Photographer's statement

It is lunch time for me and I have 12 minutes or so to ruminate, in all meanings of the word.  After another snarky comment on my blog, I have been thinking about what exactly my photography is all about.  Could I come up with a single statement that would explain what I do or try to do?

It is hard, and not unlike coming up with your teaching philosophy for an application or a mission/vision statement for work.  While I tend to think more globally and philosophically than most, I sometimes struggle to express these thoughts and visions.  Apparently saying "to do good stuff/work/whatever" just isn't enough.  Or, when people ask what I want to be when I grow up, I never have a good answer.  One of the best answers to that I have ever heard is this:  "I want to grow up and be brave and kind."  Aspirational and inspirational, for sure.

I digress.  Photographer's statements are hard, so I turned to the internet for inspiration.  I found that they are all over the board.  Some are simply focused on the subject matter, like the ones that say that they will take portraits that capture the soul and essence of the subject, or that they will take nature photos that will glow with an inner light of God's beauty as it is expressed in his/her creation.  Yuk.  I stopped looking when I ran across this one:  "I consider my personal creative praxis to be a critical reflection upon the human condition and what makes mankind unique amongst all other animals. My practice exclusively engages photography to explicate socio-cultural, psychological and perceptual conjecture within the western context of post-modernist discourse. Conversely, whilst these themes, I acknowledge, are better served by the causal relationship between photography and the perceived reality of our human existence, my intention is to examine the truth-value of the medium in our modern, information saturated age and whether the medium can be used to subvert its own authority within the context of society’s continuing confidence in photography’s ability to represent the real world."

I kid you not.  What utter and complete bullshit.  I decided that I might not be so deep, but for now, my photographer's statement/philosophy will be "to do good stuff/work/whatever."  In reality, that's not a bad goal for anyone of us.

PS:  The following is from Edward Steichen:  “The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each to himself. And that is the most complicated thing on earth.”