I’ve been thinking a lot about place attachment recently. Place attachment is the emotional bond between person and place, and is a key concept in the field of environmental psychology. But it also comes up time and again in architecture, urban design and geography. It’s closely aligned with what the Romans called ‘genius loci’ or the ‘spirit of place.’ And I think one of the ways we become inextricably connected with the places that become most important to us, is through the manifestation of our creativity.
When we formulate a creative, artistic practice (whether that is photographic image-making, painting, writing, composing music or some other), we get to explore how much of our attachment to place is down to our response to the physical materiality of place, and how much is due to psychological under-currents. For me, I sense a strong connection to places where elements of our built environment are suffused into semi-natural or natural landscapes. Where man meets nature in a most visually arresting way. Houses in the forest, a bridge in the mountains, the remains of a ruined bunker on an overgrown military airfield. I find the combination of the visual with the sounds, smells and tactile qualities of these particular spaces uniquely powerful. And it's where I’m happiest making photographs. It becomes a process of escapism and flow.
Making photographs can be both cathartic and therapeutic. Like any artistic or creative endeavour it can encourage us to wrangle with deep-rooted aspects of self. ‘Every photograph is a certificate of presence’ wrote Roland Barthes in Camera Lucida. Photographs as evidence of our being. Diane Arbus said ‘A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.’ Boxes of physical images become boxes of secrets. In photography, as in life, what we choose to leave out is at least as important as what we decide to include. We choose the frame. The reductive nature of photography is immensely compelling. Photography is about personal disclosure. Two or more photographers with one shared subject will never make the same image. They see the world differently. In a photograph they reveal something of themselves.
The photographer and essayist Robert Adams said:
“At our best and most fortunate we make pictures because of what stands before our camera, to honor 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.”
So whatever your preferred creative medium, go in search of creative fulfilment. Ignore the noisy voice inside your head urging you to stay safe and sound leading a creatively unexamined life. The fruits of these labours manifest themselves in many different ways, and as a minimum we gain a better understanding of who we are.
Carlo Navato