The Subjectivity of Constants

I was asked a question yesterday about how I choose whether something should be in black and white or in colour. It's such a subjective position to be in, when you think about it, because the nuances that are shown through each expression highlight different aspects of the subject.

This gas plant is a perfect example of the nuances in shading, in composition, in colour that feed into this choice. Notice the streaks in the background? That's a chain-link fence which lines both sides of the Bridge of Flowers. It adds a ethereal texture to the already beautiful bokeh that you see elsewhere. The delicate lines within the petals are highlighted, veins bringing life to the stamen and pistals. Pollen clings precariously to the very tips and you get the sense of floating in front of the flower head from the way this is composed.

To my eye, this gas plant was part of a narrative that demanded starkness, contrast, deltas between light and dark, gradients composed of depth and soft tones of gray. When viewed in colour, it's no less a masterpiece of nature's devising but it's different. It's softer, more feather-like. Not better, not worse, just different.

I find this same level of discussion takes place, however nuanced, when it comes to humanity and our place within community or society at large. We choose a filter, a view, a predetermined narrative and, come what may, we stick with it. We're flexible insofar as it meets our metanarrative. Flowers should be with flowers, trees with trees, and so on, so forth. In a "discussion" last night on Twitter around gender-affirming care, I encountered much the same. It beggared belief that someone could view mutability or nuance in gender and sex as not being something good, something wholly appropriate. It was a fixation that this person couldn't escape. They chose, in this case, to be fixated on a colour, a story, a particular point of view.

If I've learned anything through studying different subjects that I take pictures of, it's that?there are no constants. There's no single frame of reference that fully defines an experience. We can look at a flower through our lens and with a single drop of rain, the scene can change.

The wind can pick up, shifting petals in new orientations, vibrations through the ground, subtle focal plane shifts in the camera. All of these things come together to capture, in an instant, one aspect, a fleeting moment of dynamic change. And then, like a house of cards, it collapses and is reassembled again.

When we switch our focus to people, we see much the same. Sure, we see a constant in physical presentation: old, young, Asian, African, Indigenous, White, Brazilian, etc. We capture, in our mind, a constant based on what we have always been told to see. "A man is..." or "A woman is..." and yet, as time has moved on, those constants have shifted. People have become aware that what we used to consider a binary proposition was, in fact, much more nuanced. These aren't new revelations but, given that the "Haves" dominate the narratives of our history, it's easy to understand where the aberratives, the "not quite conforming," were relegated into the dark corners of our supposed histories.

These discussions that we're having today are really about a recognition. We've never been so aware of who we are and yet, society has never been so unwilling to change. It's analogous to the black and white versus colour conversation I've just walked you through. The challenge is always one of perspective: both are right, both are useful, both are worthy. It's not a binary conclusion that must be written into stone. It's the artistry of experience, of understanding my role to play. Someone else can take a picture of this same flower and splash it large in colour, highlighting the pinks, the whites, the yellows and it'll be just as beautiful, just as wonderful, just as intentional.

My dear souls, we need to operate with a view of humanity in much the same way we do with our art. We need to let the beautiful nuances of personhood blow our socks off, regardless of orientation, sex, gender, creed, race, or religion (or any other category we ascribe to folks). We need to let go of our constants, our militant subscription to ideals that have, for millennia, categorically denied existence to this amazing garden called "humanity." We need to be willing to reframe and rethink. It's my belief that then, and only then, will we see our full worth.

May it ever be so.

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