Why do I photograph? (Reflection)

24/03/10

I have asked myself this question many times… Why do I photograph? In fact, I should perhaps even ask …. Why do I have a NEED to photograph? Is it something that I perhaps inherited? Maybe but a better explanation could probably be that I was influenced to photograph by my family, mainly my Grandfather (from my father’s side). Both my parents were also keen amateur photographers and apparently, as my mum once told me, her father photographed, too. Therefore, some of it may be the genes…. But photography hasn’t been around for that long so who my pre-photography ancestors were?

I haven’t always been interested in photography though. That only came to light once I reached the adulthood. I have however always been interested in things artistic and loved to draw and paint when I was a child. Drawing class was my favourite class at school. I guess there was always a need inside me to express what I was seeing around me but also what was the fruits of my imagination. Apart from drawing, I would also spend hours playing with plasticine… creating imaginative world and expressing scenes from my fantasy.

Only in adulthood, I have swapped the pencils and plasticine for a different medium – a camera. Holding a camera in my hands feels so right. It is like a third hand to me, it feels as it is a part of my body. Photographing didn’t come easy to me and I have made a lot of mistakes but at the end, learning to photograph has always been just as much fun as the actual process of taking pictures. A wise man once told me that the best way to go about photography is to photograph purely for yourself. The same wise man also told me not to worry about what other people think of my results as it is hard to produce images that have a mass appeal. As long as we are happy with our own progression, the fact that sometimes other enjoy what we do is a bonus. This was the best advice anybody had given to me. Only then I was able to ‘free myself from prejudices’ and start expressing some of the thoughts and ideas that I was perhaps not confident to express before.

So why do I photograph? I guess there cannot be a simple answer to this question as it would be quite hard to exactly pinpoint the reason… But after much thinking about the reason I came to a conclusion that I simply love to realise my ideas and make an expression out of them. Sometimes they are deliberate and sometimes they happen ‘by accident’… in such case it is even more fun. I get a pleasure out of seeing something ordinary and turning the ordinary into a photographic art. I don’t photograph to record the present and the reality, what interests me more is what I AM able to do with the present and the reality. I believe that one must also try to photograph the essence of the chosen subject and that can be quite challenging. However, if essence is captured, it brings the image to life. Therefore I also love to photograph because I find it challenging. It gives me the urge to always strive for improvement. No image produced is ever perfect because if there was such a thing as a perfect image, we would no longer have the need to photograph. And this is probably most likely the answer to the question that I have asked myself at the beginning of this reflection.