Been thinking a lot lately about the reasons to create. You take something in your mind, in your thoughts and heart, then translate it into a photograph. You communicate your inner feelings and emotions through your subject and record it forever (?) on a piece of photographic film.
Why? What drives you to do that?
In my case why go to dumps an slums or the sex workers of Asia looking for stories to tell. Why would someone do that instead of lying on a beach and boozing it up? Most people I know go to Thai to relax, shop, trek, or ride on elephants.
Why did you go to the dump? I had that question asked of me recently at my Rosebud exhibition artist day. What drives a person to travel half way round the world to tell stories through photography?
I am not sure I can answer those questions. I think it comes down to an inner need to reach beyond yourself, a need to communicate what you feel, a need to try to make a positive difference. In a way it is like you were given a gift (being born into a middle class western family) and you have a responsibility to meet. In another way there is just the pure high and emotions of the creative process. There is such joy in making a photograph, it is something I have done for almost 40 years now but I never tire of it. The hunger if anything has grown and grown. I feel more desire to create photographs now at 51 years old than any other time in my life. It has become an insatiable thirst I cannot quench.
I know one thing, if I do not do it, I cannot live, it is my reason for being here in this wonderful world.
"Ain't Photography Grand!" :))) Peace Brother!
Why? What drives you to do that?
In my case why go to dumps an slums or the sex workers of Asia looking for stories to tell. Why would someone do that instead of lying on a beach and boozing it up? Most people I know go to Thai to relax, shop, trek, or ride on elephants.
Why did you go to the dump? I had that question asked of me recently at my Rosebud exhibition artist day. What drives a person to travel half way round the world to tell stories through photography?
I am not sure I can answer those questions. I think it comes down to an inner need to reach beyond yourself, a need to communicate what you feel, a need to try to make a positive difference. In a way it is like you were given a gift (being born into a middle class western family) and you have a responsibility to meet. In another way there is just the pure high and emotions of the creative process. There is such joy in making a photograph, it is something I have done for almost 40 years now but I never tire of it. The hunger if anything has grown and grown. I feel more desire to create photographs now at 51 years old than any other time in my life. It has become an insatiable thirst I cannot quench.
I know one thing, if I do not do it, I cannot live, it is my reason for being here in this wonderful world.
"Ain't Photography Grand!" :))) Peace Brother!
