some sort of hybridized system of film and digital capture, stochastic curves, tweaking dynamic range, some stuff about optics, and working with the limitations of present day technology, predictions of short range and longer term challenges and solutions, some chemistry, enough to fill my teeny tiny brain in five minutes and he went on for what must have been an hour.

I have no recollection of anything else, driving us back to school, what the students thought or even said to me the rest of that day. 

I know this is a long blog as they're meant to be short but the final story and the last time I saw Chip was in the late 90's. He was by then the dean of the Yale Graduate School of Design (1996-2006) and had invited Frederic Sommer to give a talk (for more on Fred search the blog for "Sommer"). I drove down to New Haven that afternoon for the presentation. When I got to the hall where Fred was to speak, I found a couple of my students had made the trip as well. Chip introduced Fred, Fred gave his talk and then the two students and I went nearby for a beer and maybe a slice before driving back to Boston. Soon, in walked Fred Sommer and Chip Benson, with  a few graduate students, there to do the same thing. They walked by me and didn't take any  notice. But there were two of the most brilliant people I'd ever known, hanging out, having a beer and pizza after a talk on a weeknight at Yale. Damn.

Thank you, Chip, for your huge contribution to photography.

Want to know more about Chip Benson? His work is represented by Pace MacGill Gallery and he created a website that explains much of his research: here.

More accurately: sabbatical leave. As a professor for thirty years I was fortunate to have four one semester sabbaticals and a year-long one.

Very often people outside of academia don't know how it works to be a professor. Sabbatical leaves are commonly awarded to professors in universities to conduct research free from teaching responsibilities. Eligibility is determined by rank, therefore adjuncts are usually not able to apply. Applications for leaves are handled by a committee which reviews applications and awards sabbaticals on merit. They are one of the perks of the job. Frequency varies but commonly, it is every seven years.

Outside of academia sabbaticals also occur occasionally in business and, of course, some people give themselves a "sabbatical" to take a leave to do something they can't do while working. The traditional sabbatical, however, is different in that it includes getting paid while you do it. Like I said, one of the perks.

It is difficult for me to express what these leaves meant for me for the years I ran the Photography Program at Northeastern University. Having the sabbatical in the fall or spring semester meant that I was only at school one semester for that year as it butted up against the summer when I usually didn't teach. Making pictures, practicing my discipline, was always a struggle while I was working. Squeezing in the time to go photographing or the endless hours needed in the darkroom was hard when the job and my family needed my attention. Sabbaticals freed me from one whole large component of my life and were proposed and awarded to support my making art.

Got something you'd like to do? Someplace you're dying to go? Feeling hemmed in by work? Part of being the creative person you are is to be creative in all aspects of your life, not just in the art you make.  Think about how you can make things happen, get a project funded and/or supported, there are many ways. My first sabbatical was called a "pre-tenure" sabbatical in that it was designed so support assistant professors in their efforts to publish or do their research before applying for tenure, a critical time. I applied, got a one semester leave but was not awarded a grant I applied for. So I had no funding to support my rather elaborate plan to travel around England and Northern Scotland with an 8 x 10 view camera making pictures. So, I ended up driving through the American West in my parents motorhome for two months. Although I did fine and made good pictures I learned from that one that a sabbatical leave with no funding isn't so great. Work out the support for your sabbatical before you take off.

As I got tenured and became more senior and knew the system at my university better I was able to be away  more on various projects. It helped that my daughter was away at school by then as well. No longer married, I was free go more often. Funded research trips to study other photo programs, or study new technologies, give lectures, talks, presentations, have exhibitions of my  own work and go to conferences became things I did more. In each of these situations I would photograph wherever I was. I had a discretionary budget, travel stipend and a network of internal grants I could apply for, and did succeed frequently. This meant I needed to have someone back at school holding down the fort that I could trust. Luckily, I had someone for many years in Andrea Raynor in that she exuded capability and excellence in all that she did. In fact, she's still at Northeastern and is the Department Chair.

Did I work the system? I did. Did it benefit me and my work? Yes, it did. Was I dishonest, lining my own pockets with my school's funds, or travel elaborately off the school, buy gifts on their dime or provide these perks to colleagues? No, I did not. 

I also learned this lesson. One of my colleagues, a senior graphic designer, told people she would be in Hawaii the whole time she was on her sabbatical. In reality she stayed home and worked on new projects. She knew she'd get called in to avert some crisis in her discipline if people knew she was close by. Smart. I learned that you must go away in order to cut the thread. 

My first big trip away to photograph was in 1979. I wasn't a professor yet, and told NESOP (New England School of Photography) I wouldn't be teaching in the spring. As I was  teaching at Harvard too, after the fall semester finished  in January I was free to take off for the Southwest. This was a self imposed sabbatical of indeterminant length to go make work. I needed to get south from Boston as it was winter and I had friends I could stay with in places like Santa Fe and Houston as this was a trip on a shoestring. 

Can you picture this? A 33 year old 6'2" Neal crammed into a loaded and aging bright yellow mid engined 2 liter Porsche 914, with rusting heater boxes and paint peeling off the hood, gone for three months, driving endless hours first to New Orleans, then to Houston meeting with Anne Tucker, then Santa Fe staying with my friend Ed Ranney, then Tempe and Tucson to visit with Harold Jones and Todd Walker,  Prescott to see Fred Sommer, photographing daily, back home again with a few days in DC. Me, a box of prints, camera gear, tripod and some clothes. And bags and bags of exposed film when I got home.

Want to see some of the work I made from that trip? On the site: here.

Sabbatical. Take one if you can.