Re: Re[2]: [Leica] Aesthetic qualities of photographs

[pchefurka@plaintree.com]

>>Many great musicians and composers are well documented as being
>>liberated by the use of such mind-altering psycodelics.  Are
>>there any famous photographers who did the same??
     
>Were they liberated, or is it like drinking to stay warm in the
>snow (it's >an illusion, body temperature actually goes down)?
>Or like using Leicas >and thinking it will automatically make
>your pictures look better. :-)
     
The only source of creative liberation is ideas.  Ideas and insights
can be generated by any experience, and the nature of that experience
can not validate or invalidate the ideas that flow from it.  If the
sense of the interconnectedness of all life that can spring from a 
psychedelic experience prompts someone to devote their life to 
improving the human condition, or prompts them to pay more attention 
to the aesthetics of their endeavors, does the fact that their new 
outlook was prompted by a drug experience mean that these changes are 
illusory?  I think not.

On a Leica note - when I finally got back to using Leicas, my pictures 
did get better.  Not because a Leica is somehow an intrinsically 
"better" camera, but because I was conscious of the history of the 
camera and the great photographers who used it.  This awareness caused 
me to try harder, because I felt some sense of responsibility to that 
history.  I did not want to use a camera capable of such greatness for 
mundane and banal snapshots.  It was the *idea* of Leica rather than 
the camera itself that prompted this change.

So no, the psychedelic experience is not like "drinking to stay warm 
in the snow". And I suspect there are many photographers (both great 
and obscure) whose photography has, in some way, been influenced by 
such drugs.  Unless, of course, they didn't inhale...

Paul Chefurka