My wife reading Steven Pressfield's The War of Art
Recently, I bought and read Steven Pressfield’s excellent book, The War of Art : Break Through The Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles. Pressfield, perhaps best known for his novel “The Legend of Bagger Vance”, presents a non-fiction book aimed at writers, artists, musicians and other people attempting to channel and direct their creative energies. This book came highly recommended by some fellow photographers and it didn’t disappoint. And as can be seen from the above picture, my wife Selina became engrossed in it too.
I recently had the opportunity to ask Steven Pressfield three questions. Read on after the jump to see what he had to say about the “free” model, the mechanics of creation, Annie Leibovitz and copyright.
1. There’s been a lot of talk on the internet recently about the “free” business model, whether it be giving work away to get increased access, or for promotional purposes and so forth. What are your thoughts on this?
Craig, I certainly don’t consider myself any kind of expert on this, so please take my answer no more seriously than you would that of the regular man in the street. I actually DO believe in “giving it away.” I’m not sure I can even say why. I definitely believe, as it applies to money, that it’s a good thing to spend money; keep it moving; that way, it comes back to you. So I’d apply the same principle to”giving it away.”
The other thing is Exposure. I can’t prove it but I suspect that we all as artists imagine that X number of people have heard of us or are aware of what we’re doing – when the real number is probably X divided by a thousand. In other words, nobody knows who the hell we are or cares. Therefore, the more we can gain exposure, even giving our stuff away, the higher that number goes and the better chance we have that someone will actually buy our album, or come to our show.
So yeah, I believe in some form of the “free” business model – as long as there’s SOMEPLACE where we actually get paid once in a while.
2. In photographer David du Chemin’s book “Within The Frame“, he says “Photographers, like artists in all disciplines, face a temptation to fall more deeply in love with the way we create our images than with the images themselves and the reasons for those images”. What is your take on this – do creatives run the risk of placing too much attention on the mechanics of creation?
I must say I’ve never even thought of that. Maybe it’s unique to photography, because there’s so much technical skill involved. Off the top of my head, I would say that falling in love with that stuff is a form of Resistance. Maybe I’m wrong. Put a different way, I would go back to the answer to Question 1, in that, to me, “keeping it moving” is more important than falling in love with anything—the work itself or the process of producing it. I don’t know Bob Dylan but I would bet he doesn’t spend a lot of time listening to “Blowin’ in the Wind.” He’s thinking about the album is working on now and, as soon as he’s done with that, he’ll “keep it moving” and zoom on to the next. I could be wrong!
3. Photographer Annie Leibovitz’s financial troubles led to her place the copyright to all her works as collateral in seeking assistance to get out of debt. If someone works so hard to overcome resistance and forge a life as a highly creative person, should they ever consider doing something like this?
Wow, that one’s definitely beyond my pay grade, Craig. I know Francis Ford Coppolla mortgaged himself up the ying-yang doing “Apocalypse Now” and other stuff. Didn’t Dickens do the same? I guess it’s up to the artist himself or herself. Hope that helps!
So there we have it. A big thank you to Steven for generously taking the time to answer these questions and to Callie Oettinger from Oettinger and Associates for making it happen.
I hope this sparks some inspiration in you, the reader. If you haven’t already bought The War of Art, do so now. For more writing in a similar vein, check out Steven’s blog, particularly Writing Wednesdays.
Feel free to share this, tweet this and pass it around. Comments are most welcome – I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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Craig Ferguson Images | Cultural Photography. One of the key aspects of life that we humans identify with is culture. We label people, places and events according to our ideas of what they are, ranging from the broader scale defined by tradition and place down to the small scale subcultures and tribes. Craig Ferguson Images is consistantly creating new visions in the field of cultural photography. From traditional festives and customs to modern, urban subcultures, Craig Ferguson Images is in touch with the changing world. From our base in Taipei, Taiwan we are perfectly positioned at the crossroads of the ancient and the modern.
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