Susan Currie - "Prajna 4" and "Prajna 5"
I spent the first chapter of my creative path very much seeking certainty - keeping current with the technical aspects of making photographs and striving for precision consumed much of my time and attention. I enjoyed some success along that way, but always sensed within my heart that there were other pictures that needed expressing. The Zen monk and teacher Shunryu Suzuki is credited with coining the concept of “don’t know mind”, sometimes referred to as “beginner’s mind”. It instructs of the freedom and the wisdom that is possible in emptying the mind of what we are certain of and allowing ourselves to want to understand anew. It’s an approach to living which was introduced to me through my twenty-year practice of yoga and which, in recent years, has rather naturally spilled over into my practice as an artist and brought much broader margins to my work.
Threading into my creative work wisdom such as Suzuki’s, and other tenets of yoga’s eight-limbed path such as “nonaggression", granted me the ease to see through the lens with a newfound sense of wonder. Whereas much of my early career in photography had been fairly limited to capturing portraits, I soon began to pause at forgotten fields, cast objects and the subtleties in the common. It was such an exhale for me personally to finally comprehend what the beloved photography curator Hugh Edwards once professed, “There are no symbols, no cliches, to distort the beauty of simple things simply seen.” I found myself sitting with these (often imperfect) images I would make in ways which I had not with any previous work. They for me had mystic qualities and in some ways a bit more to say?
In this recalculation of sorts, I began to use my photographs as writing prompts for poetic or free verse. Over time, my blended work began to be published here and there. I’m humbled by the poems these edits to my creative process have sparked, as this was not something I ever would have or could have predicted back in the days of weighted down with a host of gear. I one hundred percent credit my pivot toward a greater intellectual humility as that inflection moment which awakened my “beginner’s mind” and thus my true brushstroke as an artist.
My days now unfold foraging silence, making art and teaching my signature creative process which emphasizes personal “collection time” in advance of clicking the shutter or picking up that pen and paper. In these settings I also champion the idea of art as a spiritual practice, with an emphasis on practice. With my students, I often share the words of John Keats…
“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness; but still will keep a bower quiet for us, and a sleep full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.”
My experience is that in building into our days (non-negotiable) sacred space and making some personal record of beauty we have the opportunity to nourish ourself and source the resilience so essential in the rush of our modern world. There’s a magic that is possible to every body in releasing the certainty of it all and relaxing some of the aggression and judgement we bring to the easel or to the camera or to whatever may be our creative step away.
My new book, GRACENOTES, (2017 Shanti Arts) continues my practice of using a fusion of words and images to illuminate the quiet pulses of every day beauty upon which I stumble. I’ve termed these findings “gracenotes”, and I invite readers to use the journaling pages sprinkled throughout my book to record their own… to keep that “bower quiet”. The attached image samples a recent “gracenote” captured as I roamed the streets of Paris this early springtime. Wandering along the Sienne, with few expectations, in the bustle...into the mystery I roamed. Simply, seeing.
Threading into my creative work wisdom such as Suzuki’s, and other tenets of yoga’s eight-limbed path such as “nonaggression", granted me the ease to see through the lens with a newfound sense of wonder. Whereas much of my early career in photography had been fairly limited to capturing portraits, I soon began to pause at forgotten fields, cast objects and the subtleties in the common. It was such an exhale for me personally to finally comprehend what the beloved photography curator Hugh Edwards once professed, “There are no symbols, no cliches, to distort the beauty of simple things simply seen.” I found myself sitting with these (often imperfect) images I would make in ways which I had not with any previous work. They for me had mystic qualities and in some ways a bit more to say?
In this recalculation of sorts, I began to use my photographs as writing prompts for poetic or free verse. Over time, my blended work began to be published here and there. I’m humbled by the poems these edits to my creative process have sparked, as this was not something I ever would have or could have predicted back in the days of weighted down with a host of gear. I one hundred percent credit my pivot toward a greater intellectual humility as that inflection moment which awakened my “beginner’s mind” and thus my true brushstroke as an artist.
My days now unfold foraging silence, making art and teaching my signature creative process which emphasizes personal “collection time” in advance of clicking the shutter or picking up that pen and paper. In these settings I also champion the idea of art as a spiritual practice, with an emphasis on practice. With my students, I often share the words of John Keats…
“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness; but still will keep a bower quiet for us, and a sleep full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.”
My experience is that in building into our days (non-negotiable) sacred space and making some personal record of beauty we have the opportunity to nourish ourself and source the resilience so essential in the rush of our modern world. There’s a magic that is possible to every body in releasing the certainty of it all and relaxing some of the aggression and judgement we bring to the easel or to the camera or to whatever may be our creative step away.
My new book, GRACENOTES, (2017 Shanti Arts) continues my practice of using a fusion of words and images to illuminate the quiet pulses of every day beauty upon which I stumble. I’ve termed these findings “gracenotes”, and I invite readers to use the journaling pages sprinkled throughout my book to record their own… to keep that “bower quiet”. The attached image samples a recent “gracenote” captured as I roamed the streets of Paris this early springtime. Wandering along the Sienne, with few expectations, in the bustle...into the mystery I roamed. Simply, seeing.
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Susan Currie is a Boston-based photographer and writer. Her second book GRACENOTES, a blend of visual and verse, was published in 2018 by Shanti Arts. Susan teaches a variety of creative workshops and retreats throughout the country where she shares her signature "slow shooting" approach to making images.
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