Time and again we learn of artists confessing an inability to ignore the internal and insistent creative impulse driving their artistic expression. Carl Jung aptly describes this phenomenon:
Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument.
The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends,
but one who allows art to realize its purpose through him.
Artists often speak of the process of creating as entering a state where one is less aware of the material world and the passage of time – the creative process itself allowing the artist to experience a feeling of temporarily transcending everyday reality and entering a different and unique state of awareness.
This describes what I often experienced during my photographic exploration of the natural world – time seemingly suspended while framing a composition and tripping the shutter. Perhaps this observation by photographer Edouard Boubat reflects the same phenomenon but from the perspective of the viewer.
I think that the photos that we like were made
when the photographer knew how to disappear.
If there were a secret, certainly that would be it.
Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality...
One can't possess reality, one can possess images-
one can't possess the present but one can possess the past.
–Susan Sontag