Photography has become my art.
Photography has become important.
Laden. Very serious.
Photography has become entangled in a web of emotional strings and hang ups.
Recently there have been moments in which I’ve found myself wishing for simpler times, wishing to take a photograph with no strings attached.
Back in 1989 when I discovered photography, when I had no pretensions of being a photographer, it was fun and done for the sheer joy of it, I took snaps and bathed in the simplicity of it. I didn’t mind spending hours in the darkroom printing anything – portraits of friends, holiday memories, pets.
I loved it.
I used a Kodak box brownie 6×9, the camera that brought photography to the masses. I used old bakelite cameras with 127 film. I used my new Nikkormat.
I tried different films, at extreme speeds. I used 3200 ASA films at 24 ASA or 100 ASA at 6400 ASA. I cropped prints into extreme shapes, vertical stripes, horizontal stripes, anything and everything,
I photographed.
I continued to love it.
But slowly, ever so slowly, that enthusiasm, that love turned it into a job. Into something serious, precious, laden with connotations. I no longer took photographs unless it was for a good reason.
The child like enthusiasm had dripped away.
And then, sometime around 2010, 22 years after my first B&W snaps, 18 years after I graduated from college with an-ever-so-serious exhibition of reportage photographs taken in Romania, about 8 years after the concept of West of the Sun had come into my life, I began once more, without realising it, taking photographs for the sake of taking photographs.
I had an I-phone.
Much like a box brownie, it was fixed lens, simple, easy to use and had helped revolutionise photography for the masses.
I could snap, without a second thought. I could snap without worrying about the amount of work needed in the darkroom. I could snap without my Art feeling threatened. I could snap, finally, for the sheer hell of it.
Landscapes I passed when I didn’t have my ‘serious’ camera with me.
Holidays.
Portraits of friends.
Of Carla, my beautiful muse, calling to the very essence of my creativity.
I was even doing what could be considered photographic jobs, taking photographs of Carla at work with Art Model Collective.
I could take wonderful, instinctive photos. I could experiment with the framing, I could have fun, I could still be a photographer, but without all the excess baggage.
What an amazing, creative, fun art form photography was proving to be. Again.
How wonderful to be able to enjoy myself. Again.
And, yes, to enjoy myself with no strings attached.
May 19, 2019
April 26, 2019
January 28, 2019
March 19, 2018
February 15, 2018
January 11, 2018
October 3, 2017
September 3, 2017
June 2, 2017
May 18, 2017
April 27, 2017
February 27, 2017
November 11, 2016
November 7, 2016
November 5, 2016
September 25, 2016
July 1, 2016
June 3, 2016
May 24, 2016
May 24, 2016
April 9, 2016
March 20, 2016
November 11, 2015
November 10, 2015
October 20, 2015
September 12, 2014
August 15, 2014
July 1, 2014
June 2, 2014
April 20, 2014
April 19, 2014
November 28, 2013
June 10, 2013
May 8, 2013
May 3, 2013
March 24, 2013
February 23, 2013
February 22, 2013
February 21, 2013
February 7, 2013
January 22, 2013
November 29, 2012
November 1, 2012
June 9, 2012
June 6, 2012
June 5, 2012
June 3, 2012
February 3, 2012
January 20, 2012
January 19, 2012
January 18, 2012
January 17, 2012
January 5, 2012
September 3, 2011
August 19, 2011
May 24, 2011
April 21, 2011
April 20, 2011
April 10, 2011
April 8, 2011
April 7, 2011
March 22, 2011
March 16, 2011
March 3, 2011
March 2, 2011
March 1, 2011
February 28, 2011
October 20, 2010
October 15, 2010
September 16, 2010
August 22, 2010
August 5, 2010
August 3, 2010
July 8, 2010
June 25, 2010
June 19, 2010
June 15, 2010
June 2, 2010
May 23, 2010