The dissolution of ego centered, fixed points in Terrence Malick's movie aesthetics and its inspiration for photography
Earth, die unmoving center of the cosmos - many people locate themselves in their lives in a similar earthy way. In European history of ideas at least it was at the beginning of the 16th century to give up first reluctantly, then and finally hard-won this view in favor of a heliocentric worldview.
That Earth suddenly was no more the center of all being, did not please everybody, Sigmund Freud even called this a cosmological affront against the human being. And added another one, modern men was not even ruler of his own inner house. In talking about id, ego, super ego, and their unconscious implications, he also suggested a psychological one.
'Self', Regensburg, 2021 © Dr. Christine Lehr
Creativity inspired by Buddhist philosophy is not about attaining rulership in the own house, but to suspend the ruler, the assumed self. This gets quite vivid for example in the movie aesthetics of Terrence Malick. 'Tree of Life' from 2011 contrasts the profane, human everyday life with cosmological images of raw nature, and emphasizes this relation with a camera movement of unintentionality.
Interestingly enough 1969 Malick translated Heidegger's 'Vom Wesen des Grundes' ('Essence of Reasons'). Accordingly familiar with metaphysical questioning his work as a film director gives numerous cinematic examples of this perspectivity. In every case unintentionality implies the questioning of the self, which might have a specific intention. When in urging situations the camera rolls past the protagonists, or stays focused on the shadows in the curtains, while a family breaks.
For the own photography the idea of selflessness can be translated into and tried as unintentionality. A wider lens seems to be more suitable than one with bigger focal length. That means the more an image includes the less determined, intended its arranged elements. The practiced, photographic perspective not only gets intentionally widened, with this exercise a hierarchy of objects in the image gets questioned. Ultimately the own self.
Comments