Synthetical Diversity for Celebrating Differences.
By William To be published Complexd Magazine is a bi-‐monthly fashion & lifestyle publication for Multicultural Women in the UK. Delivering rich content that is visually diverse and representative of reality; Complexd is for aspiring and aspiring women. By-‐line: William is an author, entrepreneur, technologist, and photographer, has worked around the world, and is married with two wonderful multicultural children. See his work at www.GestaltPhotographs.com. He can be reached at William@gestaltphotographs.com. Article: Has everything and everyone in mass media, urban development, marketing, technology become alike or fall into one of a few categories, good-‐looking people with large mass appeal, diverse peoples' photographs being uncannily similar, paparazzi's candid shots looking the same no matter who the subject is, modeling poses world-‐wide copying each other, newscasters' voices with no accents, cities around the world filled with the same chain stores as my local mall or neighborhood? Do you see homogeneity everywhere you look? Do you feel a sense of profound sadness, not at enjoying the benefits to society of what's been created, but at what's been lost? I do. What is happening? What is that is lost? Is it just my rigid attachment to tradition that no longer serve us, tradition in the way of building a world culture that brings diverse people together into a community that extends beyond national boundaries? A world culture is a laudable goal. But, are the differences between cultures being melted together into one, slowly and uncontrollably without purposefulness? Or are we in a cultural battle, with one culture vying to becoming dominate? Is the subtly and lack of focus on this in mass media for the sake of pushing one world culture forward, or is it just avoiding difficult but authentic conversation? I think the latter. cultural diversity confusion extends much deeper, not limited to just society, but permeating corporations creating work environments that prevent any sense of celebrating differences with respect to diversity other than prescribed company policies carefully written for legal compliance to prevent discrimination, protecting minority from majority. The goal is worthy, diversity recognized as necessary and diversity protected. Unfortunately, the strictures enacted reduce celebration of difference to celebration of uniformity, to right of existence, shying from real,
significant cultural diversity, or creating dialog on the utter and absolute differences. Fear of harassment, lawsuits, uncomfortable situations, all leading to suppression of differences not widely accepted, focusing on and advancing acceptance of differences that are culturally accepted by all, often superficial difference, or upon reflection not a cultural difference at all. In the end, majority rules and one culture is created. Society, government, and commerce drive the celebration of diversity, albeit unknowingly, through assimilation, not by respect, reverence, or understanding, not by creating a moral crisis calling for understand and empathy, certainly not to construct a new culture which allows both to exist but forces all to a new level of knowledge and development. Why should we care? Something is being lost, and if we don't identify it, engaging it, we lose it, forever, extinct. This is the source of the sadness I feel when I see sameness around me, in every corner of the world, covering the differences. The desire for one society is deserving, yes, but for one idea, no, one culture, never. We know what happens in the past when one culture smothers another-‐-‐brilliant ideas are lost, subtly forgotten, and centuries before any comprehension of what was lost is brought into main-‐stream society, consider sustainability practiced by American Indians, think centuries old medical practices of now lost Brazilian tribes. What extraordinary ideas have we just missed by not looking, synergies between societies lost, lost because we do not know how to celebrate differences in a positive engaging way. But these are grandiose examples, think of the little differences that
are forgotten or push aside each day, what we cut and never recover, without ever knowing, the individual daily differences between all of us. Out of these thoughts came an alternative photographic project calling to me. The photos here are two examples of the ongoing experiment, searching for an aesthetic in photographs to observe differences rather than abstract them into mediocrity, pushing away a desire to assimilate and reduce us all to one concept, refusing to neglect all other meaning for the purpose of protecting our own myopic views to simplify the world, in a hope to link to further understanding and acceptance of ideas not our own with joy and celebratory action. Classical portraits focus on the emotional connection, a relationship a viewer can "see" in the eyes and face of the subject, what if we get the viewer to "see" something else, see something not contained within themselves, but outside themselves? These are not classical portraits derived from Greco-‐Roman artists vision, but portraits derived from difference and multicultural life. I call the idea synthetical diversity, borrowing a concept from Kantian philosophy of synthetical knowledge, creating a new idea by combining two ideas, recognizing neither original idea alone would take you to the new idea, an idea that would not exist but for the existence and knowledge of the two that gave it birth. Without differences there would be no new ideas except refining existing ideas. Visually photographs have a voice unlike
others to convey the celebration of difference in a single instant. Highlighting a difference as the focal point of the photograph, but connection via a human aesthetic, appealing, enticing, engaging, enlightening, in an instant, allowing the viewer of the picture to identify not just on similarity, but on diversity at the same time. For me celebrating differences brought to life by diversity, focusing, not glossing over, but stopping on them, immersing oneself in them, enhancing them, highlighting them, above all celebrating them and the strength encapsulated, is where photographs have changed the world and will change it again in the future if we accept it. We are not defined by the past, locked into geography, or slow moving ideas. Ideas move fast, societies change overnight, we can become aware of how our admirable goals need to be inclusion and celebration instead of assimilation and elimination. One culture doesn't have to win over another. We can make a positive celebrated multicultural society, bring the best of all, view points from directions we never imagined existed, exciting ideas that never existed before, ideas for a sustaining growing fearless society.