There is no getting away from the fact that we live in a consumer culture. Ever since Edward Bernays fathered the world of PR we have been heading to an advertising heavy culture in which we find ourselves deceived by what is truly fulfilling in life. I’ve been doing a great deal of thinking around this - so far in terms of possessions, music, TV, films, food and church - and at some point I may blog about it at length.
In the interim I have concluded that a partial antidote to the consumer attitudes (and let’s face it we all have them to a lesser or greater degree) is to become more actively creative. If you are reading this with a church background then you may well agree with me that we are made to be creative. The consumption of the arts is not in itself creative (although simply discussing it could be seen as such). I’m not very musical and neither am I a painter but I like photography so on Saturday I intentionally set out to strike a better balance between consuming and creating. A balance mind, so I started in the cinema for 90 minutes watching the delightful WALL-E.
After leaving the cinema I wandered around absorbing some of the beautiful sunlight and taking the odd snap here and there. You can see some of my favourites over at flickr just here. I was in part aiming to photograph love, or at least relationships. I think I did that in at least half of the photos. I particularly like this one:
So here starts my ambition to redress the consumer/creator balance in my life.