Creativity Is an Expression of Love for the World

What a decades-long passion project can teach us about creative work.

I’m traveling in California this week, and while visiting the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art I caught an exhibition of work by the German photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher. The Bechers were a married couple who collaborated over the course of decades on a project they were both passionate about: documenting the architecture of the industrial age. They called the structures they photographed “anonymous sculpture.”

The Bechers were driven by an urgently felt need to capture images of these structures before they disappeared. The curator’s notes that accompany the show quote the Bechers telling this story: "Once we were in northern France, where we found a wonderful headgear [the top of a blast furnace]—a veritable Eiffel Tower. When we arrived the weather was hazy and not ideal for our work so we decided to postpone taking the photos for a day. When we arrived the next day, it had already been torn down, the dust in the air.”

But the Bechers’ work was also driven by another insistent feeling: love. Here’s the artists’ son, Max Becher: "The truth is my parents loved their subjects. They were like entomologists interested in something that was fascinating and important. My parents were very emotional about the objects they photographed. Some they thought were very funny, others they thought were weird or disturbing. Others they thought were just spectacular. Every picture is a commentary. If you look long enough, you see their emotional connections to all of them."

The exhibit of the Bechers’ work got me thinking about how the heart of creativity lies in the way we interact with the conceptual and material world. Three acts in particular seem central: looking, valuing, and loving.

Looking. Because the Bechers looked so closely, with such discernment and rigor, they were able to see the beauty and nobility of structures that others overlooked.

Valuing. The Bechers demonstrated their respect for these structures by applying to them the full power of their artistry and expertise.

Loving. The Bechers cultivated an intensely emotional relationship with the objects of their work, treating them as if they were animate beings.

How about you? What kind of “anonymous sculpture” resides in your world, waiting for you to take a close and loving look?