Recently I said that my photography was c**p and I could not see anything anymore. I put up a photograph of a flyover stairway to prove it. Sis, who knows about this stuff, said it was an okay photograph, and that she had similar feelings, but more about why am I taking photos like these?
Which is about motive. Why am I taking these photographs?
It's common for big-name photographers, especially towards the end of their careers, to take reels of film that they never develop, let alone print or exhibit. It's as if the act of photography had become some sort of obsession, and not in a good way.
Most people take photographs to have something to remember the event and the people. At weddings, that is often done by a pro. At most other occasions it's done by one the group, and consists of the rest of the group smiling and mugging for the camera. Not my life, but neither am I knocking it.
Professionals take photographs of the client's cooking equipment because money, and because they know the tricks of the food photography trade. (Few of which the rest of us would want to know about. Here's a starter: none of the food is ever hot.)
Some professionals take photographs on spec to sell to us, the general public. Or in the case of photo-journalists, or sports photographers, to sell to newspapers. Then there are a very small number of fine artists who take photographs of carefully-staged images. Cindy Sherman. Gregory Crewdson. Add your favourite.
Leaving a small number of amateur art photographers. Why on earth do we do it?
There's the satisfaction of seeing and recording the image, of knowing we have the eye. But that's a small part of it.
It is, I think, about finding and recording the moments of magic, transcendence, mystery, majesty, artistry, beauty, humour, and otherwise notable-somethings in our lives. An assertion and a re-assurance that our lives are not one endless sequences of drudge and mundane blah. Even if we have to travel for hours overnight to find those moments at daybreak on a hill-top.
That's why there's such an interplay between where we live our lives, how we are feeling, and the photographs we take, or even our belief that there are any photographs worth taking. When it works, it's a dream, but when it slumps, it's a tangle of factors and emotions that just won't fall out of its own accord.
Why am I taking these photographs? I don't want to. You know, I'm sure there was something happening recently that has a bearing on this, but I can't remember what it was... so I have to get out of a pair of ruts: one in my own head, and one the way I spend my time. Neither of those is as easy as it sounds, especially when it's too damn hot.
Amateurs. They can so indulge their feelings.
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