When I first started my photography career, a family member asked me when I was first getting started, they asked “Why I do it?” I replied, “ It’s the stories I get to encapsulate into an image”. They kindly questioned me “Stories, you’re only taking a picture”. It got me thinking about how other people may see photography as medium and whether it is indeed seen as merely an image or if like me, you believe it’s something must greater.
When you next look at a photograph, I encourage you to take a moment and ask yourself, what is it that I see? Does the photograph evoke a certain feeling, a memory or does it make your mind wonder of a time now past, do you reminisce on what once was?
Our minds our hardwired to make sense of things, to understand, entertain the idea of something, we can’t help ourselves, it’s in our nature to do so. As an avid reader myself and anyone else who prefers their hand in a book, will know how our minds create, the exact world in your head, from the word we read on the page, each character so multidimensional, you feel as if your right there with them, fast forward a year or two, and there’s a film or series of the exact same book you read, yet it never quite lives up to the world your mind envisioned whilst you read it for the first time.
This is because, everyone’s vision of something is different, even if the subject matter stays the same.
Unlike books that tell stories in the fictional literate sense, with a beginning , middle and end. Photographs hold something much more valuable; they hold truth and sentimentality. Most people who look a photograph will know the subject matter, there’s a real-life connection ignited when looking at it. This connection sparks parts of the brain connected with memory, which send you back to the time of when that photo was taken, perhaps the person in that photograph is no longer with you and you miss them, now you’re experiencing an emotional attachment to the photograph, whether it’s sadness, grief, love, you’re experiencing something so deep and real without anything ever been said, read or even imagined. Isn’t that incredible. It the reason why we wear lockets of our loved ones around our necks, for comfort and safety, why soldier’s carry their wives and children, to bring hope and light to their day. Photographs are so immensely powerful, and we don’t even realise it.
Let’s challenge this belief for a moment and say you have no real time connection to the subject matter in the photograph. Pause for a moment and remain looking at the image. What comes to mind? Do you begin to wonder who they are, what they were thinking at the time this was taken. Perhaps you’ll feel a certain emotion towards it, perhaps a photograph of a dog, might spark a memory of your dog that pasted a few years ago, or you’ve always wanted a dog and so now that photograph becomes part of your dream to one day have a photograph of your own dog on your wall. Do you see that without any real connection to the subject matter, you leave feeling something, even if it’s small.
If was about just pictures, we wouldn’t feel anything towards them, they’d be lifeless and soulless, we would look at them and feel nothing. Photography is a beautiful medium of storytelling. As a portrait photographer, I photograph real people and animals, so I believe I am capturing the truth behind my subject each single moment of the shutter, but what if that subject matter isn’t living, what if you are a still life photographer or you shoot ecommerce work for large companies, well, anything still life has a story to tell, think of a ruined building, that still standing but beginning to crumble in places, what happened to it, how did it become so neglected, I imagine what it could look like if shown some love and care, there are still so many questions, that building has a past, a truth, which is captured in your photos. Ecommerce photographers, okay so your subject matter isn’t necessarily real or truthful, it’s fictious like a book, however, there is a truth in why you are there, you’re capturing the truth of the brand behind the photographs. What story or values are you trying to depict in your images, the final photograph is still telling us something, it’s merely switched from the subject being the focus point and has become more about the intention of the artist, that being the brand you are working for.
As a photographer, I aim to evoke emotions and memories when you look at my photographs, even if you have no real connection to the subject. I want your mind to envision an entire world of possibility when you see my work. For each photograph to be its own origin story, a connection that only grows stronger in time, becoming more timeless and much more valuable.
