Photo-Dialogue

Photography is sharing

2012-05-31T09:14:17Z

These days, there are so many ways to share our images - our cameras now prompt us to upload our photographs to Facebook, Flickr, Twitter.... and so we might forget the conversation and relationship that is prompted by a less virtual experience of sharing photographs.

I've been working with Global Generation, a Kings Cross-based charity that is rethinking what cities can be. Young people, the 'Generators' are being supported and trained to inspire others to create a new and sustainable future. Finding new and interesting ways to express the vision for their work is critical - and, rather than a typically corporate 'mission statement', the Global Generation vision is a living, ongoing conversation that is regularly revisted and re-interpreted.

While the generators use social media extensively to share their work, here are Patrick and Kara using digital images, taken themselves during a field trip, as a prompt to express the values and relevance around what a tricky concept like sustainability means to them. In this kind of participative photography, the quality of the image takes a backseat to the quality of conversation and relationship that the image provokes.

Many organisations issue a vision and then expect people to have a conversation about it - but that's the wrong way round.

It's our shared conversations, in moments like this, that show us the shared possibility of our vision.

I consider a tree

2012-05-19T14:02:50Z

Hugh Dunford-Wood

Hugh P is away at the conference in Mexico this weekend and will be presenting the short film we made to accompany the new translation of Martin Buber's 'I and Thou', one of the foundational dialogue texts.

Throughout our research, we asked experts in their field, physicists, mathematicians, botanists and ecologists to 'consider a tree' and here is artist Hugh Dunford Wood sketching a tree in the Cotswold hills. Hugh had travelled up from Dorset and was, for a painter, travelling remarkably lightly. All was revealed though when, after a short trek to find our tree, one that he had painted perhaps 20 years previously, Hugh took an iPad from his bag and started work.

Using an art programme which built up layers (similar, in a way, to Photoshop) Hugh used an initial sketch as a basis for his image.

Sketch - Hugh Dunford Wood

Then he continued to 'paint' away, building his image over a period of a couple of hours to produce this beautiful final picture.

A tree '(re)considered' by Hugh Dunford Wood

And here is the original painting, hanging on the wall of Hugh P's house, which inspired our day!

Painting - Hugh Dunford Wood

Roots...

2012-05-03T08:46:09Z

It doesn't look like this image will make it into the Martin Buber film that Hugh is making for the Mexico conference.

But I kinda like it...

It is a picture that I borrowed from Rachel Piper (who does some gorgeous woodland shots). OK, to be honest, I have somewhat abused her work after being inspired by a card in the British Library. The card showed an old negative image of a tree and it had been left the wrong way up on the shelf...

The image took me back to a moment in a very particular dialogue.

A few of years ago, I was walking with my son, who was about 8 years old at the time, through some woodland on the edge of the Conway Valley in Wales. Our conversation went like this:

Me: Hey - do you think if you touch a tree it can actually feel you doing that?

Him: Yep.

Me: You seem pretty sure about that... Trees do that kinda thing?

Him: Of course they can feel you.... They can feel you before you touch them.

Me: Huh? How does that work...?

Him: You're standing on their roots...

And with that, the world turned upside-down.

Virtually there...

2012-04-28T18:15:17Z

A while ago I was sitting with my meus co-director Ty Francis at Manchester airport waiting for a flight to Switzerland. We were both tapping away on our phones - occasionally taking a moment to fall into a real conversation but the quickly drifting back into our virtual worlds.

For two organisation consultants who specialise in presence and relational practice the irony was not lost on us.

So we tweeted about it. Then we took photos and tweeted them too...

Now I see that Social Media Anxiety Disorder (SMAD) might be the next illness we create.

And so I've become fascinated with images of people wandering around in their virtual worlds, oblivious to all around them, sometimes with faces lit up by the glow of the tiny screens. It's all rather magical and rather beautiful, I think.

Or maybe I'm a little bit SMAD....

Yeah, anyway, you can follow me on Twitter...!

Update (29 Apr): See this NYTimes article on the disconnecting nature of our virtual conversations.

All of This and Nothing

2012-04-10T10:50:46Z

I've been working with my Ashridge colleague Hugh P on a dialogue project which will celebrate a new translation of Martin Buber's 'I and Thou.'

Buber's work is often seen as one of the founding texts of conversational practice and dialogue; he believes in the fundamental wholeness of nature and our complete participation in it. Hugh has been working with a short piece of Buber's work, "I consider a tree...'" and we have been asking top academics from the fields of physics, mathematics, botany, ecology and art, "So, how do you see a tree?" In turn, I have been working photographically with the various responses to produce images for a film which Hugh will present at a conference in Mexico next month.

This image came from our conversation with the brilliant Andrew Steane, Professor of Physics at Exeter College, Oxford. Andrew guided us into through the matter and forces that make up a tree before takinging us into the shadowy world of quantum physics where the idea of matter itself becomes erm... problematic... We know that we have information pointing to the existence of matter but actually putting a finger on it....

So, here is my quantum tree. We can see information that leads us to think of the tree but... it kind of isn't really there....

Martin Buber - I consider a tree

I can look on it as a picture: stiff column in a shock of light, or splash of green shot with the delicate blue and silver of the background.

I can perceive it as movement: flowing veins on clinging, pressing pith, suck of the roots, breathing of the leaves, ceaseless commerce with earth and air - and the obscure growth itself.

I can classify it in a species and study it as a type in its structure and mode of life.

I can subdue its actual presence and form so sternly that I recognize it only as an expression of law...

I can dissipate it and perpetuate it in number...

In all this the tree remains my object, occupies space and time, and has its nature and constitution.

It can, however, also come about, if I have both will and grace, that in considering the tree I become bound up in relation to it. The tree is no longer It. I have been seized by the power of exclusiveness.

The Creative Moment

2012-03-23T13:03:47Z

So much of our 'creativity' work in organisations assumes that we should work together in some kind of perpetual collective brainstorm.

My Photo-Dialogue work with the London designers showed that collective work was only a part of their process. Indeed, their creative group work seemed to take place in just twos and threes. None of the big corporate jamboree stuff that is usually so popular.

I know that 'big, diverse, sociable and provocative' has a place in promoting innovation and change in our businesses and social institutions.

Yet our inquiry into design processes showed that, where moments of creative breakthrough are concerned, the potential for providing space so that people can be 'Alone and in the Zone' is often under-estimated.

The Red Fingernail of Detail

2012-03-09T11:04:21Z

Here is another image from the series made as we used reportage photoraphy to inquire into the organisational conditions required for amazing creativity and innovation in a top London design studio.

We worked through a loose Appreciative Inquiry approach and sifted pictures of what might have been 'moments of breakthrough'. Choosing photographs that resonated with team's actual experience of great design processes, we found that critical themes emerged. And so, this particular design team, alongside 'Alone and in the Zone', seen here on P-D, repeatedly selected to this image as a representation of what became named as 'The Red Fingernail of Detail'.

As we continued to inquire appreciatively with the designers we surfaced exactly how important attention to detail was in defining their sense of value and creativity. Nothing slapdash or rough-cut for this team; they paid exquisite attention to their work, sometimes in spite of other organisational and business demands.

And so the managerial challenge, if design brilliance and innovation is a fundamental requirement (and not many people would argue against that these days), rather than typically trying to get more from less or being overly directive and 'efficient', becomes 'how do we support the conditions that encourage the unique capability of this team?'

As Appreciative Inquiry guru David Cooperrider says, our positive images of the future lead our positive actions - and so "the artful creation of positive imagery on a collective basis may be the most prolific thing any inquiry can do."

Creative Shift

2012-03-03T16:31:43Z

Clay sculpting tools

This image is one of a series that I made at Ashridge when the ADOC students worked with the amazing sculptor Kathy Iffla.

Kathy Iffla

Kathy had arranged for normally beautiful Monk's Barn facilitatation room to be covered with blue plastic and for each student to have a desk and a block of clay.

The creative opportunity was to work with some of the creative issues that the particpants' doctoral work was generating in a medium that stepped back from the broadly written/spoken academic tradition. The shift to working with clay; 3D, felt, experiential and sensual also shifted perspective and opened up new insights. Each sculpture became it's own mini-change project as the work, under Kathy's instruction, was carried out in complete silence.

Then came a critical moment.

After a period of working on the clay, Kathy asked the particpants to move places and to work on somebody else's project. And so here was the creative 'crunch'; what to do? Is it OK to assume ownership? How much is it OK to introduce new ideas? Surely this is someone else's 'baby'? How attached can we afford to become this work? Who am I to mess around with someone else's stuff?

All, of course, excellent questions for anyone working with creativity and innovation in organisational change and a series of conversatons during the workshop began to develop further insight into the clay sculptures and their meaning for change practitioners.

Here are some of the incredible, sliently co-created pieces of work:

Visibility

2012-03-01T17:40:41Z

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent Earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.

I found Rilke's poem on Joanna Macy's website as I reflected on my experience of a Photo-Dialogue coaching session with author and dialogue practitioner Amanda Ridings.

Amanda and I were working on the prospect of 'visibility'.

Amanda had put 'getting out there' at the bottom of the priority list and, like many writers, needed to make sure that both she and her new book, were clearly visible to her coaching clients and dialogue students.

The camera provides and excellent coaching tool for issues like 'visibility', or 'vision'... and in our Photo-Dialogue I gently challenged Amanda..."...so... show me how that would feel..." as I photographed away checking-in with her as the images arrived..."...is this what you mean...?"

The images we made together during the session are only part of the story; then the conversation and dialogue begins.... This image is a section of a collage that became part of the conversation; I scribbled Rilke across the frame, Amanda responded by collaging new images onto the photograph. This movement between conversation, image and text generates a far wider range of creative possibility than the normal coaching 'meeting'. And our process and dialogues will continue as ideas form and actions are tested...

Using these co-created images in the coaching process provides a unique quality of engagement and accountability. In fact, although the photo-dialogue provides the key ingredient to a successful coaching process, ultimately the images become very difficult to ignore.

As art-critic John Berger says:

"Unlike any other visual image, a photograph is not a rendering, an imitation or an interpretation of its subject, but actually a trace of it. No painting or drawing, however naturalist, belongs to its subject in the way that a photograph does."

Alone and in the Zone

2012-02-24T16:05:10Z

I'm always deeply fascinated by creativity and how we can set up working environments to get more of it.

This image is part of a collection that I made to support an investigation into creativity in a leading London design studio. We used reportage photography to record moments of 'breakthrough' and then improvised an Appreciative Inquiry methodology to understand the conditions that supported inspiration and creativity. The pictures are now part of a research project into how we can use visuals in this sort of inquiry process.

Here is S - intensely working away... This picture was repeatedly selected by the designers and became part of a themed set which they named 'Alone and in the Zone'.

So, one of our discoveries was that although design is often seen as a very social process there needs to be time and space to get immersed... to lose yourself in the ideas and possibilities... and a great design studio needs to make sure that, even in this time of expensive office space, there are opportunities to be alone...