Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Doors of Perception

What is your perception?


The postman just delivered a fat envelope (one of my favourite things), of negatives and CD's that I had processed.

I'll show off a few more images later, but for now I'm interested in the door photographs below, which I'd completely forgotten I'd taken. I admit I have a vague interest in doors because I'm renovating a house and doors, and door furniture are likely to crop up in the near future.

The title of this blog "Doors of Perception" is a pun and refers to the 1954 book by Aldous Huxley about his experiments with drugs to "open the mind". "Perception" is a term used in psychology to describe a process of awareness that is triggered by outside stimulus. In the case of art and photography, part of the brain is triggered into action by visual perception. What you perceive is a result of your experiences and your culture.

In simple terms, perception can help you find beauty in the mundane and ordinary, which is what, as artists, we are striving for. And perception can be easily developed, simply by looking carefully (awareness) at the world around, and practising your art on a regular basis.

Of course there's no guarantee that the art triggered by perception will be any better than art created by the conscious mind, it's just another way of working.

So it seems that the doors are my proof that perception was at work and can be a driving force for creativity.

Door. Photograph by Tim IrvingDoor No.7

Door. Photograph by Tim IrvingDoor No.20

Door. Photograph by Tim IrvingDoor No.5

3 comments:

  1. Great shots. I find myself photographing doors quite often.

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  2. I had a friend in the late 90's who shot the most beautiful photographs of doors in South America. But she wouldn't photograph windows because they made her sad, bringing to mind people who can see out but are trapped inside.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I did a Photographic project in school on doors, it was really interesting, really nice photos.

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