All language subtitles for 14.02 - Let It In

So I'm going to share a story with

you that happened to me about three years

ago, and more than anything that we've talked

about in the last 14 weeks, this has

impacted my creative journey as a photographer more

than anything else.

So I was in Ghana with my sister,

who's a medical doctor, and we were with

a team of about 30 doctors and 20

nurses and pharmacists, surgeons, optometrists, dentists, and we

were traveling to these very small, very remote

villages in the north of the country and

setting up clinics in these schools, providing Medicare

to the locals, many people who had never

seen a doctor in their entire lives.

And the lineups were humongous, the wait time's

about eight to ten hours, the heat was

unbearable, the storm's completely unpredictable, but man, just

the most beautiful people.

We were on about day number seven of

being there, and it was towards the end

of the day at about four o'clock

in the afternoon, and Leslie, the nurse, was

surveying the crowd trying to figure out how

many people she was going to be able

to see that day and how many people

we were going to have to turn away

and say come back the next day.

And as she was surveying the crowd, she

saw this little foot sticking out from behind

a mother's back, and it was way back

at the back of the people waiting.

And she was drawn to this tiny little

foot like a magnet, and she has no

idea why.

But as she approached the scene, she saw

this mother who was from the Fulani tribe,

and she was pregnant, and she had an

18-month-old strapped her buck to her

front, and she had this little girl behind

her back whose foot was sticking out, and

she was barely clinging to life.

And within a few minutes, Leslie had this

little girl on a makeshift medical table, where

after about a minute on the table, she

started convulsing, and she died.

And her mother started wailing, and within a

few seconds, it looked like this.

And I was there with my camera, not

knowing what the hell to do, because quite

frankly, at that moment, photography felt pretty damn

useless.

And so I had this internal struggle of

whether I should photograph it, whether I should

not photograph it, whether I should leave, whether

I should stay.

I couldn't help the nurses, I couldn't help

the doctors, couldn't help the wailing mother.

So at that moment, I just decided to

do the only thing I knew how to

do, which was try and make compositions, which

felt pretty damn useless.

But I ignored all my feelings, and that's

what I did.

As I was doing this, I watched this

incredible team of professionals, one of which was

my sister, with no electricity, and no machinery,

and very little of the usual resources, bring

this child, Idrisu was her name, back to

life.

And the wailing of the mother stopped, and

the chaos turned to calm, and everybody took

a big, deep breath, a sigh of relief.

And it wasn't until later, where something undefinable,

something amazing was revealed to me, something I

didn't see until the storm was over, until

that chaos had subsided, and the wailing had

stopped, and the air had stilled.

And this is what I saw.

Out of that dark corner was the most

beautiful graffiti, the most beautiful art I've ever

seen.

Looking down on the miracle of this saved

life, there was this peaceful man and woman,

and the more I look at this image,

the more crazy it is, the more undefinable,

the more, I don't even know what word

to use, but you know, if you look

at the man in the image, he's an

exact replication of her brother in the same

photo.

They're the same face, they're the same profile.

And nobody saw this.

The doctors didn't see it, the nurses didn't

see it, the patients didn't see it, I

didn't see it.

I didn't see it until I sat down

for lunch and started flipping through the photos

in the back of my camera.

My conscious did not see this, but somehow

my unconscious had seen this.

To some, this might represent a god or

a force, but to me this represents our

unconscious.

And when you really think about this, guys,

that's what photography is.

That's what photography is all about.

Illuminating light, whether we're talking physical light or

metaphorical light, illuminating light onto something previously unseen.

And that's also what creativity is.

The use of imagination or original ideas to

bring into existence something that did not exist

before.

That's the definition.

Except with photography, it does exist.

We just have to observe it.

We just have to find it.

As photographers, we often think that the creativity

within us is the life-breathing force behind

what we do with our cameras.

But I don't consider myself a creative person

at all.

Some of you may have read the book

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert.

I had a big sort of eye-opening,

light bulb moment when I read this book,

because she defines creativity as something that exists

not in you, but outside of you.

And she also defines the word genius, which

comes from ancient Rome.

And a genius wasn't something that came from

within human beings.

Rather, it was a disembodied force that would

visit certain individuals at certain times for completely

unknown reasons.

So people weren't geniuses.

They had geniuses.

And somehow, taking this genius out of me

and externalizing the creative process released so much

of my anxiety and my unmanageable expectations about

my creative performance.

And so it's got us thinking differently about

creativity.

Where does it come from?

Why does it come from?

And this is where it gets really interesting,

because creativity, I think, comes from tension.

It comes from moral ambiguity.

It comes from not knowing what to do.

It comes from discomfort.

It comes from crisis.

It comes from sadness.

It comes from loss, which is the most

universal of all human experience.

And it comes from having an open mind

and an open heart, so that when creativity

does hit you, when it does brush up

against you, you're open to receiving it, you're

open to using it, and you're open to

optimizing it.

And it comes from the universe, from the

unknown.

So how do we bring it from where

it exists out here in through our hearts,

up through our brains, and out through our

cameras?

We have to make it about them and

their story, not about us and our cameras.

We have to get outside of our comfort

zone.

We have to make mistakes, and those mistakes

are going to open new doorways that we

never even knew existed.

But we have to stop seeking, and we

have to start observing.

Because it's our art, and it's shaped by

a whole bunch of unknown forces that we

don't even know about that come through us.

So if you approach your experiences, and you

approach your weddings with an open mind, without

expectations, without preconceptions about what to do, or

what not to do, or what you think

you should do, if you constantly question, just

constantly question the way you think, and believe

in unseen possibilities, then you can open yourself

up to these forces.

You can be better.

You just got to be ready with your

cameras up, and your focus locked, and let

it in.