Originality: Returning to the Origin
This spring, I had the privilege of teaching ARTS/HHMN 220: Photopoetry at Salem College. As part of the course, the students shared an exhibit of their work in the Elberson Fine Arts Center—original photographs paired with original poems.
The exhibit was supported by a grant from the Educating Character Initiative at Wake Forest University and Lilly Endowment Inc., for which I am deeply grateful.
But what stays with me is not simply the exhibit itself. It is the way the students began to see. Because early on, we asked a simple question: What does it mean to be original? In most settings, originality is about being new, different, or impressive. There is often a quiet pressure to stand out, to produce something that hasn’t been seen before. But in this class, we explored something different.
The word original comes from the Latin origo—meaning beginning or source. To be original is not to be novel. It is to return to the source of seeing itself. That sounds simple, but it is not easy. Most of us have learned, often without realizing it, to perform—to make images we think others will like, to write in ways that sound a certain way, to shape experience into something recognizable or impressive.
But contemplative photography invites us in another direction—not toward performance, but toward presence. The practice is to see what is here before we name it, before we interpret it, before we try to make it meaningful. Color, texture, light, shadow— a moment, as it is. And something begins to shift.
When we try to be original, we often move away from direct experience. But when we simply attend—when we slow down enough to actually see—something authentic begins to appear. Not because we created it, but because we allowed it. Originality, in this sense, is not something we produce. It is what arises when we are fully present.
Each student sees from a different place—shaped by their life, their attention, their way of meeting the world. No one else stands where they stand. No one else sees in quite the same way. And when perception becomes clear and unforced, that difference naturally reveals itself—not as something new, but as something true.
Walking through the exhibit, what I encountered was not a collection of images trying to impress. It was something quieter than that—moments of alignment, places where seeing and being met seemed to touch.
A different kind of originality—one that does not announce itself, but simply is. And perhaps this is the invitation, not only for photography, but for our lives.
