There's something really magical about trying to see things in new ways that go beyond, in some sense, the biological human experience. Light-field photography, too, goes beyond the human experience because our eyes work like conventional cameras.
I think a really rich world to live in is where you're thinking in terms of human behavior and human types and not being super literal. In order to see the deeper truth, you need to break out of literal frame of mind.
I used to live in a room full of mirrors; all I could see was me. I take my spirit and I crash my mirrors, now the whole world is here for me to see.
I grew up with my stepfather in Brighton, but I did spend a lot of time with my natural father, and I was loved by both, so I suppose the advantage of this was that I wasn't bound by one set of experiences; I always had an alternative.
Living at the YMCA in Harlem dramatically broadened my view of the world.
Once I began to consider everything as being of potential interest, objects released latent layers of value.
The idea is that what an artist lives through should broaden his notion of what it is possible for a human being to live through, and that new understanding should then get into and expand the work.
Not only does travel give us a new system of reckoning, it also brings to the fore unknown aspects of our own self. Our consciousness being broadened and enriched, we shall judge ourselves more correctly.
I'm not such a fan of imagination. If you're alive to details, they oftentimes suggest a richer or deeper imaginative line than you would have imagined.
I would go to the beach in my turtle neck, all bundle up. I would read my book and kind of scowl, but I hadn't seen the most beautiful beaches in the world. We had a beach (in Canada) where you couldn't even go swimming. But once I travelled and saw more beautiful areas, my relationship to the planet expanded I started connect to it more and be more aware.
Only the best books are special. Why? Because they open our eyes, touch us, excite us, extend us.
It's a very salutary thing to realize that the rather dull universe in which most of us spend most of our time is not the only universe there is. I think it's healthy that people should have this experience.
Art and literature should help us to get out of our mental cocoons.
Enormous enlargements of an object or a fragment give it a personality it never had before, and in this way, it can become a vehicle of entirely new lyric and plastic power.
Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.
Courses in the humanities, in particular, often seem impractical, but they are vital, because they stretch your imagination and challenge your mind to become more responsive, more critical, bigger.
