Book Review: Karr, A. and Wood, M. (2011). The practice of contemplative photography.

Australian edition cover

Karr, A. and Wood, M. (2011). The practice of contemplative photography. Boston: Shambhala.

This book was something of a revelation when I bought it at the start of my formal photography education, but as I quickly became immersed in projects, assignments, and academic reading requirements, I never had much time to devote to it.  Eventually it came to take up space in a box from which it was retrieved only a few months ago after saying an at least temporary farewell to the photography program to which I have been a part for the past three years.  The emphasis there was on conceptual practice, photography work that is planned, preconceived, and placed within an appropriate academic context.  Such work is rarely devoted to discovering the sensorium, but is instead devoted to depicting how one conceives the sensorium.  There might be some disconnect, some disjuncture between one’s concept and what one was able to depict, and to that degree there might be room for discovery, but the work proceeds from the idea that the sensorium is best understood through concept rather than experience.  Given that this kind of practice takes place within an academic context, a world that trades on words and ideas, it is difficult to see how it could be otherwise.  

This book - and others like it - offers an approach that seeks to connect to the experience of the sensorium before it is overlaid with words and ideas, of discovering life in its most essential form. To do this requires giving up the need for stimulation - for entertainment - and learning to relax the mind, the practice of patience and returning one’s attention to the unfolding of experience.  The method described here is not confined to photographic practice, but is available in all places and at all times to those who begin with the intention to see clearly.  By learning to do so, the mind is freed from expectations and learns to experience the world afresh, as it appears before layered with words and ideas. “Seeing things as they are is also accepting them as they are, which leads to appreciating them as they are.”  

And what more could we possibly ask from photography?  

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