I have this lifelong aversion to asking permission—from anyone, about anything. I hate it. I fucking hate it. Maybe it’s because I got my fill of it growing up. Parents. Teachers. Friends. Always needing to ask if it was okay to exist the way I wanted to. Maybe that shit just wore me out. I don’t know.
All I know is that asking permission doesn’t come easy. It’s a friction point in my inner life. Right or wrong—more often wrong than right, I’ll admit it—I’d rather make a quick decision based on my own terms than drag someone else into the process. Their rules. Their judgments. Fuck that. It’s like putting a leash on a lion.
When I was a card-carrying Evangelical Christian, I spent a decade—a fucking decade—asking God for permission to do this, to do that. Pray, wait, beg, pray some more. It was exhausting. Every move I made came with this constant internal audit: Was this okay? Would God approve? And you know what? It never felt like life on my own terms. It was a life dictated by someone else’s imaginary stamp of approval. Eventually, I said, “Fuck that.” I walked away. Best decision I ever made.
But here’s the thing: even after I ditched the church and the endless permission slips from the sky, I realized I wasn’t done with that bullshit. I’d carried it with me into my photography career. Decades of making images and so much of it was still tied up in asking for validation. Clients, critics, curators—always wanting their blessing, their green light, their fucking permission to say, “Yeah, this is good enough.” It’s insidious. You don’t even realize you’re doing it half the time. And then one day you wake up and go, “Wait a minute, whose photographic life am I even living?”
For me, that wake-up call came in 2011. I discovered iPhone photography, and something inside me just snapped. It was like a goddamn jailbreak. No more asking permission. None. I started shooting what I wanted, where I wanted, how I wanted, when I wanted, who I wanted, and even why I wanted. I became the sole arbiter of my creative choices. Freedom at last.
I’ll tell you what: there’s nothing like it. When you stop asking permission, you stop playing small. You stop shrinking yourself to fit into someone else’s idea of what you should be. That’s the lesson here, isn’t it? That art—real, honest-to-God, spit-on-the-floor, raw-as-fuck art—doesn’t ask permission. It doesn’t knock politely and wait for someone to open the door. It kicks the door down, strolls in, and says, “This is mine.”
Since 2011, I’ve been living my creative life on my terms. No gods, no masters, no clients, no critics. Just me and the iPhone in my hand. And you know what? That’s the way it’s meant to be. Art doesn’t ask permission. It just is. And the second you realize that, you’re free. Free at last.
Click.
Jack
