Who do I photograph for?
For those of us who love photography—not just for the wonderous jiggery-pokery that the cameras do but for the art and the feel of it—we start out shooting to please ourselves. During those early days of just getting to know my camera, each day felt like an adventure. I would go out and walk around my neighborhood for hours, genuinely not knowing what might be interesting to photograph but curious to see what would strike my fancy. I took a lot of photos through windows and other clear barriers because I liked the texture and I wanted to see what would happen if I followed that spark.
I have always photographed both my environment and my children, but these two areas of photographic interest remained mostly separate. I needed to practice different skills in each arena for a long time, and after being in the trenches of early motherhood for years, I needed an artistic outlet that was completely separate from my children.
About a year ago I noticed my interests begin to shift. I enjoyed the process of making street photos on my neighborhood walks, but I rarely spent time looking back through them and almost never felt an emotional connection to them. The photos I wanted to thumb through again and again were the ones of my kids. It didn’t matter if they were slightly out of focus or the odd finger was cut out of the frame. I realized that what made me love these photos was their meaningfulness, and I’ve been chasing meaning in my photography ever since.
Different kinds of photos are meaningful to people for all sorts of reasons; I’m not here to argue that a certain kind of photography is more meaningful and therefore “better” than another. But what I do know is that I make better photos when I believe in their power. I have to make the photos that I love in order to make good work.
I’m not the first photographer to say this but it bears repeating: photographing for ourselves yields better results than photographing for other people, even when you’re technically making the photos for other people. There’s no way for me to scientifically prove this, but I swear making photos that I would want of my own family gives them some sort of pixie dust. Also, I have a very simple probably kind of small brain—it’s not big enough to hold things like experimentation, curiosity, and wonder if it’s also holding other people’s expectations. Maybe those are the ingredients to the pixie dust.
I love stories; I love both the drama and the mundaneness of family dynamics; I love how toddler bellies are not unlike puppy bellies in their roundness; I love it when parents hold their babies up high and a long, glistening tendril of drool reaches down to kiss them on the nose (landing in the open mouth is even better). I photograph funny things better than pretty things because I value them more. When I’m with a family, for a short time I forget that their kids aren’t my kids, and I make pictures of the things I love about them. I suppose I could spend time worrying that this family might not love the same things, might not want a photo of a funny gap-toothed smile or a diaper check. This is where I trust in the pixie dust, it’s always helped me to find my people.
