Don’t get me wrong, even after 45 years of creating and sharing my photography with the world, I still enjoy the validation I get from others viewing my work.
But as I’ve said here, repeatedly, this is not the reason I take pictures.
For me anyway, and this may surprise you, the hard cold truth to this social flattery, in comments like “Awesome”, “Beautiful”, “Wow”, “Stunning”, “Great stuff”, is for the most part, relatively meaningless to me? Nice? Yes, of course. But, again, not that meaningful to me.
While always appreciated, it often feels shallow and surface?.
For the past handful of years, since deep-diving into my autobiographical style of iPhone photography, I find myself with a deeper appreciation toward those who not only recognize how I shoot but, also, how I think.
Looking at my photographs only is like seeing only my surface and facade, my externality
Understanding my words, my beliefs, my values, my philosophy, and my theology is validation, for me, of an all-together different kind and level of internality and intimacy
Yes, of course, I revel in the treasure of being considered an artist and poet.
But, as I get older and wiser, I seem to get an even deeper, longer-lasting pleasure of being considered a thinker, ideologist, and theorist in life and photography.
As I am learning, the people who get the most out of following me, like myself, use photography as therapy, as philosophy, and as autobiography.
My total package, if you will, is words and pictures. I am a scribe and poet.
I’ve been doing photography, for such a long time, that I find myself both bored and disinterested in only mechanical and technical discussions of photography.
Who cares? Been there, done that. Yawn.
There are only so many ways to talk about “expose and compose”.
Photography, at least the way I go about it, has to tie to life the beautiful, lyrical, and emotional side of life itself!
Feel with me. Think with me. Love with me.
I love you.
Click
Jack
