Observation
I've been thinking a lot about observation recently.
Not photography - Observation. The act of paying attention. It feels increasingly unfashionable.
Everything now seems to demand a reaction. An opinion. A position. Every story has to be judged before it's even understood. Every image has to become content. Every experience has to be shared before it's had chance to settle.
We've become remarkably good at responding. But, I'm not sure we've become any better at looking.
When I started Mamnick, I don't think I realised that most of the ideas weren't really coming from fashion at all. They came from places. People. Buildings. Old photographs. Cycling. Fishing. The way morning light falls across a Derbyshire hillside. A conversation over a coffee or a pint down the pub.
None of those things were trying to sell me anything. They simply existed.
I think that's what continues to interest me. Not creating stories for the sake of having stories, but noticing the ones that are already there.
Sometimes I wonder whether we've confused originality with invention. Perhaps originality is just paying closer attention than everyone else. The internet has made it incredibly easy to reference what somebody else has already seen but It's much harder to notice something yourself.
This is probably why I still try and carry a camera almost everywhere. Not because I think I'm going to make a masterpiece but because it's a reminder to slow down. To look properly and to notice.
Some photographs become campaigns. Most don't.
Some observations become products. Most don't.
That doesn't make them any less valuable. The product is often just the evidence that you were paying attention.
When people ask where ideas come from, I don't really have a clever answer.
I don't sit waiting for inspiration. I walk. I read. I look and I listen. Eventually something refuses to leave me alone and only then does it become worth making.
Perhaps that's all Mamnick has ever been. Not a fashion brand. A practice of observation.
What do you think?
The Journal was never intended to be one-way.
If this piece resonated - or you disagree - leave a comment below.
Words by Thom Barnett
Photography by Craig Fleming
Comments on this post (1)
Some fifteen years in a NYT Sunday Magazine about Marc Jacobs, his words which appeared in a sidebar resonated with me.
“Appropriation is a totally and actual way of creating. Every field works to a certain extent in that way, and I think one is absolved of being a thief or a fraud when one fesses up to what informs one’s work. I always get this quote from Chanel wrong, but the gist of it is that he who insists on his own creativity has no memory. I don’t think it’s necessary to say how fantastically original one is, and if one does, one only has to dig in the past to find out who came up with that idea. Innovation is an evolutionary process, so it’s not necessary to be radical all the time.”
I’d tend to agree.
— Richard Sachs