I believe every artist invariably reaches a crisis point as more and more people see their work. We ask ourselves, are we being true to our art and ourselves or are we pandering to what we think we know our audience to want? Are we more concerned with the lay audience or critics? Fellow artists? Whose opinion, if anyone’s, matters most? Which artist influences our vision and are we merely building upon someone else’s work or worse, distilling it?
In the online world, both with blogs and of course even more-so with an interactive photo sharing site like Flickr with its instant feedback, this crisis happens much faster and possibly with a lot more confusion. We see trends develop in a matter of weeks—if online enough you can witness it happen in a matter of hours sometimes. How many of us are using textures right now? How many shooting plants with sunset bokeh? How many original ideas are we producing today? Are there any truly original ideas left?
In poetic theory, this is what literary critic Harold Bloom calls the “anxiety of influence.” We struggle not only in terms of what great masters have done before us—we have the anxiety of what our peers are doing right there online next to us for all to see. Who is copying whom? Influencing whom? When is it okay to be inspired and when is it theft? And what of our audience? Do we know how to parse our inner vision from all this external noise?
Looking at all these layers—art influence, peer influence, audience influence—that’s not just a lot of anxiety, but one hot neurotic mess. No wonder all artists are moody, brooding wrecks half the time!
Welcome to my new website! The focus here is me as an artist who uses photography as my primary medium. This is a blog on which to write about and showcase my work. While I offer commissioned portrait photography, I am primarily an artist. I will be writing here about my ideas and my struggles. I will write about particular pieces and general goals. I will write about upcoming events or shows and hopefully good news. I will write about camera equipment and photo processing techniques.
The topics are photography and creativity. I may dip my foot back into poetic prose and likely muse on books I’m reading and music I love. Above all my goal is to continue to grow and discover my true vision—to separate it from all the outside voices—while remaining connected to my fellow artists always.
