Why Do You Make Photographs?

Why do you make photographs?

Simple question, really.

But have you ever thought about what it is that makes you do it and love it so? (I am making an assumption that you love to make photographs because you are reading this blog and this blog is all about loving to make photographs.)

I have a simple answer when it is asked of me; “Because I have to.” I need to make photographs like I need to breathe. I carry an iPhone camera without being hooked up to AT&T, just for the camera. I have film cameras and I have medium format and large format cameras. I have cheap digital cameras and point and shoots… I love them all.

Because they make photographs. Still images. Prints.

I tried the movie route for a while back in the early 80′s. Thought that directing would be a really fun thing to do. Then I got a chance to do it and got a taste of the incredibly different world that is the film industry. There was simply no way I could force myself to deal with the unions and the whining and the bitchiness and the attitudes. It may be some people’s thing, but I found it totally not compatible with my way of seeing the world.

And I wasn’t that committed to it anyway. I don’t really see movies in my head. I see still images. There are a few movies that I can watch over and over, but they are few. But I can still pull out an old Mapplethorpe book or a Weston or an Adams or a Ritts and be totally entertained. I see things I didn’t see last time.

I think that as your world changes and the things you are interested change, what you see in the images change as well. When I was learning technique, I tended to look for images that reinforced the challenges I was having in technique. When posing subjects was new to me, there were images that I would study to learn. To see. To do.

Then, when those things were no longer the big challenges they once were, I can look at those images and see even more. Stuff that I didn’t see the first or second time because I was looking to be taught. I was looking for answers instead of letting the image supply the questions.

And to me, that is one of the great things that surround the best still images. A sense of contextual alteration… questions of reality… seem to flow from images that attract me. I want images that challenge me to feel or do or see. Images that kind of creep up and take you by surprise, with a new and challenging view of something so obvious or so known to me that it makes me take pause.

Dan Winter’s pictures do that for me. And the surfers of Joni Sternbach. And the landscapes of Nadav Kander (Try Wilderness). And a whole host of photographers who move beyond the encounter photograph to make a photograph that intrigues. At least to me.

My fascination for the still photograph goes back to when I was a kid. I believe it was 1954 when Life Magazine printed the images that were taken at Auschwitz and the other concentration camps. They horrified me, and as a kid of about 5 or 6 years old they gave me nightmares. They were some of the most powerful pictures I had ever seen, and they made me have a physical reaction. They still do.

Because they were moments taken and captured and delivered in a medium that was not of reality. Black and white – ink on paper – two dimensional. As far away from the real world as possible and yet… they were as real as one gets when confronted with terror.

I knew later that I wanted to be a photographer (after brief stints as a drummer in a soul band “Salt and Pepper”, a jazz drummer and arranger, an art director and various other crazy stuff that I had the wonderful opportunity to do.) But it is the capture of a still image – something that will last a lifetime or two – taken of a split moment in time – that still captures my imagination. That moment in time will never be repeated. Ever. But I got a chance to hold it forever. I can relive that moment in my mind… the way I remember it. Movies don’t do that… they live it for you. I like it my way more.

I take a lot of pictures. A lot. I throw a lot of pictures away. A lot. I am very aware of where I fit in the grand scheme of things and at this point in my life, I couldn’t care less about criticisms or artistic differences. Being the best I can be is the goal of what I do, and I have little desire to copy or mimic anyone, or try to ‘fit in’ to some faddish or temporary direction. I make pictures now to impress me. Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t… but I work at it. Every time.

Garry Winogrand once said “I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs.”

Yeah… like Garry said.

And I like to put a little twist in if I can. Sometimes reality can be so damn real… ya know.

I got to thinking about this after reading Zack Arias’s post on negativity. I know where he is coming from there, and there have been times when I had either thought about quitting or committing homicide (justifiable in my mind of course) against some folks who lied and stole from me. But that never seemed like a good plan, so I kept on making photographs.

I do know that being in photography as a career is really hard. It is. There are missed anniversaries, late late nights, red-eye flights to places with no rental cars, dead-beat clients, book-keeping nightmares, overhead and insurance and on and on and on. And somewhere in that mess of reality you have to be able to turn it all off, and flip the “I’m gonna make a knock-out shot now…” switch to on.

And that has to happen all the time. Clients don’t care about all the crap you have to do to be in business. They simply don’t. And that is OK… think about it. Do you really care about all the crap they have to do to stay in business? Really? Hell no. I would never trade my puny, mundane, seemingly terrible problems with anybody else. There are more to our lives than what we see. And I have no wish to have someone else’s hidden problems.

If you are starting out in photography you must understand something I learned a long time ago… painfully. Photography is a harsh mistress. She demands your concentration when you may be needed elsewhere. She demands your attention – ripping you away from loved ones and family and things you would maybe be better off doing. You can fight it, but she will usually win with those of us who love her so.

My friend Ken says that the worst day of photography he ever had was still better than the best day he ever had at a “real” job. I don’t just say “yeah” to that, but “hell yeah.”

So I would say to Zack, and anyone who was dealing with how damn hard it is to do what we love… stay the course. Manage expectations. As fickle as photography is, be true to her. Photography will thrill you and she will break your heart. Sometimes on the same day. Sometimes within the same moment. And know that she will not be true to you… she will desert you with her BFF ‘talent’ and go to Vegas, spend a ton on your credit card, meet some young hotshot whippersnapper and run off for a few days, trashing the Mustang and shootin’ up a casino, gettin’ drunk and quite possibly arrested.

But she will come back – unrepentant for sure, without apology and with a bit of an attitude… but back indeed. And you get to start the whole damn passionate thing over again.

It is passion that fires it all in the first place.

The passion of the still image.