Enchantment

Enchantment produces a Secondary World into which both designer and spectator can enter, to the satisfaction of their senses while they are inside; but in its purity it is artistic in desire and purpose. Magic produces, or pretends to produce, an alteration in the Primary World...it is not an art but a technique; its desire is power in this world, domination of things and wills.

- JRR Tolkien

I'm reading "Defending Middle Earth" by Patrick Curry. He includes the above quote from Tolkien.

It got me thinking about my photography, specifically, my frustration with it lately. Two points of frustration: 1) my photos are not perfectly crystal clear and noise-free like so many photos I see on DA and flickr; 2) my photos don't perfectly and completely capture the moment and place that I photograph.

Both of these are shallow deceptions, and I should know better. This isn't a comment on those photos that DO seem crystal clear and noise-free; and my own philosophical and spiritual experiences have taught me that "the moment" that I'm usually trying to capture is the alchemical mixture of perception and imagination, and so of course a photo can't capture that perfectly and completely.

That is, a photo can't do that simply by being a bare chronicle of the object I photographed. Because THAT is only the perception part; there is still the imaginative aspect. In fact, even the perceptual aspect is stripped down: there is no sound, no feeling, no taste, no smell in a photo.

So what does all this have to do with Enchantment and Magic? I sometimes want my photography to be magical: a technique geared to wield power over the world. I will force my will onto the image. When it doesn't come out perfectly, I am frustrated.

Instead, if I thought of my photography as Enchantment... well, what would that be like? I would simply approach my photography - from the framing of the shot, to the clicking of the shutter, to the post-production - as a way to create a secondary world that both I and my viewers could step into. No forcing of my will on the primary world - we all know what that looks like. This would be a secondary world, one that exists, but not like the primary.