The Real Frontier: Reflections on Proust, travel, and shifting perspectives
“The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is.”
– Marcel Proust
The French novelist Marcel Proust wrote about this idea in his great novel In Search of Lost Time. Proust was reacting to the romantic notion that adventure requires traveling to exotic places.
He argued that you can travel around the world and see nothing new, or you can stay in one place and discover entire universes if your perception changes.
The real voyage becomes psychological and artistic, not geographic.
I’ve been fortunate to travel to many continents and explore a variety of ecosystems and cultures. But my creative work does not depend on travel, rather, it revolves around my state of consciousness.
One can have a voyage of discovery in the backyard, or anywhere. I’m a travel romantic to be sure, but some of my favorite images were created close to home, in the most ordinary of circumstances.
Passport stamps are hollow if no insights were gathered along the way.
Art, at its best, expands awareness and touches the human soul. Photography offers us the chance to see through other eyes. And whether those eyes belong to a child, an old wise woman, or even a wild beast, we can become wiser for it.
So how does a photographer see with deeper vision? How do you shift your consciousness enough to see what else things might be?
Practice. We practice slowing down and embrace silence. We study mythology and symbolism. We journal, meditate, and ritualize the photographic moment.
I could create these images — these moments of insight — with any camera, even a smartphone. But when I look down into the ground glass viewfinder of the Rolleiflex, something shifts. The world becomes different. I’m pulled out of ordinary seeing and into another mode of perception. The extraneous fades away and what remains is the one subject that has quietly tugged at my awareness. That inverted image, projected onto glass, becomes my crystal ball.
I try to look with my other eye, the one rooted in myth and meaning. And listen to the subject. Why did this particular scene seize my attention? What is it whispering to my consciousness?
Hearing that whisper is harder than ever in a world of social media and constant streams of information. While I don’t need to travel to the end of the earth to experience a moment of revelation, it is often easier out in the wilds. Wide open spaces leave room for the muses to reach you.
If you have any practices that help quiet the mind and approach each moment with an open eye, mind, and heart, I’d love to hear them.
The real frontier is not geography.
The real frontier is the edge of perception.
– Jak
If this resonated with you, you may enjoy Field Notes — my occasional letters on photography, symbolism, travel, and the art of seeing. Join the List ->
