MY VOICE MY LENS: Part 2 - Leadership and Photography
“My Voice My Lens is about blending artistry and leadership and each discipline offering lessons to the other. What surprised me the most about this journey was noticing how very quickly the photos became my teacher and my guide to understanding who I am.”
- Valerie Rother. Leader, People and Culture Strategist
Excerpt: Culminating Artist’s Statement, My Voice My Lens, Cohort 7, 2019
Financial, 2019
Through photography the photographer will find
the simple to be complicated,
the miniature to be enormous,
the insignificant decisive…
not only the familiar but the strange,
not only the ordinary but the rare,
not only the mutual but the singular.
- Dorothea Lange Documentary Photographer, Photojournalist, Social Activist, Teacher, Arizona, 1940
LIVING THE QUESTIONS
In Blog 5 we wondered: How can a meaningful creative experience be a strategic tool for enriching leadership qualities and practices? We explored the expressive potential of the arts and their rich potential for “explaining man to man, and each to oneself” (Edward Steichen).
This leads us to explore the next big question – Part 2 in this 3-part series:
Q: Why? How? Leadership and the Art of Photography?
BACKSTORY
Throughout my many years as an art educator and photographer, I have had opportunity to learn and understand that:
* everyone has the potential to be a leader – teachers, students, physicians, administrators, parents and children, friends, artists, social activists … on and on... – if only we ‘see’ this and wholeheartedly enable their voices to creatively lead us
* just as the art of leadership, the art of photography is dynamic –a fluid mode of expressivity that continues to reinvent itself and its multitude of roles, including:
- opening dialogues, and encouraging others to think, see, and share thoughts with greater agency, nuance, and understandings
- convening ‘community’ - by breaking down obstacles and artfully connecting us to one-another and the world beyond
With this in mind: I invite you to ‘read’ the following photographic images in the mindset of a leader:
Through the art of photography, a photographer can observe and evoke:
presence
Outside, Robert Van Gennip, Cohort 5, My Voice My Lens, Wave Financial, 2018
happiness
Happiness, Mitra Khatibi, My Voice My Lens, Cohort 6, Wave Financial, 2018
introspection
John, Dawoud Bey, 1999
moxie
Jump Up, Sarah Bugeja, My Voice My Lens, Cohort 7, Wave Financial, 2019
longing
Nyx (The Night'), The Truth Is In The Soil Project, Ioanna Sakellaraki, 2019
decisiveness
Louis Bourgeois, Annie Leibovitz, 1997
indignance
Self-Portrait, Richard Avedon, 1980
restlessness
In a Flash, Fahad Junejo, Cohort 5, My Voice My Lens, Wave Financial, 2017
restless change
Through My Window: Migration! Regional Line/ Philadelphia-Merion Station, PA, Judith Leitner, 2022
outrage
Dark Horse, Gwanghwamun Square, Seoul, Argus Paul Estabrook, 2017
manufactured complexity
Shipbreaking, Chittagong10, Bangladesh, Edward Burtynsky, 2001 fr. Manufacturing Landscapes, 2003
weariness
Time Unencumbered, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Judith Leitner, 2022
gender identity - then
Gay Semiotics, Hal Fisher, 1977
gender identity – now
Mike and Sky, Catherine Opie, 1983
personal history - then
Hutchinson Family Singers, Unknown, 1844.
personal history – now
(Now) Na' Marcelina, Juchitán, Oaxaca, Gabriel Uturbide,1984
the singular within the mutual
Hairdo, Whuzan Water Canal, China, Judith Leitner, 2009
the diminutive within the monumental
Monumental, Fernando de Noronha, Brazil, 2009
steadfastness – individual
From My Balcony: Highligner On His Way to Dismantling A Circular Column, Judith Leitner, 2017
steadfastness – collaborative
From My Balcony: Team- Dismantling A Circular Column, Judith Leitner, 2017
rare beauty
Flying Mop, Tim Flach, 2010
natural beauty
Silent Forest, Christian Chiarri Mani, Navigating Change Photo Contest, Wave Financial, 2020
heroic resilience
Nelson Mandela, Hans Geda, 1990
hopefulness
Balcony Sunset, Camila Louzada, My Voice My Lens, Cohort 10 and Navigating Change Photography Contest 2021,
Wave Financial, 2020
CONCLUSION:
A: As the illustrious ‘Lenser’ Val expressed in the introductory quote: the art of photography has the potential to ‘blend artistry with leadership, with each discipline offering lessons to the other’. Of course, each has objectives, technologies, practices, and complexities specific to their overarching purpose; yet, as I have learned: no matter what realm leaders are is embedded in – business, education, science, medicine, the arts – great leaders’ primary mission is twofold: to be an open-minded observer and to craft a trusted work space that scaffolds and amplifies self-understanding.
The art of photography is, indeed, a superb creative tool for observing and evoking the complexities inherent in the human spirit.
I invite you to join me in exploring these questions further in the final installment of this 3-part series – Blog 7 - where I address “The Big Question”: “Why? How?: Leadership and The Art of Self-Portrait Photography?”.
p.s. an adjustment decision: Blog 7 will be posted on Tuesday, October 4, and thereafter: the first Tuesday of every month. Will keep you posted!
Thoughts most welcome!
Looking forward!
j
