Wit is the unexpected copulation of ideas. 

                                                                        Samuel Johnson

What happens when you see two things that don’t go together, and suddenly they do?

You wake up! You stop describing and interpreting the world to yourself, and just for a moment you really see what’s there. What you already know doesn’t explain it, so you have to look further and wider. Your mind has to expand.

It’s that kind of startled response that I think lies at the very center of good art, and that’s how art can change peoples minds. It happens when something suddenly interrupts the flow of our thoughts and we tip over into a kind of silent hyperawareness. Fair art tells us what we already know, the really good stuff points to what we don’t know, and we can choose to go after some new knowledge or not.

It is that state of awareness that I have come to think of as the state of creativity, where new dimensions and insights arise.

If a photographer is in that state and manages to make a picture, people who see it can participate in that deeper awareness too. This kind of event is where I think art gets its power.

There are certain meditation practices that harness this effect. Zen monks use the sound of something like a slapstick to jolt meditators awake into a state of awareness. The Tibetan practice of Dzogchen uses a loud voiced sound to take one out of discursive thoughts and into a state of open and thoughtless awareness…thoughtless but not stupid.

When I work in environments that are alien and even alarming, my eye/mind is opened and my photography shows it. Two of the strongest projects I think I have ever done were in prison and in an African boxing club. No question that the reason they came out as well as they did was that I was really, really alert in these startling surroundings.

And just recently I came across a few images and at once saw this effect working on me.

The first is this photo by Rebecca Moseman that she calls Lipstick. The image has a disorienting crop that withholds just enough information so that you really have to slow down and go into it to see what is happening. When you do, you realize quickly enough that the lipstick-smeared figure is a young boy. So both in it’s cropping and its subject the photo is quite disorienting, and it really wakes you up.

The second example is by Uriel Sinai, part of a series, done for the New York Times, around the recent Israeli election. It is a bit different, a little more deliberate, but it still has that surprising juxtaposition.

Of course, elections are really fertile visual ground to begin with. They beg a photographer to capture that atmosphere of fluidity and unknown outcomes.

So in Sinai’s photo we see a scene such as one might find around any electoral event—people in dark suits grouped around a central figure who is fairly recognizable even though he sits with his back to us. If it stopped there it would be a very good picture, evoking the darl choreography of an election. A photo editor could really use this.

But … then that disembodied that arm floats out and touches the central figure in a way that is … what, solicitous? Protective? The incongruity and unexpectedness of this gesture just stop you. Once again unexpected ideas copulate and surprise does its work.

I must say, I can just imagine the photographer’s excitement as this unexpected arm floats into the scene and he sees it and suddenly brings his camera to his eye, hoping—hoping that he’ll get this wonderfully surreal moment.

For the viewer a curtain is parted, but no meaning is given, and he/she is left to contemplate what it might mean … or just to contemplate.

In all of my workshops I work to to precipitate this creative state for participants using a number of exercises that tip people into their own direct experience of it. If I just explained it and it’s uses for artists, it would remain theoretical. People have to experience it and allow it. Once they have, they can begin to use it in their own work.

You can learn about working with this approach to make more creative photographs at www.lookingintothelight.com

And for the most convincing demo ever of this effect, watch this: