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Photo Challenge

Chaos

This week, let’s embrace disorder and its creative power.

One recent afternoon I found myself inside a large cavernous space filled with thousands of excited kids and millions of LEGO bricks. No, I wasn’t having a nightmare during a nap. I’m a parent; I don’t expect to take a nap until 2019 at the earliest. I was at a LEGO expo.

Here are some of the epiphanies I had during that afternoon:

  • Stepping on a single piece of LEGO: horribly painful. Stepping on a gazillion LEGO blocks: surprisingly pleasant. (How come an enterprising podiatrist hasn’t come up with Legotherapy yet?)
  • Structures, statues, and mini-universes might be impressive and fun. But nothing was more satisfying — on several sensory levels — than the brick pit.

If you’ve never seen a brick pit, imagine a huge, unwalled ball pit… full of LEGO. Or just look at the photo I took of its endless, chaotic depths:

lego1

Just like with building blocks of all types, we’re often under the impression that photography needs to be orderly and neat, and serve some overarching design or idea. What I loved about the brick pit — and my photo of it — is that it embraced the creative potential of disorderly randomness: one huge heap of colorful, pixel-like atoms.

This week, share your own take on chaos, whether it’s the mess in your living room, a busy street crossing, a party on the verge of getting a little out of hand, or any other subject that celebrates a lack of (visual) control.

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    7. Sorry for the inconvenience, everyone!

      We’re currently experiencing a pingback issue that requires us to manually approve them — so all pingbacks will show up (more than a hundred already do), but after some delay; we’ll do our best to approve these as fast as we can.

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  10. Enjoyable post to read, thank you! I agree that stepping on one Lego is horribly painful! Ouch! Although chaotic at times, Legos are fun, stimulating and creative for minds of all ages!

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  11. Fascinating how the success and global love of Lego has been built upon chaos. The love of making something out of nothing, the fun of knocking it all down again. If Lego was politics, what might this word hold in store for the US election or UK attempts to Brexit. ….Gosh, that’s an unusual thought..

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  15. Legos are an amazing and creative outlet for children, and even adults. They should be utilized more. I work with children, and love to see them just build things because it means they have creativity in their minds that isn’t always based off something that they saw on tv or they were told. Lots of kids make something up, and its okay, because it means they have ideas. A lego pit would be quite interesting from the sounds of it.

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    1. We’re currently experiencing a pingback issue that requires us to manually approve them — so all pingbacks will show up (yours already does!), but after some delay; we’ll do our best to approve these as fast as we can.

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  26. Wow this was an awesome post “I don’t expect a nap until 2019 at the earliest,” completely cracked me up!

    The chaos found in Lego is one of the most beautiful because it’s one which promotes creativity, unleashing the inner artist in you in order for you to pick up the building blocks from that chaos and create something beautiful. I guess it’s about time I take a trip to a Lego store…

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