Let the photos make themselves.

I have been thinking about how to make photos ‘meaningful’. Every time I write that, I put it in quotation marks because I still don’t know exactly what I mean by it. I think what I am getting at is that I am trying to find pictures that convey a mood, or invite questions, or make a statement about something. That’s the closest I can get in twenty words or so. A concrete example I can come up with right at this second would be pictures by Tish Murtha. I look at her work and immediately they have a mood, a feel and on top of that, in my opinion, they have something to say about the way a group of people lived. That’s what I would like my photos to do. There are many examples of photographs that, through the aesthetic or the artistry show the beauty, or the interesting form of a subject, or can capture something that I am incapable of putting into words. That’s what I would like to be able to do through my photographs. But I am not there yet. In this time, therefore, that I am searching I think what I have to do is just make photographs and look at them almost with surprise when they are developed, as if I have never seen them before. Look, and look and look until I find something that I think is good and then examine that as closely as I can. Examine it and try to excavate that – find out how I managed it – and then make more photos. Keep doing it and, at least for a while, let the photos make themselves.

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