#2445U

I was listening to a podcast about aphantasia today and it made me think about my relationship with photography. Aphantasia is when someone doesn’t have a “mind’s eye”, ie. they can’t visualize things in their head. Some people have strong visual imaginations, they can see close to realistic looking objects in their mind. When they imagine for example a red apple, they see vivid colors, a clearly defined shape, texture, light reflecting off of the waxy surface of the apple, almost like seeing it in real life. On the other end of the spectrum there are people who see nothing. Try as they might, they cannot conjure up an image mentally, it’s just all black, with the general concept or idea of the thing taking the place of a visual image.

As with most things in life, this is a spectrum and most people fall somewhere in the middle. While I don’t think I have aphantasia, I feel that I am closer to that end of the spectrum than the fully vivid, technicolor, shiny apple end. When I try to imagine things, the images are blurry, vague, with most of my imagination taken up by the concept. I see things as if they are behind a fog, or far away. There is a general shape and some coloring, but I can’t see details and most importantly I can’t imagine complex images. One apple? Maybe. But ask me to imagine a bowl of fruit on a table and I can only do one at a time, the table, or the bowl, or the individual pieces of fruit.

I think that this is part of the reason why I struggle with what photographers call “previsualizing” - imagining a picture before taking it. Many photographers use this method to figure out the picture they want, then creating it in real life. In constructed photography, like posed fashion shoots or still life type work, this is highly important. You need to know what you want the final image to look like, so you can figure out the perspective, composition, arrangement, lighting, etc. Maybe it’s no accident that I’m not very good at this type of photography.

Even in documentary genres, especially when working on larger projects, photographers often go out into the field with an idea of the image they are looking for. They don’t arrange the scene of course, but they know what picture they need for the project and can actively look for it, compose for it, place themselves in a situation that is likely to produce that image. It can help with simple things as well, like picking the time of day to shoot to get the quality of light you want.

For me, all of this is a struggle and most often makes me more confused than prepared. So I’m thinking, this might be part of why I gravitate towards more reactive types of photography, like reportage or street photography. In these genres, I place myself in a situation that has interesting content and be open to seeing pictures as they come together. I don’t need to plan shots ahead, I can instead rely on my intuition and quick reaction to see a moment coming and capture it. I can compose through the viewfinder, but I need something to be in front of the lens to know how I want to photograph it.

During photojournalism school I often struggled with exercises where I had to come up with concepts in advance and then go out and photograph them. I ended up putting this down as a symptom of my ADHD: planning is not my strong suit. I get lost in the weeds and I get anxious about needing to nail down every detail. My concepts and project plans come out overly complex and baroque and more often than not completely abstract. I then struggle to create reality based images that form a coherent photo series based on these plans. And I do think that ADHD is part of the picture. But part of it might be my weak visual imagination. I can’t really “picture” images, so I fall back on abstract concepts to feel like I’ve come up with something.

Over the past year I feel I’ve learned a lot about myself through learning and practicing documentary-style photography. One of the bigger lessons is that I need to lean into my strengths and stop trying to force myself to make photography in a way that doesn’t come naturally to me. I’ve learned that “coming up with a project” for me means a very basic starting idea, rooted in reality, like an event or a place or environment. I then need to immediately go out and try shooting in that environment. I can’t come up with a well rounded project in advance, but I can learn from the pictures I’m taking what the project is. I don’t plan, instead I discover the project. My work emerges from the picture taking, and for that I need to be out there, trying things and seeing where they lead.

Well, anyways.