Question: how many Zen Buddhists do you need to take a photograph?
Answer: None. The photograph takes itself!
Well, even I’m not satisfied with that as an answer. Obviously, you need some human intervention. But what sort?
Standard Zen photos seem to major on things like carefully raked sand or gravel; piles of pebbles; long exposure shots of the sea; distant horizons with nothing in the foreground; and so on. The recurring theme is stillness or calm but the subjects are very hackneyed. Moreover, in my understanding of Zen practice, calmness is not to be preferred over any other mental state. If you seek it out you simply have yet another attachment. It may or may not be a by-product of the practice, that’s all. So what are we aiming for?
In The Zen of Creativity (Ballantine Books, 2005) John Daido Loori says that the essence is ‘no intent’. “The activity, whatever it may be, is not forced or strained. The art just slips through the intellectual filters, without conscious effort and without planning…..a continuous stream of spontaneity.” At its heart, it seems to be an absence of expectation. With photography, that is very difficult to achieve since hovering in the background there is always the idea of “good” photography and “bad” photography. This is something we have to get over, to banish from our minds.
So when I finished my recent retreat I was interested to see what sort of photographs would emerge from the 24 hours or so of the post-retreat period – a walk in the surrounding countryside and then up the coast. Here are several examples below so you can make up your own mind about whether or not they have any quality in common.
Abandoned street lamps, Crosby
Weathered Barn, Crosby.
Liverpool blitz debris, Crosby.
Coastal scene with disused groynes, Crosby.
Unidentified structure with graffiti, Crosby.
Well. To my eye the answer is a resounding “Maybe”. They re possibly a little over-pictorial (just nice pictures) but perhaps they do have a good slow pulse as well.