Few things in our lives are new. Truly new. Those few things are rare and far between. The majority of the new, is new only to us! However, the older you are the less that is new. What was new to us is now old but constantly being discovered by those who have followed us. To them it is new. I hope you are still with me on this.
That is if the work is done to find the new and the old new. The problem is that even though it has never been easier to find new things thanks to our past now being available online, it seems that many are not interested in undertaking the process of discovery. And yet we all need new inspiration, to be challenged and to be shocked by the work of others.
Sometimes that shock may be a pleasant one, occasionally it may not be what we want but either way it can be positive. It can shake us out of a safe place which may be comfortable but creatively suffocating.
In a sense this to me is the basis of good teaching. Opening the eyes of others to what they don’t know exists. The direct opposite of the social media algorithm that aims to show you more of what it has decided you like.
We all like what we like but how will we grow creatively and intellectually if we are never shown what we don’t know we may like? Or recognise what we don’t like by being presented by that very thing?
I first came across the concept of the ‘shock of the new’ thanks to the television programme of that name presented by the Australian art critic Robert Hughes broadcast in the early 1980s. I was a teenager obsessed with art and it introduced me to the work of Duchamp, Schwitters, the Bauhaus, the abstract expressionists and so much more. At the time none of this was new but it was new to me and that was all that mattered.
I liked some of it, didn’t understand much of it but appreciated all of it.
Today I wonder if we are losing touch with the importance of that feeling of discomfort. That feeling of challenge. I think we may be. Therefore, I would like to set you a challenge. Today, try to find something new to you, explore an area where you have never been, do something you have never done or speak with someone you have never met. You just might find that you may just be inspired to do it again and again. The shock may not be so unpleasant after all.
Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Under Graduate and Post-Graduate Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and the author of At Home With the Makers of Style (Thames & Hudson 2006), Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Routledge 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Routledge 2019) and What Does Photography Mean to You? (Bluecoat 2020). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com and he is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.
Scott’s next book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, (Orphans Publishing), is on pre-sale now.
© Grant Scott 2023