Oblique Strategies for Photographers
Created in 1975 by Brian Eno and artist Peter Schmidt, Oblique Strategy cards encourage lateral thinking by offering unconventional prompts and creative dilemmas.
Each card contains a concise statement – direct or abstract. The goal is to challenge habitual thinking patterns and invite new possibilities into the creative process. Oblique Strategy cards have been used by artists such as David Bowie, Coldplay, and Damon Albarn to inspire innovation in their creative work.
Here’s Brian Eno speaking with Jarvis Cocker, describing the origins of the cards and explaining how he has used them to bring fresh ideas to his creative work.
Oblique Strategies for Photographers
I have compiled a series of Oblique Strategy cards with prompts for photographers.
One card appears in each edition of the Beyond the Frame newsletter, beginning at Beyond the Frame 75/.
The cards are free to use and to share under a Creative Commons Licence.
How to use Oblique Strategies for Photographers
Oblique Strategies for Photographers cards are not instructions but a collection of interruptions designed to jolt you out of familiar habits and habitual ways of seeing.
If your creative process stalls, when a photograph feels too easy or too difficult, view one card at random. Read it once. Don’t analyse it. Let the phrase linger freely in your mind and see what shifts. Some cards might initially seem irrelevant or obscure but their purpose is to divert your thinking, so allow the thought to percolate. Treat each card as a quiet collaboration between intuition and serendipity, between what you intended and what your laterally thinking mind can imagine.
