Why do we photograph? Read my newsletter issue "On purpose in photography"
Purpose in Photography
in journal
purpose
“Where’s the Bronica?”
in journal
"Beautiful images, but where is the Bronica?"
If someone paid me $1 every time I get asked about the Bronica, I'd be making a very comfortable living off of photography.
We like to say we don't care about gear but at the end of the day, it's what we pay the most attention to. After all, buying a new camera and learning how to use it is a clear goal, something actionable anyone can do. We feel like we make progress.
Figuring out what to do with that camera is harder, though. Even though the purpose behind our photography is all that matters in the end.
I struggle with this like everyone else, and sharing my journey as I try to get closer to the what and the why, and not the how, is my purpose.
What's yours?
Be your own prophet
in journal
I'm currently reading Susan Sontag's On Photography - definitively a thought-provoking book, to say the least.
In Heroism of Vision, she mentions photographer Edward Weston and his supposedly vision of photography as "elitist, prophetic, subversive, revelatory". Sontag attributes to him the following thought:
Photographers reveal to others the world around them [...] showing to them what their own unseeing eyes had missed
This vision does sound a little elitist, painting the photographer as a prophet.
While I distrust truth-tellers, I do believe our photography can be self-revealing and we can become our own prophets. Photography has led me to places where I would normally not be and to situations I wouldn't necessarily put myself in.
It makes me feel alive.
I see image making as the excuse to connect with a forgotten part of the world that doesn't seem to affect us (me) anymore. We live in these little bubbles, away from nature, and photography helps me to find part of that lost connection. It's worked for me and that's why I share my work and passion for photography, because I believe it can work for others as well.
An approach to photography not as a means to show anything to others, but to reveal the world to ourselves.