How can you expect a beholder to experience my picture as I experienced it? A picture comes to me a long time beforehand; who knows how long a time beforehand, I sensed, saw, and painted it and yet the next day even I do not understand what I have done. How can anyone penetrate my dreams, my instincts, my desires, my thought, which have taken a long time to fashion themselves and come to the surface, above all to grasp what I put there, perhaps involuntary.
—Pablo Picasso
Alfred Stieglitz promoted the idea of equivalence in photography, requiring that a photographer aim “to record something so completely that those who see it will relive an experience of what had been expressed.” The idea of equivalence resonated deeply with such artists as Ansel Adams, Minor White, Georgia O’Keeffe, and others. For many years, I, too, believed in equivalence and strived to achieve it in my own work—with mixed success. I no longer do. In fact, I now believe that the most profitable way to engage in creative work—photographic or other—is to ignore completely the goal of equivalence: the goal of striving to make others feel—to “relive”—exactly what I have experienced and what it meant to me.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the word “expressive” as (among other things) “effectively conveying meaning or feeling.” In this sense, equivalent photographs are expressive in a narrow and specific way: they express not just any meaning or feeling, but a photographer’s own authentic meanings or feelings. Put another way, a photograph that expresses just aesthetic appeal or any meaning the photographer did not in fact feel, is not an “equivalent,” no matter how successful it may be by any other measure.
Further, let’s not ignore the very high bar set in the definition above, which requires expressive art to not just convey meaning or feeling, but to do so effectively. To convey a meaning effectively, both artist and beholder of art must share an understanding of that meaning and recognize the ways this meaning can be conveyed (metaphorically) in an artwork. This means that an equivalent photograph must not risk trespassing beyond the shallow and narrow range of shared meanings and feelings understood intuitively by both artist and beholder. Put another way, striving for equivalence demands that artists refrain from attempting to express in their work meanings that are highly complex, deeply personal, relying on esoteric knowledge or on having some shared life experiences, or outright ineffable.
With this realization—and given that my own interest in making art is rooted entirely in my desire to experience and to contemplate complex and personally profound meanings—the pursuit of equivalence came to be a non-starter for me and I decided to put it out of my mind when creating.
Still, despite not aspiring for equivalence, I do very much strive to express meanings and feelings in my work—not just appealing aesthetics or objective testimonies to my encounters with certain things and places. I just don’t worry too much about doing so effectively. That is, I don’t bother with whether another person will even recognize, let alone “relive” the meanings I wish to convey. Convey to whom, then? To myself.
On its face, this may seem an odd proposition. Why bother conveying meaning to the one person who ostensibly already knows it? The answer: this person in fact doesn’t know it, and may not know it if I did not make the conscious effort to distill, become mindful of, contemplate, and attempt to express this meaning—at least not beyond a simplified and superficial version of it.
This is because this person is, practically speaking, just one “tenant” in my psyche: a product of processes in my brain giving rise to the illusion of being a singular, unified entity that I sometimes casually refers to as “I” without considering that “I” is profoundly lacking in insight into most of what the rest of my brain does—most notably the (potentially deep and important) feelings and perceptions generated by other—unconscious—parts of my brain. As neuroscientist David Eagleman described it (in an interview with physicist and philosopher Sean Carroll), “The conscious part of you is like a broom closet in the mansion of the brain, and almost everything going on, you don’t have access to, and you don’t even have awareness of.”
In striving to express complex inner meanings to my “I,” I am doing two things: I prompt myself to become conscious of meanings and aspects of my experience that I may otherwise never even consider (i.e., I make myself more mindful), and I invest cognitive resources in deriving and assimilating these meanings that may otherwise be claimed by various lesser distractions. In a sense, by striving to recognize and express such complex inner meanings, I extend my consciousness—my awareness of the depth and complexity of my present experience—beyond the default range of meanings “approved” for my “I” to be aware of by automated mechanisms in my brain, sometimes referred to as attention filters.
Attention filters are mechanisms in the brain that discard the great majority of information detected by the senses and/or generated by unconscious brain processes, deeming them unimportant to bother the conscious “I” with. Attention filters also prioritize some feelings, perceptions, and responses over others, not because those other feelings and perceptions are any less important or meaningful, but because these filters have been configured by evolutionary processes aiming to maximize my odds of survival and passing on my genes. This despite my “I”s disinterest in the latter and the fact that many former existential threats are no longer so. Also, these filters did not evolve to increase my “I”s joy in such things as abstract thinking, art making, and philosophical contemplation.
Striving to express myself to myself is, therefore, a way for my “I” to free itself (at least to a degree) from the tyranny of unconscious brain processes when deciding what meaning I derive of my experiences, and to do so according to my own consciously decided priorities. In this sense, it is the same goal trained by and resulting from various forms of meditation and the practice of mindfulness: the deepening of my conscious awareness of myself and of things in the world that may inspire (sometimes great) meanings unrelated to my existential needs, by taking conscious control of my attention, directing it at will, preventing it from being hijacked by lesser distractions, and applying it deliberately where it may yield me the highest rewards.
Thus, we can say that expressive art may be most powerful when it is decidedly not equivalent by Stieglitz’s definition: not intended to convey some precise, preconceived, unambiguous meaning from one person to another. This is because the more complex and personal a meaning is, the more likely it is that others will not be able to fully (or at all) comprehend, relate to, and “relive” it, regardless of the medium used to express it. Insistence on equivalence, therefore, may prevent artists from embracing and channeling into their art the deepest personal meanings they are capable of—for the lesser reward of perhaps creating a popularly appealing product.
To turn to art to convey a prescribed and obvious meaning seems ill-conceived, if for no other reason than because equivalence of meaning may be accomplished much more effectively by way of factual use of spoken or written language than in any form of artistic production. Given that artistic expression is by nature ambiguous, I believe it is better to think of expressive art not as a mechanism for conveying “equivalent” meaning to others, but as a way of broadening, deepening, and making oneself more aware of meanings that may be found in one’s own experiences.
What about viewers of such art? What do they get from beholding a work whose meaning (to its creator) is likely beyond their ability to understand and “relive”? The answer: they get the very same value from such work that its creator did: a prompting to consider, to make, and to experience their own meanings. Indeed, we might say that the finest and most compelling works of expressive art are those that intuitively inspire their creators and beholders to seek and to strive to maximize such personal, inner meanings—not those that seek to impose an artist’s meaning on their audience regardless of whether they find this meaning interesting or relatable.
In contemplating a work of expressive art, both artists and beholders must ask themselves the same question: what is the deepest and most satisfying meaning I can find in this artwork? Indeed, each of us must accustom ourselves to ask this question not just once but each time we create or behold a work of art. This is because our sense of meaning is not a fixed quantity; it may be affected by such factors as our mood on a given day, our knowledge and understanding of art, of the world, and of ourselves at a given time, our life experiences, our level of emotional maturity. Consider how many people may behold a given work of art and find no meaning at all in it, whereas others may consider it a work of genius. It seems to me the most fruitful attitude toward art is to aspire to be among the latter group (and this has nothing at all to do with whether the work’s creator was in fact a genius).
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I am certain that no person looking at my work can imagine exactly what it was like to me to make it: the experiences that led up to it, filtered through my own personality, mood, feelings, and thoughts; the emotions experienced in the course of first conceiving and later producing it; and the feelings aroused in me when I look at my own finished work (sometimes multiple times after I considered it finished but later felt moved to take further). This type of equivalence, or even something just close to it, is not what I expect—or have any right to expect—of my audience.
I urge you to ask yourself each time you see one of my works what it means to you—to the person that you are, with your own sensibilities, life experiences, emotional makeup, beliefs: the immensely complex tapestry of factors that make you, you. Before anything else, I hope my work tempts you to extract whatever meaning you may find in it that is most rewarding and elevating to you.
Of course, you may also consider it interesting to attempt to imagine what my works may mean to me, if you suspect that this knowledge may inform or even enhance your own impressions. If so, I am grateful and consider it an honor. But please recognize that these impressions, too, would most likely be as much a product of your own mind as accurate estimates of the meanings I attempted to convey—to myself 🙂
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Happy New Year, everyone!
—Guy
I completely agree. Just having a camera in my hand and looking, effectively stops my brain filtering. My looking and experiencing is my own personal joy. If it gets translated into an effective work of art, so be it. If not, the experience of making it is enough.
Just a note as long as you’re quoting Picasso. When I was young living in NYC, I’d visit The Museum of Modern Art a lot and on one wall was this enormous painting by Picasso titled Guernica. I loved looking at that painting and it touched me deeply. It was only many years later living in CA that I read that it was painted in response to the Spanish Civil War. I got none of that from my visits to that painting. So much for equivelance. I have no idea what Steiglitz was experiencing making a photo of the Flatiron building, but that doesn’t detract from my appreciating it..
Thank you, Dan! I agree about the value of the experience of making.
I was also inspired by Guernica when I saw it, but by then I already knew what it was and Cubism was already widely accepted as a valid an important art movement. I have to wonder if I would have been as impressed with it if I saw it without this background, like the original critics of Cubism (and many other abstract art movements) who often panned anything that departed from the norm (see Monet, Cezanne, Kandinsky, and many others). A good reminder to let go of expectations and “rules” when it comes to art, and to not stand in our own way of appreciating it for what it is.
Thank you for sharing your ‘inner expression’, Guy. Your comments and words cause me to slow down when I am reading them as they seem complicated and contain thoughts that are foreign to me and my brain, and I need time to absorb them or digest them if you will. There are times, that I might have to come back to them a time or two. Then other times, while reading your books-they just resonate with me and I find myself saying, “Yes, that is it!”. Maybe I’m a bit like A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh–“For I am a bear of very simple brain and long words bother me.” For me it is the complicated deep thoughts that bother my simple brain. Thank you again, Guy. May 2025 be a wonderful, healthy and happy new year for you.
Thank you, Shari! Ultimately, there is so much to learn and to understand that all of us are simple brains in some ways and some contexts. The joy, at least for me, is in trying to figure things out. Immanuel Kant used this analogy in his description of the sublime:
“Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt.”
I understand your comments about the reasons not to be straightjacketed by the notion or goal of creating an equivalent.
Given the multiplicity of I’s that we may have greater or lesser access to, it is interesting to consider the practice of titling an image. From which “I” does the title emerge? Some titles may appear to be totally obvious and mundane. Others may come about after considerable time spent contemplating and/or editing an image. A title may nudge the viewer to approach or approximate some meaning or feature that belongs to the artist. Some viewers may welcome this and others might resent having to accommodate their viewing experience to the title that belongs to the image creator.
That’s a very good point. Ansel Adams, despite considering himself expressive and being a believer in equivalence, only gave his images factual (i.e., not expressive/personal) titles. Some artists avoided titling their works altogether to not bias their viewers, or because they felt that what they wanted to express visually or poetically may be diminished by associating it with less expressive words. I have no problem giving my work titles that are expressive of my own meaning, but I don’t fault anyone who may choose to ignore them. I do it all the time. For example, I love Mendelssohn’s “The Hebrides” even though I’ve never been to the islands, and to me the music is more expressive of my experiences hiking in the desert rapt in thoughts.
I thank you for your very interesting and philosophical writings. I own and have read three of your books, and I found them equally inspiring. However, there is one thing that continues to frustrate me. You consistently write about the importance of the meaning of an image to the creator, as well as to the beholder. But I have never found one example of what that meaning could be. To understand what could constitute a meaning, I would need just one single example. I realize that this is very subjective, but it would certainly help me comprehend the scope of what you are writing.
By the way, I am an American living in Germany and just happened upon your first book In what I remember as being a lovely little gift and coffee shop in your hometown. What a lovely discovery.
Thank you, Karen! You can think of meaning as significance. The artists finds it significant (i.e., has a reason) to create the artwork, and each viewer may or may not consider an artwork significant in their own way. For example, a religious person may look at an artwork depicting majestic scene and find it significant because it arouses in them reverence for the divine. A nonreligious person may look at the same scene and appreciate its wildness, romance, the forces of nature at work, humility before the immensity of the cosmos, etc.
These are all simple examples to make the point. In truth, many artworks inspire much more complex meanings than can be described in words. This is especially true for music since it doesn’t represent (literally re-present) any physical object; it just inspires feelings by stimulating the brain.
Given the magnitude of this topic, I feel like I need to write a longer text specifically about it. Maybe in the coming weeks.
Your thoughts are brilliant! I always find it very enriching when viewers of my photos see something different in them and I am challenged to engage with them. When I see art, I usually ask myself what the creator’s motives are. Even if they may not be the same as mine. But that is exactly what is enriching about art.
And if I can’t recognise a masterpiece as such, then that probably has something to do with my own “limitations”, doesn’t it?
It may be limitations, but I think in a greater sense it’s just differences (in knowledge, personality, life experiences, temperament, etc.).
“As the saying goes, we see in terms of our education. We look at the world and see what we have learned to believe is there. We have been conditioned to expect. And indeed it is socially useful that we agree on the function of objects. But, as photographers, we must learn to relax our beliefs.” —Aaron Siskind
Barthes, Roland
The death of the author …
Exactly right. Except he was referring specifically to text. I think it holds true for any form of expression.
When I look at another artist’s works such as yours I try to not think but rather let the default network in my brain suggest a meaning. The default network by the way is a part of your subconscious brain that only becomes active when the mind is at rest. A good friend of mine whose work I deeply admire frequently shares his photographs with me and two other friends. I don’t always connect with them but when I do I let him know what my experience is. It rarely aligns with what he has in mind. When one of the other friends respondit’s a simple word like ‘Beautiful.’ I get that a lot with the phographs I share on Facebook.
When I look at another photograph and stop thinking, the default network kicks in and scans the experiences or episodes as the psychologists call them stored in my brain. Sometimes it comes up with something and sometimes it doesn’t. When it does come up with something it shoots it into my conscious brain.
But here’s what ties in with the point you are making. The episodes or life experiences stored in my brain are not the same as those stored in my friend’s brain. And that holds for those that view my photographs. So, when one makes the effort to experience a work of art in this way, it’s a given that their experience will be different from the artist’s because they have different life experiences.
So, nice try Stieglitz. However, there is a lesson for those of us who make photographs. Landscape photographs can go beyond aesthetics. They can also be expressive which the photographer can strive for. Just don’t expect your viewers to react the same way you do.
Very well stated, Ralph! I agree.
Thanks for your interesting thoughts. We are more into abstract art and hope that art is changing our way of thinking. We find the intellectual side of art inspiring.
Thanks and Cheers
The Fab Four of Cley
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
Thank you!
“The willing beholder responds to the artist’s suggestion because he enjoys the transformation that occurs in front of his eyes. It was in this enjoyment that a new function of art emerged gradually and all but unnoticed during the period we have discussed. The artist gives the beholder increasingly ‘more to do’, he draws him into the magic circle of creation and allows him to experience something of the thrill of ‘making’ which had once been the privilege of the artist. It is the turning point which leads to those visual conundrums of twentieth-century art that challenge our ingenuity and make us search our own minds for the unexpressed and inarticulate.” —E.H. Gombrich
Super interesting ideas and arguments, Guy. I think the default position of landscape photographers who’ve heard of Stieglitz is to accept Equivalence as real and believable so I commend you for taking a different position and arguing it strongly. I’ve personally always struggled with it while trying desperately to manifest it. Perhaps your strongest statement, “…we might say that the finest and most compelling works of expressive art are those that intuitively inspire their creators and beholders to seek and to strive to maximize such personal, inner meanings,” is most agreeable with me and a powerful closing argument. Thanks for sharing this post and happy new year!
Thank you, Matt!
Yes, our limitations are results of our education, experience, but also our assumptions.
“Your assumptions are the windows through which you see the world,” actor and director Alan Alda once put it. “You have to wipe them clean from time to time to let the light in”.
I always try to remember that.