In this post I’ll explore how daily creativity can benefit our mental health, self-confidence, and sense of connection to others. I’ll focus on the work of four photographers (Clark James Mishler, Brandon Stanton, Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, and Ellis Ducharme) and one artist (Devon Rodriguez). I’ll also draw on my experiences with daily photography and writing.
Engagement
This post was inspired by a recent conversation with Fran in which she mentioned a photographer in Alaska who took one photograph a day. The photographer is Clark James Mishler, a documentary portrait photographer based in Calistoga, California. He relocated to Anchorage in the early 1980s where he spent four decades as Alaska’s premier environmental portrait photographer. There’s a fascinating behind-the-scenes video of Mishler at work on the Frontier Scientists YouTube channel. His approach to street portraiture (“Would you guys mind participating in a photo shoot?”) impresses and terrifies me — the latter because I can’t imagine having that degree of self-confidence. I’ve only once or twice dared to ask a stranger if I might take their portrait. The closest I’ve come was striking up conversations with people while volunteering with the mental health charity Time to Change. My first such experience was at the Newcastle Mental Health Day event in 2016.
Our remit was to engage members of the public in conversation about mental health. This was utterly new territory for me, but I knew I wasn’t the only one volunteering for the first time. It was scary, but I felt fully supported. My first conversations were a little tentative, but I soon settled into things.
I have nothing but respect for those able to engage confidently with people they don’t know. Mishler aside, I’m thinking of street photographers and artists such as Brandon Stanton and Devon Rodriguez.
Amateur photographer Brandon Stanton moved to New York in 2010. Fascinated by city’s characters he started taking street portraits of the people he met, sharing them online as Humans of New York. What began as a personal project has become a global sensation. According to the Humans of New York website, “HONY now has over twenty million followers on social media, and provides a worldwide audience with daily glimpses into the lives of strangers on the streets of New York City.” Devon Rodriguez is an American artist from New York City. He initially gained recognition for drawing a series of realistic portraits of commuters on the New York City Subway. I discovered him recently through this extraordinary video of him drawing and talking with a talented hairstylist.
Connection and Challenge
Mishler, Stanton, and Rodriguez all make a point of exploring the personalities and stories of the people they feature in their work. In an interview for Frontier Scientists, Mishler said he considers his shots not only from an artistic viewpoint but also anthropologically.
All these kind of environmental factors are going to be very interesting to people — anthropologists and general people — in the future when we are looking back at this time, this place, saying “Who were these people?”, “What was the weather like on that day?”, “What was that corner of Anchorage like on that day and how is it different now?”
These wider human perspectives are something I’ve found difficult to navigate in the past. In 2015 I visited an exhibition at the Laing Gallery in Newcastle by Finnish photographer Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen. The black and white images of life in the north east of England in the 1970s and 1980s left me intensely uncomfortable. My blog post For Ever Amber: Pictures at an Exhibition includes a chat conversation I had with Fran at the time.
Marty: Wonderful exhibition of photography. Local documentary photos. Gritty, real. Real life.. Real people.. Hopelessness.. Poverty.. Unemployment.. Dirt.. It’s depressing.. But also there is hope there.. That life goes on no matter what.. Not an easy exhibition for me. There is nowhere to hide. It is human. Humanity doing what it does.
Fran: What do you feel? Mad glad sad afraid?
Marty: Ignorant. Naive. Inadequate. Privileged. But also that I am these days a little less of those things. That it’s up to me if I want to change. It is in my power to do so.
I think what disturbed me most was being confronted by the uncompromising reality of other people’s lives; lives of which I had no personal experience. I found it difficult to see beyond the grime and poverty and celebrate the warmth and humanity of the lives depicted. The fact that Konttinen’s images affected me so strongly is a testament not only to her skills as a photographer but also to the power of documentary photography to challenge and inform. I still feel naive and inadequate in many respects and my life is certainly still privileged. But I’d say — I’d hope — I’m more open than I was ten years ago to the circumstances and challenges of other people.
My Experience of Daily Photography
Many years ago I had an account at Fotolog, an online social media community which encouraged members to post one photograph each day. It was possible to skip days but you could only upload one image per day. I found the discipline invigourating, and I met a number of interesting people through the website. One, a very talented artist, became a dear friend. Fotolog ceased operation in 2019. I’m not aware of any similar sites or apps with the one photo a day restriction, but it would be possible to follow that discipline using other social media platforms.
In 2016 I got into the habit of sending Fran a daily photo of a particular tree close to my home. I did so almost every time I left the house for a walk, mostly in the morning on my way to work. I described these beginnings years later in Of Fellings and Feelings: An Exploration of Loss and Renewal.
As I walk to the Metro station, I message Fran good morning for when she wakes later, and send a photo of the tree and path just outside our court. This is a new tradition, started a couple of months ago when the leaves on that tree were first turning towards autumn. It’s a nice way of sharing how the weather is here in Newcastle without getting all meteorological.
That blog post was written to commemorate the dual loss of our tree and the more famous “Robin Hood tree” at Sycamore Gap in Northumberland, England. During covid lockdown in 2020 I took the permitted daily walks for exercise. Walking the same route day after day, sometimes two or three times a day, imposed a structure that paradoxically gave me the opportunity to notice the small changes that are so easily overlooked. The difference in light from one time of day to another. The ever changing skyscapes. The shifts in colour and foliage as the seasons turned. I didn’t take photographs every day, but I’d often return with a selection of images to share online with friends and followers.
Mental Health and Well-Being
The benefits of daily creativity are nowhere better expressed than by Maine photographer Ellis Ducharme, who shared his story with us on our blog last year. In Six Feet Above: A Conversation With Ellis Ducharme he described how the discipline of going out to shoot one image each day helped him navigate a particularly difficult period in his life.
Thankfully, my wife could see what was happening to me, and she suggested that even though I was incredibly busy and didn’t have time for much, I had time to go out and take a single photo each day just to prove to myself that I did have the ability to be creative and make my own decisions. [...] I would continue on this schedule for about three years, taking a single photo somewhere in the natural span of my day, retouching it and posting it with a timestamp and where my mindset was that day. I still will occasionally add to this series, but at the beginning where I was doing it every day like clockwork, it entirely carried me out of that low spot, and I believe that it saved my life.
In researching this post I came across a book by Joost Joossen titled One Photo a Day Keeps the Doctor Away: Inspiring Ways to Slow Down and Look Around. According to the blurb the author presents “160 photography challenges that help you to slow down and look around. [...] Taking a moment out of your busy day to create a thoughtful image will sharpen your focus and creativity.” I’ve not read the book but I recognise the value of prompts when it comes to writing. I’ve previously shared 40 Mental Health Blog Topics From the Caring Friend’s Perspective and 21 Image Prompts for the Mental Health Blogger.
Creativity and Community
Writing has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I recently celebrated having kept a daily diary for the past fifty years, and publish a new blog post here every week. I find the discipline helpful and motivating. Rather than just being “something I do” writing is an integral part of who I am. It’s fundamental to how I navigate whatever’s happening to and around me. The act of writing itself grants me an escape into a world of my own, but writing also connects me with other people and gives me an opportunity to benefit from their perspective and experience. That’s most obviously true of my blog posts, many of which are inspired by conversations with friends and colleagues. Fran and I wrote our books and maintain our blog as ways of sharing our experiences and ideas, in the hope they might be helpful or beneficial to others.
I’ve never taken part in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) but such initiatives are another approach to disciplined creativity. Others include Inktober (one pen and ink drawing each day through October) and NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month) in which participating poets aim to write a poem a day for the month of April. Initiatives such as these offer encouragement and also provide a sense of community with the opportunity to connect with other participants.
I know how valuable it is to have someone who engages in the same creative pursuits. In particular, I value my dear friend and fellow mental health blogger Aimee Wilson, who blogs at I’m NOT Disordered. We both benefit enormously from having someone who understands the rigours, challenges, and delights, of writing on a regular if not daily basis. This level of understanding is expressed perfectly on a coffee mug Aimee gifted me a couple of years ago.
I MIGHT LOOK LIKE
I’M LISTENING TO YOU
but in my head
I’M THINKING ABOUT
BLOGGING
No matter your creative sphere, regular engagement allows you to develop your talents and explore your art’s relation to your life as a whole. Writing every day benefits my sense of who I am. It also allows me to engage more meaningfully with others and the world around me.
Over to You
In this post I’ve explored the benefits of creative discipline. I’ve focused — pun intended — on taking one photograph a day, but the idea can be adapted to other frequencies and any creative pursuit. Have you taken part in anything of this kind, and if so did you find it helpful? Do you take photographs, write, paint, or pursue other creative activities in a regular or structured way? Creative or otherwise, what regular activities do you find helpful to your well-being? Fran and I would love to hear from you, either in the comments below or via our contact page.
Photo by Jakob Owens at Unsplash.
