When I was cutting my teeth on commercial photography, back in the early 80s, apart from the few Advertising jobs and Annual Reports I shot, I mostly shuffled between Editorial (magazines and books) and Stock.
These two niches seem to give me, at the time, what I felt like I needed most in and from photography-freedom to shoot things the way I wanted to shoot them.
After all, deep down, I was a beginning artist and poet, less of a technician and mechanic.
And, truth be told, I wasn’t so great or skilled at taking directions from anyone. I’m still not.
As I have said here, many times over, my goal, from the start, was never to own and operate a photography business, but, instead, live a photographic life.
I was more interested in shooting for the wall and not the wallet.
More personal work, less commercial work.
Of course, like all photographers of the time, at my same age and phase, I had to make a living and collect paychecks.
So, like it or not, I had to grin and bear the prompts, pulls and pushes of shot lists, client briefs, storyboards, and, worse of all, snotty-nose, 20-year old, Art Directors that just graduated from Art School that, many, knew little-to-nothing about photography.
Uggghhh.
Even to this day, whether it’s me inviting this conflict in or not, I find a war going on inside my creative brain.
It’s the war of documentation vs abstraction.
Am I shooting the subject, that thing, I’m pointing my camera at, as a record or document of what that thing or subject looks like.
Or, instead, am I shooting a mood, a feeling, a perspective, an emotion, or an artistic statement.
I’m an all-out, terrible, documentarian. That is the truth. My brain doesn’t work like this.
That seems more the purvey and purpose of pure photojournalists, among whose ranks I do not have a membership card or access to the club.
While I do document life, it’s more of a poetic documentation, that, often, borders on abstraction and extraction.
A few weeks back, I was in Oklahoma City, on a business trip, with Shannon.
While she was in day-long meetings, I was wandering the streets, looking to express my creative self, looking for freedom from the representational qualities in art.
I was shooting for the wall, not the wallet.
After my initial flirtation-turned-obsessions with shooting OKC buildings, it dawned on me, that what I seem to be doing was not shooting building abstractions but building extractions.
In other words, rather than show the viewer the whole subject matter (ie the building), I was pulling out and removing, for all to witness, a poetic and artist point-of-view of the structure.
Extraction, in the natural world, is often done with friction and force.
But, in the photography world, it’s done with feeling and foresight.
Click
Jack
