I tried looking at a photo with multidimensional awareness with one special photograph Seeff took in 1994 of Michael Jackson and Diana Ross. She’s wearing a romantic, other-century type of blouse. He’s dressed in vintage Michael. She, some 15 years older, nestled in his shoulder. When I click in and use my visual-emotion antennae, what I see is startling: a multi-leveled layer of relationship between two artists: mother/son, warrior/lass, collaborative spirits, possible lovers, possibly soul mates through eons. Look a little more and you see veiled defiance, longing, resigned impossibility. Even the angles of their noses converge in mid-air.

What did Seeff see?
“Michael Jackson was so shy,” he says. “Most of the time he didn’t even talk to people in public. But when you look at that photo he felt so safe with her and so loved by her and she with him. You see two people who love each other and feel comfortable in each other’s presence. In fact, they give each other a sense of safety and security and value. It’s the whole Maslow hierarchy of value.”

Seeff is presently preparing a documentary on creativity based on conversations with great artists and scientists and I was privileged to view some rough footage.  Especially, a classic session with Tina Turner. After cancelling a shoot with her husband Ike, she arrived one day in 1984 for her Private Dancer album, heralding her return to the stage as a free woman liberated from abuse. What Seeff captures on moving film is the embodiment of an unleashed pent-up passion, with Tina’s unmistakable cougar growls, her backward Moonwalk teetering on stilettos, the diva-like port-de-bras arms slicing the air like a knife. The brilliant part is that you see Tina working it out. More than entertainment, the clip is a complete undressing of an artist discovering her power and grace in an unconditionally loving space.

And that is exactly the space that comprises Seeff’s art form.

As is being available any time for spontaneous combustion. When Seeff was called to California to shoot Steve Jobs back in 1984, intention was way on the back burner. “I remember we were having a great conversation in his home about creativity and he said, ‘Wait a minute, I want to show you my new baby,’ and ran out of the room. When he returned, he was holding the latest Mac and just plopped on the floor, with his legs in lotus position, and pulled the computer onto his lap. And I just clicked.”

That shot - the outcome of a keen eye, refined technique and a talent for being nowhere but in the present moment - became the iconic 1984 cover of “Time” magazine, hailing Jobs as a guru who would change the course of the tech world, and our world, forever.

And the rest, we say, was history.

Pamela Bloom is an award-winning journalist, interfaith minister, and frequent contributor to Science of Mind magazine.