I tend to use photography as a method of showing myself, and sometimes others, how I see the world. It can force me to consider what I value and motivates me. While my understanding of myself and my world through photography is something that took years to process, I continue to explore and make sense of what I do and why I do it. I do not fully understand what draws me in and compels me to take photographs, or why I feel that I must. Perhaps by looking back on my history with photography I can make new revelations about my work, and my myself.
Over the years my style of photography has changed drastically, and I found myself ignoring the pictures I took when I first started exploring my world with a camera. I assumed that those must be bad somehow, or at least lack any meaningful value, since I’ve come so far since. But I recently began to rethink my dismissal of my early work. I decided to pull from my closet an old box of negatives, which contained every photograph I ever took before I fully switched to digital cameras. The box hadn’t been touched since the last deposit was made; the end of my last film photo class in college. I started to take a serious look at those old pictures and think about who I was when I took them. In a series of several articles I’m calling ‘Finding a Subject’ I will discuss my impressions.
Part One: My Earliest Experiences with Photography
I got my first camera as a hand-me-down from my father around age 13. It was an original Nikon F from the early 60s. It had a light meter, sort of. No auto-focus of course. And, at least for the first few rolls I shot, it couldn’t do shutter speeds below 1/60th of a second. But it otherwise worked, and it was mine. My father is a professional photographer, so my house full of cameras, pictures, and photo books. It was only natural that I would gravitate towards photography. I was anxious to start taking pictures.
Flower. 2003
I started by venturing into the backyard. Photographing the types of suburban-outdoor objects that fascinated me as a child. Insects crawling around in the grass, flowers from my mother’s garden, or a tree root lit by a light in the basement, were all common subjects that filled those first few rolls of 35mm film. Thankfully, the lens I had for my Nikon had a macro function. This close-up feature brought a plethora of subjects into my reach. I would spend hours exploring our small backyard, camera in hand. Few of these early photographs were visually simulating or even properly exposed and focused, but occasionally I would get lucky.
Tree Root. 2004
My primary influences, other than my father’s pictures hanging on the walls of our home, were two photo books. One a collection of photos from National Geographic, and the other was about the early 20th-century photographer Edward Weston. I wasn’t ready to fully comprehend what I specifically liked in the photographs I saw in those books, but I knew that I wanted to emulate what I saw. Weston’s work subconsciously led me to focus the form of the objects I was photographing. I would often take photos that focused on light and shadows. Black and white photography became my norm, even though I usually shot with color film. I had my negatives scanned and then the images converted to black and white. I believed, at least at that time, that black and white photography gave my pictures a certain kind of focus or clarity; color was a distraction I sought to remove from my pictures.
Looking for interesting forms in everyday objects lead me to practicing what a form of still-life, or maybe even abstract, photography. However, throughout those early years I could never express what my goals were with each picture I took. If you were to travel through time and ask me why I was taking these pictures I would have likely responded with a simple “because I like it”. Being unable to explain further. I believe this ambiguity, not knowing the ‘why’ behind choosing a subject, might have led to a certain honesty in these early photographs. Even without knowing why I was taking a picture, or composing it in a particular way, I couldn’t help to subconsciously inject some part of myself into the pictures. Photographs are impossible to separate from the personality of the photographer. Taking pictures requires making constant choices, even by just choosing a composition you are deciding to include or omit elements from the photo. These decisions reflect the mind of the person behind the camera. Perhaps the answer “because I like it” is all the justification required.
Swing Set in the Fog. 2004
Flipping through some of the greatest photographs published by National Geographic, instilled in me an interest in documentary photography. Using the camera as a kind of objective observer, to record the world. I wanted to take pictures like that. Photos that told a story or would function as a record of daily life in a particular time and place, ones that may even be historically significant at some future point.
The first photo project I ever assigned myself was to document my home town. I loaded my Nikon with film and set off on foot. I spent an afternoon photographing all of my favorite spots; the park, the brook, the street with the most trees. It was only once I made it home that I realized I hadn’t loaded the film properly and all day long the 35mm film stayed firmly in its canister as I shot 36 pictures that were never recorded. My first attempt, at what I thought would someday become an important historical record of life in my town, had failed. However, I tried again some time later and did manage to capture some pictures that were in line with my original goal.
Fungus. 2005
Nature played a major role in my early photographs, and still has a place in my work today. At my time of writing this, I wonder what purpose photographing nature serves beyond its inherent beauty, or if another purpose is required to take meaningful photographs of natural subjects. When I was in my early teens, however, I didn’t pose this question to myself. There was no goal, nor need for a goal, I simply wanted to photograph something I found beautiful or fascinating.
I began to use my camera in more technical ways when I attempted to capture the night sky as the stars moved across the sky. I set the camera up behind my garage on an old video tripod and took an exposure of about 30 or 40 minutes. It took several attempts before I got everything right, at least, what I believed was right. There was no way to know for sure and I had to wait a few weeks before my developed film got back to me. I remember at the time being disappointed that on the only frame that I got right, a plane had flown through the shot. Now, however, I think it was serendipitous and the streak from the plane’s lights is perfect for this photograph. It fits with the rest of the scene for a few reasons. One of which is that it highlights that this picture was not taken out in the wilderness far from people and city lights. It was taking in a New Jersey backyard, not far from an international airport. It might not have been the peaceful nighttime landscape picture I envisioned, but it was real.
Star Trails from the Backyard. 2005
I believe that many people who use photography as a creative outlet, either by choice or to fulfill an innate need, would hope their photographs represent something true about themselves and/or their subject. That some inborn honestly lays as the backbone of their work, or at least that our photographs show something real; even if its only an imagined reality. Hoping that some deeper meaning was captured beyond just the surface of the forms recorded by the camera, no matter how trivial or seemingly redundant that meaning might be. Perhaps all true photographic art is a form of self-portrait. Or perhaps these meanings only exist in the minds of those who look for meaning in our photographs. Does this meaning happen when the shutter is pressed? or after the image is viewed outside its original context? Or maybe, "because I like it” is all there is behind an artist’s photographs.
For me, this idea of looking for and creating honesty in my photographs is constantly in the back of my mind; at least in retrospect. I rarely have these considerations when I am out making photographs. In fact, very little goes on in my mind when I shoot. I just take the camera and point it at things I find interesting. Its only later do I sometimes understand why I found something interesting in the first place. Perhaps that’s the secret to taking meaningful photographs, but only time will tell if I still feel the same when I look back at my pictures I take today in the years to come.