Sometimes it’s fun just to pick up the camera and play, and really I don’t do that often enough. When I have my camera in hand I often approach what I’m doing more like work. I’m in my head and thinking through every decision, and very often I choose not to even pick the camera up at all if I don’t feel like the end result will serve some purpose. I guess sometimes I forget that the beauty of this thing I do is that it fills the need to create, which is perfectly acceptable to do just because it’s fun and I want to. But every now and then when it’s been too long since I’ve made something I start to feel antsy and I allow myself the freedom to make pictures just because. And sometimes I even like what I come away with. These were all taken early one morning while I was visiting my mom. I can never resist the opportunity to play with light and shadow and reflection.
Learning to Unsee
I was telling a friend recently about all of the photos I made in Florida, about the ridiculous number of them (seriously, it’s embarrassing), and about culling them down to just a handful that I would do something with. I remarked that the rest of the set - the ones that didn’t make the cut - would be stashed away and forgotten until a later date, a year or two from now, when I would likely stumble across them, hone in on one, and think, “What was wrong with me? This image is fantastic!!”
It’s honestly one of my favorite things about what I do. It feels like finding treasure. Usually it happens on a day when I’m busy tracking down an old image for some purpose or another. The best is when it happens on a “blah” kind of day, when I’m feeling a little stuck and unsure of what I’m doing and where I’m going.
Take these two for example. I stumbled across these yesterday tracking down some older images I want to use in a print portfolio of my work. These pictures were made exactly one year ago today. And they were discarded about a day later. Why? I have absolutely no idea. That’s sort of the fun part of finding images like these; they are the stumbling upon of some past version of yourself, and you can only guess at what you were thinking at the time. In this case I imagine that it was a combination of not the subject I was looking for (I had spent the morning mostly making very minimalist pictures of bare and dead trees) and feeling like the moment I captured wasn’t close enough to the moment I felt.
So why then, do they look so much better a year later? It’s a weird thing, but time can completely change your relationship with an image, or with the past itself for that matter. You just have to learn to unsee it; to allow enough time to pass that you’re able - and willing - to see it with fresh eyes.
Logos
I’ve spent the majority of my time as a photographer being incredibly self-conscious about my work. If I had to guess I would say it’s probably equal parts “comes with the territory” and my innate personality, helped along by a healthy (or rather, unhealthy) dose of listening to too many photographers criticize their peers’ work.
The thing is I don’t really question whether my work is good. I feel like I’m technically proficient enough to finally call myself a photographer now (I avoided this for so long) and I’ve gotten enough positive feedback from people who like images here and there to feel confident that I don’t suck. Not entirely at least. What I question is whether my work is worth anything. I question - constantly - whether it has value.
And let me just go ahead and say right now: I don't say any of this looking for compliments or affirmation of any kind. I have all but entirely left social media because I hate the idea that it’s so easy to find our validation in the likes of others. I don't need to know that other people approve of what I’m making. But what I want is to believe, to feel, that when I share what I make I’m offering up something worthy. Something of value.
But then that gets me thinking: How do we define what is valuable?
In my last post I mentioned that I was reading Sean Tucker’s book, The Meaning in the Making. One of the things from the book that has resonated deeply with me is the idea of creation as Logos: the generative principle of the universe, implicit in the cosmos, ordering it and giving it form and meaning. An eternal and unchanging truth. Truth with a capital T.
For me this is where the value of creation lies, in its ability to tell a Truth. Even if we can’t always expressly state in words what that Truth is. In Sean’s words:
“Logos is our attempt to describe the Truth we all somehow know but struggle to articulate, because when we manage to, even in small ways, it brings us comfort and a feeling of togetherness, knowing that this experience of life — with its joys and hardships — is shared by all…
It’s not a neat or easy process. So many artists will say the same thing about their work: ‘Sometimes I’m not sure what I’m aiming at, or exactly how to get there, but I know it when I see it.’ Whether we say it obliquely or directly, subtly or overtly, whether we arrive there deliberately or intuitively, art is most powerful when we are speaking the Truth with the things we make and speaking Order into the collective Chaos.”
I read this little excerpt while sitting on the beach, on the first true vacation (the relax and do absolutely nothing that you don’t want to do kind) that I’ve had in six years. Six. Years. It was long overdue. After the stress and chaos of the last few months the time free of responsibility coupled with a venue entirely new to my lens were exactly the thing I needed to spark my desire to make pictures again. And I made a LOT. But with every single image made I thought about the passage above. What Truth was I telling in the pictures?
See this is the thing I have always wanted in my work, and the reason I think I am often hard on myself and question the value of what I make. I used to see images of people, of activists and immigrants, of those who are brave and those who are fascinating and of places that matter and moments that will live forever in our collective memory, and I believed that those were the things I had to capture in order to create something worthwhile. But I’m not so sure I believe that anymore.
Small moments can offer just as much Truth, and can resonate just as deeply. Some of the photos of other photographers that mean the most to me are often simple, everyday moments. They are images that I have a visceral response to; I see them and I see the Truth in them. And sometimes I may not even be able to put that Truth into words. But I recognize that it’s there and it draws me in. It brings me comfort.
When I consider my work in this light I begin to think that perhaps I do ok. Perhaps, at least occasionally, I manage to capture a bit of Truth, and perhaps the recognition of that Truth will bring someone else comfort. And that definitely feels worthwhile.