Photographing Feelings
I’m Brad Carr, and I write open and emotive essays about life, light, and landscape. I also run group workshops and creative retreats, and am available for private tuition and mentoring.
This essay features in my upcoming photobook, Finding Light. To preorder, click here.
It has taken me a long time to come to terms with the fact that I am different – ‘different’ being that I am a man and I am not afraid to admit that I have feelings and experience emotions. For many years, I did all that I could to conceal them from the world because it wasn’t always safe as a young man surrounded by other young men to be sensitive, open, fragile, and vulnerable. My face, however, could never hide the truth for too long, and my stepfathers and peers could always tell exactly when they had pressed my buttons in the right ways to cause me to give my energy away to them.
It seems now to the adult version of me to be an absolute absurdity that anyone would ever want to be anything other than deeply sensitive; sensitive to beauty; sensitive to the pain that makes us so receptive to this beauty, and sensitive to the natural world and all its’ inhabitants despite their mistakes, flaws and imperfections. At one point in our formative years, we were all sensitive to the touch of our mothers’ soft hands upon our skin and the sound of her gentle voice in our ears. Why then, I ask, do we spend most of our lives desperately trying to abandon our true selves and forget our true nature? In a world quickly overrun by data and machines – machines that can now apparently ‘create’ art – maybe it is time that we doubled down on what makes us human. That means excavating and exploring the worlds we have kept hidden inside our fragile hearts for so long.
Photography has given me a platform to express many of the deep-rooted emotions that have been locked inside the safety of this world for as long as I can remember. Due to the turbulent nature of my younger years, I naturally developed an unusual (for a man in this modern world, at least) depth of emotional intelligence. The pathways of my inner landscape, it could be said, have been well-trodden since my birth.
A Journey Towards Authentic Self-Expression
It is now approaching seven years since I first picked up my sister’s camera to begin the journey towards my full expression. When starting with photography, I quickly learned how to navigate the technicalities of the equipment, and I have since been using the medium to access and communicate from the depths of my soul. The thought of creating photographs to represent or document a place and time offered little stimulation to me early on in my creative journey.
What was always much more interesting to me was the thought of being able to ‘say’ something beyond words – to have found a way to express the appreciation for the beauty that I have felt in the deepest corners of my heart since I entered this world. It seems to have come naturally to me to have found my source of fuel for creativity by drilling down into these corners. Despite my ego occasionally resisting the opening of my heart, my creations, I believe, are a further excavation of my inner landscape, revealing greater depths within myself. I often wonder how much treasure there is left to discover.
Embracing the Artists’ Role
It has taken me a while to find comfort in referring to my photographs as ‘art’. This seems to be a conflict that many photographers face as they reach a certain point in their respective creative journeys. I have also, therefore, felt uncomfortable calling myself an ‘artist’ for a long time, although I seem to bear no resistance at all to doing so now that I further understand the depths from which my photographs have been created after seven years of deep reflection, soul-searching and venturing into the darkness of my younger years to understand myself.
Only yesterday, was I having a conversation with two wonderful, kindred souls - Elfin and John, musicians from north Wales and creators of The North Cafe Project - when John told me that he hears music when looking at my photographs. That, perhaps, points to something universal contained within the work; a language that is beyond words; something that awakened something within another person - another ‘artist’. Maybe, then, the artist is, quite simply, someone who communicates through their ‘feelings’, and uses the ‘thinking’ brain as a tool to translate whatever stimulation they become aware of within to awaken feelings within another person through whatever medium they choose.
It seems to me to be simple now: if you wish to communicate something from within to share a message with the world – something that goes beyond, perhaps, the recording of a time or a place for documentary purposes – then why should you not call your creations ‘art’? A photograph can, on one hand, be ‘of’ something, but it can, more importantly to me, be ‘about’ something – or someone – too.
It may have taken me over thirty years, but I realise now that I was born to be an artist; to share my inner world of thoughts and feelings with the outer world; to share my lived experiences; and to articulate what it means to be a human being living in this physical world, and existing, simultaneously, in the often forgotten and unexplored world of spirit. All the complex early life events that once caused me so much pain and confusion, I now understand, happened for me to be here, doing this – a thought I often bear when I am opening the shutter of my camera to translate the feelings of my inner world as they reflect in what I see outside of me.
Perhaps my increasing desperation to share such parts of my soul comes because of my unconscious decision to keep so much of myself hidden (and, therefore, safe) from the world following the years of psychological, emotional, and, occasionally, physical abuse that I witnessed and received in my childhood home – abuse that was often directed towards me for simply being myself.
For many years, I held back a fundamental part of who I was to remain safe and survive in a cruel and volatile environment. The art of photography is helping me to accept and embrace the other half of me who has always been in tune with his feelings, senses, and intuition. I have succeeded where my father figures failed and achieved something they could not, by making peace with and calling back the fragmented parts of my soul. I am more integrated and whole for having embraced the role of the artist and created maps of my inner world.
Finding Stillness
The theme of ‘stillness’ is consistent throughout my work and has been present since my earliest creations. It appears my soul has always been drawn to create in the precious moments when the world falls silent and the masses have abandoned the wild landscapes for the safety and comfort found within their homes, leaving me at peace in my solitude for a few brief moments at least.
I was recently asked what it is I am looking for when creating. I paused for a moment upon hearing the man’s probing question and then placed my hand upon my heart. The man looked a little perplexed, expecting, perhaps, an answer from my mouth – an answer that I gave him eventually when he went on to ask me what I meant. I proceeded to tell him that it is a feeling that I am looking for initially before I am drawn to create something. I seek the ephemeral state of presence that a quiet mind and a heart filled with song can bring. My mind, I explained, often becomes entranced by the entangling branches in the canopy above, the glittering leaves that are backlit by the warm morning’s sun, or the ripples that dance gracefully across the mountain lake. Only when the mind is occupied, can I tune into the faint whispers of my soul that longs for a connection with something beyond the comprehension of rational thought and logic.
The photographs containing the most compelling stories in my portfolio were created during those precious moments of inner stillness that I can only experience whilst sitting beneath ancient trees or walking beside a tranquil mountain lake. The memories I have from these moments with Mother Nature show how far I have traveled away from the chaos of my younger years.
I write my stories now as a testament to the healing powers of the trees’ loving embrace, and the power that creativity holds as a force for transformation and transmutation of the pain that so many of us choose to carry for too long throughout our lives. My work, I hope, centered around photographing from this place of feeling, will stand to inspire others to turn our collective pain into creative power so that we can heal together on our individual and shared journey through life – and move closer to the light of love, joy, peace, and harmony during our time here on earth.
This essay features in my upcoming photobook, Finding Light. To preorder, click here.