Welcome Obstacles!

Halfway into 2024 I can look back and admit that it’s been a challenging handful of months. As an independent photojournalist, I produce content for various outlets, mostly magazines, either printed or online. However, the business has been long declining and doing so faster than ever.

The media industry had been struggling for years already, when covid hit it even harder. As of yet the industry hasn’t really been able to recover. Yes, some media outlets do better, but many more are on the brink of folding.

In the beginning of the year, I lost one of my most steady clients, a publishing house that has a dozen publications in its portfolio and provided me with around 30 percent of my turnover. Even if I still do an occasionally job for the publisher, it’s nothing compare to what it was.

I think most of us wish we had a creative life free of problems—that our creative development would flow free of challenges and in a continuous heightening state. However, as much as we want to avoid obstacles that seem regularly to hinder our bliss, they are not only inevitable, as we all experience, but actually necessary for our creative development.

We are most creative when in flow. Flow is that state of mind in which we get all absorbed by the task we have set out to do, whether it’s painting, photographing, writing, knitting or whatever creative endeavour we are in to. When in flow we become one with our lives, enacting a complete focusing of attention on the task at hand—thus leaving no room in the mind for irrelevant information. It is a state in which we are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter.

Here is the thing: According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian-American psychologist who recognized and named the psychological concept of flow, flow is about confronting appropriate challenges. For him flow is a balance between challenge and skill. He emphasizes that the experiences that contribute most positively to our flow, the one that generate new patterns, are often uncomfortable.

To paraphrase Csikszentmihalyi; challenges aren’t only inevitable but necessary. It’s only by coming up against obstacles that we can get into the creative flow.

All artists need obstacles to strengthen their foundation and achieve greater long-term growth. Creativity means to conceive of something new—and what person would ever develop anything new without overcoming adversity first? Obstacles can serve the purpose of increasing our capacity as human beings and galvanizing us to accomplish the tasks we deem most important.

Thomas Kuhn, one of the most influential philosophers of science of the twentieth century, wrote about this in his analysis of what motivates scientists to pursue their research: “The man who succeeds proves himself an expert puzzle-solver, and the challenge of the puzzle is an important part of what usually drives him on”.

If obstacles in science can be reframed as puzzles, cannot the same mentality apply to the creative endeavour?

I openly admit I didn’t see it that way when I lost the aforementioned publishing house as a major client. However, the predicament forced me into thinking anew. Or rather, to bring to fruition something I have long been thinking about.

Over the last couple of years, I have a taught a couple of online workshops, something I enjoyed doing. In all modesty, they have been quite well received. As a continuation of those workshops, I have been wanting to put together a new online workshop about photographing people. Losing that client suddenly opened up my schedule and let me sit down and actually plan and create the workshop.

Alas, it’s now been running for a month and still very much alive. I have enjoyed finding time for the process, both creating and running the workshop. Without losing that client, I would still most likely be dreaming of putting it together.

For me there is no doubt: Obstacles are the hurdles that get us into flow.

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