Glimpses 07 – March 2009

The body learns. I initially learned to appreciate this in Yoga – my teachers would repeat ideas over and over for years. They do this because they know that it can take years of repetition and observation for an idea to bind itself to experience – then it becomes knowledge. In a similar fashion, I Initially thought this edition of Glimpses would be short and centered around an image. As I sat down to write it – the past seemed to reach out into the present and to appear in a new light. So at the heart of it there is still an image – but it is about the magic that led to it.  I am again going back in time to revisit the first “Sweet” sessions with Shahar, Tal & Eran.

In one of the sessions Shahar suggested that I choose a body part to focus my attention and work. I chose to work with the upper part of the torso – the shoulders and neck. Then Shahar suggested I introduce a change by choosing another body part. Some minutes later I started focusing on hands. Tal & Eran seemed to acknowledge my choice (though I did not say anything about this to anyone else) and their dance became a dance of hands.

Some time later, when I got around to browsing the images from the session I came across this pair of sequential images. They were taken a few minutes before I made the conscious choice to change focus from shoulders to hands (in the sequence, they appear amongst the shoulder images).  To this day I wonder about the nature of “my choice”.

As this edition of Glimpses was moving within me, I recalled a question I have engaged numerous times over the past years – how can I express my presence, photographically, in a physical space of movement?

• Initially I searched for “technical variations” such as photographic exposure settings.
• Then I explored “mechanical variations” such as replacing zoom lenses with fixed focal length lenses (which caused me to travel the space with my legs instead of my wrist), manual focus, etc.
• During the last Orchard Labs projects I learned to experience, appreciate and work with a new perspective on composition. One that is based on my position in the space (and it’s affect on  the composition of the space) in addition to what is framed in the camera (classic composition).
• I am now realizing that I can move on a more subtle level – small shifts of my intentions and interests (magic!) can cause a shift in many other aspects of my work and interaction with others in the space.

Thinking back to the unconscious transition from shoulders to hand now takes me to a new experience. What if it is not me that made that choice to change? What if that same choice manifested itself in the dancers as it did through me? I now recall with a deeper understanding a phrase Shahar introduced that describes an intricate dance that takes place in our work: “Conscious intent and Unconscious motivations”. Indeed!