Attention with intention.
The importance of meaning in the creative process.
Every month on the BreatheSync instagram feed we feature someone who inspires us and hopefully you too. Last month Carlo Navato, one of the founding partners of the awesome Do Lectures, and a master craftsman of buildings and images was our featured artist.
The first set of images featured the poem Wild Geese by Mary Oliver. And then the second set the poem God’s Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins
As well as being a great friend he also is one of the rare people that brings a profound sense of meaning to his work along with a lightness of touch that allows and honours our full spectrum of feeling and being. Here he shares a few words on his approach:
Why did you agree to the collaboration?
Michael is an old friend and the work he is doing making meditation, understanding the breath and yoga, accessible to many, is important. When he approached me about a collaboration I was delighted and flattered, so agreeing was easy.
How did you approach it?
My photographic work is characterised by an interest in our multi-dimensional relationship with landscape and aims to depict the mutable qualities and complexity of urban and edgeland environments. There is abundant materiality found there and I like to simultaneously examine place and spatial context on both a physical and psychological level. The work seeks to explore and question notions of transition, place attachment, memory and identity.
How does your relationship with breathing affect your creative work?
I have had my own daily meditation practice for some time now and I can honestly say that it is a wonderful way to enter a flow state. Flow states have interested me since reading Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi’s seminal work Flow many years ago. It is from this deeply concentrated or ‘altered’ mindset that much great creative work gets done. I find the similarity between a meditative focus on the breath, and the zone that seems to envelop the best photographic experiences, particularly in the landscape, hauntingly similar.
Do you have any favorite images that were featured and why?
I have a strangely compelling relationship with the windsock that is the subject of my image Direction. This is situated in a historically important contested landscape that was the subject of my Masters thesis work at Goldsmiths, and is something I came back to time and again over a two-year period. I have a whole box of printed images of the windsock in different seasons, at different times of day, and from different angles. For me it signifies change — change of direction, change of energy, change of position, but also security. The windsock’s principle job is, after all, to assist pilots in calibrating the best approach to landing and landing safely.
I’m also fond of Another place — the lady came into position as I was setting up my tripod to photograph Gormley’s hauntingly sublime sculptures on Crosby beach, and thus provided the subject matter for an image that I hadn’t intended to make. It brings to mind Robert Adam’s wonderful quote:
At our best and most fortunate we make pictures because of what stands before our camera, to honour what is greater and more interesting than we are. We never accomplish this perfectly, though in return we are given something perfect–a sense of inclusion. Our subject thus redefines us, and is part of the biography by which we want to be known.
Any advice for budding photographers or creatives?
Do the work. Make the practice of image-making or the creation of other art, a process, a habit, an exploration. We all see the world in a unique manner and that is why no two photographers or artists will make the same work when presented with the same raw materials. Be original. Experiment, challenge yourself and above all create work that is personal, meaningful and intentional. Work that is produced viscerally and with specific intent, is likely to be good work. Mark Twain said:
You cannot depend on your eyes if your imagination is out of focus.
Do not be a victim of chasing fashion or contriving a style — your unique style will reveal itself in time, and of course it can change and evolve and will improve. Creativity is a muscle that we all possess but like a physical muscle it needs exercise to avoid atrophy.
Thank you Carlo for inspiring us to bring our best selves to our work. If you are inspired to breathe the world better with words and images, please get in touch.
