What is an artist
© Christian Patterson
Another post about my favorite subject: me. I’m awfully sorry about this. Amy Stein wrote a great post a couple of months back about how the readership of her blog expanded so much when she stopped writing so much about herself and more about photography. I hope to soon follow her example, but apparently not today. An entry over at Conscientious just got me thinking about how I define myself. Joerg said:
A couple of days ago, Ed Winkleman posted about a scientist who produces beautiful images, but who refuses to consider herself an artist. As always at his blog, the discussion that followed is quite interesting. Needless to say, part of my interest stems from the fact that in my day job I am a scientist myself, and I keep running into people who just can’t comprehend how a scientist would know something about photography. So when people ask me what I “do”, I’m always a bit of a loss what to say, since I don’t want to define myself through any single activity.
I sort of feel the same way as Joerg does and I too often have trouble answering this question. Clearly, photography is a serious pursuit of mine; but I’m also finishing a degree in political science. As we finished out senior year, we were all asking each other what our plans were. Acquaintences were surprised to hear I’m planning on an artistic career instead of a political one, “wow, that’s a big a change,” etc. And since I’m not trying to get a job covering politics as a photojournalist for the Washington Post, I guess it would seem that my passions of mine are unrelated.
To me, of course, political and social, critical writing and photography are not at all unrelated and each are tools I can use to put forth a cohesive view of American culture. My work is not inherently political because often times I find art with too heavy-handed a message off-putting. We live in an era where we let viewers interpret what we make for themselves so I by no means want to advance any kind of agenda or anything like that. But I am looking to bring all the things I do together and put forth complementary projects of all kinds encouraging, and hopefully stimulating, critical thought.
I’m an aspiring pointer-outer-of-things.
June 15th, 2007 at 9:27 am
Greg–
I agree with you that political and social writing and photography are related and can be used as tools to critically investigate and comment on American culture. Through my work I hope to share my view of the current American political and social landscape in a subtle and thought-provoking way. I have an undergrad and grad degree in political science and worked in policy and politics in DC for far too long before discovering photography in a serious way. Thank God I finally did. My political background has been helpful in informing and organizing my thoughts around my work. But photography has allowed me to express those thoughts in a way I never could in spoken or written words.
Amy
Amy
June 15th, 2007 at 11:28 am
that sounds a little arrogant no?
June 15th, 2007 at 11:34 am
Thanks so much for the thoughtful comment Amy! I didn’t realize we share a similar background!
June 17th, 2007 at 12:58 am
You bring up a good point. I went through the same thing last year when I graduated from college. I studied print journalism and when I told people I wanted to pursue photography rather than reporting or even photojournalism I got a lot of cock-eyed looks from professors, friends and acquaintances. But as you just said yourself, I think that only makes you a more informed photographer and you’ll bring a range of thoughts and experiences when approaching your work. And I fail to see how that makes you or Amy arrogant. theman, care to elaborate??