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The purpose of photography
May. 2nd, 2021 09:40 pmI've loved photography as a hobby most of my life. But recently, in my slow-going efforts to declutter and minimize my things, I've started to re-examine my relationship to photography and what photography means to me.
There are two things I did this weekend that have helped me clarify things about how I approach photography. The first thing was going through my old college photos and the second thing was going to an exhibit of Frida Kahlo's collection of photographs.
So one of the things I brought back with me from my mom's house was two boxes full of photo prints. I wanted to go through them and decide which ones to keep and which ones to donate to the Pittsburgh Center for Creative Reuse. Turns out that they were almost all the pictures I had taken during my college years. There were a TON of landscape pictures and pictures of flowers, etc. that I put in the donate pile. Many of those pictures were well taken but...flowers and clouds looked the same in 2000 as they do today in 2021. To be frank, those pictures were boring. But the true learning experience was what I decided to keep. What I kept were pictures of people that are still very important in my life, of course, but also of people who I never saw again after college, but I remember very fondly. I tried to keep pictures of things that were indicative of the time the picture was taken or pictures of rooms and dorms where I stayed in that bring up a lot of memories. I kept a lot of pictures from my time in Kobe in 2000. A lot of the people in the pictures I never saw again after college but I have such fond memories of the experiences I shared with them in Japan.
Then today, I went to an exhibit at The Frick of pictures of Frida Kahlo and the people in her life, taken from her photograph collection that was discovered in her home (which is now a museum dedicated to her art) a few years ago. The photographs chronicled all the various aspects of her life, especially her relationship with Diego Rivera. The text accompanying the photos discuss the themes behind what she chose to keep/collect. According to the text, she kept photographs as a way to feel connected to the people she loved in times of isolation due to her health. She kept photographs that alluded to the good times in her life as well as the painful times in her life. The exhibit really spoke to me, especially on the value of photography as a tool to chronicle one's life (and times) and the power of photography to evoke memories. Photography for the sake of documenting as opposed to photography for the sake of art (Frida's art, for one, lay outside photography).
I guess what I want to say is that I hope these two experiences this weekend can guide the way I approach my photography in the future. But it is easier said than done. It is so tempting to take a picture of every beautiful thing you see (especially now that it's spring!), but sometimes those things are best experienced "in the moment." Unlike photographs of people, you may be able to capture the image, but you can't capture the unique moment in which you took in the sight or the feelings it evoked in you.
There are two things I did this weekend that have helped me clarify things about how I approach photography. The first thing was going through my old college photos and the second thing was going to an exhibit of Frida Kahlo's collection of photographs.
So one of the things I brought back with me from my mom's house was two boxes full of photo prints. I wanted to go through them and decide which ones to keep and which ones to donate to the Pittsburgh Center for Creative Reuse. Turns out that they were almost all the pictures I had taken during my college years. There were a TON of landscape pictures and pictures of flowers, etc. that I put in the donate pile. Many of those pictures were well taken but...flowers and clouds looked the same in 2000 as they do today in 2021. To be frank, those pictures were boring. But the true learning experience was what I decided to keep. What I kept were pictures of people that are still very important in my life, of course, but also of people who I never saw again after college, but I remember very fondly. I tried to keep pictures of things that were indicative of the time the picture was taken or pictures of rooms and dorms where I stayed in that bring up a lot of memories. I kept a lot of pictures from my time in Kobe in 2000. A lot of the people in the pictures I never saw again after college but I have such fond memories of the experiences I shared with them in Japan.
Then today, I went to an exhibit at The Frick of pictures of Frida Kahlo and the people in her life, taken from her photograph collection that was discovered in her home (which is now a museum dedicated to her art) a few years ago. The photographs chronicled all the various aspects of her life, especially her relationship with Diego Rivera. The text accompanying the photos discuss the themes behind what she chose to keep/collect. According to the text, she kept photographs as a way to feel connected to the people she loved in times of isolation due to her health. She kept photographs that alluded to the good times in her life as well as the painful times in her life. The exhibit really spoke to me, especially on the value of photography as a tool to chronicle one's life (and times) and the power of photography to evoke memories. Photography for the sake of documenting as opposed to photography for the sake of art (Frida's art, for one, lay outside photography).
I guess what I want to say is that I hope these two experiences this weekend can guide the way I approach my photography in the future. But it is easier said than done. It is so tempting to take a picture of every beautiful thing you see (especially now that it's spring!), but sometimes those things are best experienced "in the moment." Unlike photographs of people, you may be able to capture the image, but you can't capture the unique moment in which you took in the sight or the feelings it evoked in you.
