Photography for Pleasure, Not Popularity
July 21st 2006 01:15
Reminiscing over treasured photographs
Online photography communities are heartbreakers. Like the addictive ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends whose heady experience you find yourself wasting four years of your life with, online communities can be very much the same blur of pointless highs and gut-wrenching lows where your world becomes dictated by page views, comment counts and “favourites”.
An interesting thought occurred to me the other day—how about taking some photographs and not exhibiting them online? Sure, you may find that you have neglected to upload an outtake here and there, but the practice might still stand of having always shared your photography with the public.
For me, it has always been difficult distinguishing between the comments on my photographs like where “randomphotodude” would say, "awesom foto, ur model is hot, chek out my stuf thnx" and the people who sincerely liked my work and was keen to watch me grow. They have been a source of both intense frustration and great, great pleasure.
I am not pledging a vow of silence, or anything else revolutionary, but simply proposing the idea to all interested readers that we allow ourselves the room to grow a little through the old-fashioned celebrations of amateur self-satisfying art—paper photo albums.
Still shoot anything and everything to your heart’s content, but only when it pleases you and not when you’re garnering for page views. Shoot your models and sitters, but as a memento of your growth and not as any contrived or grandiose attempt at art. Page by page, I challenge you to fill an album that you will be able to carry around with you for the rest of your life, and measure its worth by the fond memories it inspires, and not by comments.
Charles Dodgson aka Lewis Carroll filled volumes of albums with his portraits
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Comment by Sisi
For relevance, I'm in it for the pleasure...I can say this for sure because I was never popular with the art teachers (except for Ms Stanmore, but she never did tell me what she liked about my work...she was lovely though)...but I still did my own thing anyway...how I miss those darkroom days! Where do you develop your photos now? I still have a box of photo paper if you'd like it...it's been a while though, hopefully I haven't accidentally exposed it...by the way, you still write beautifully