Self Identify

I recently gave a talk to a camera club and as part of the preparations for that I gave some thought to how I would introduce myself, which led me down the path of thinking about how I self identify as a photographer. No, not my personal pronouns…I guess these are more my professional pronouns.  I know that this is a “deep” subject for some, its just where my head went and I thought I would share some thoughts around this topic. Trust me, I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about what to call myself, it’s just that it came up at this time thanks to the presentation.

Normally, I really don’t care about labels or how to classify my work. There are a lot of photographers self identify in different ways.  We can be “artists”, “photographers”, “landscape photographers”, “street photographers”, “visual creatives”, “photographic artists”, and so many other labels.  I think its part of the human condition to try and make order and sense of our world and because of that, we have this need to classify and organize the world around us in order to understand and navigate the world.   In our personal lives, in our professional lives and in our creative lives, we have made all of these “buckets” that have labels on them to classify. Just think about how many different descriptions/classifications of painters and painting styles there are throughout history!  Many of these labels come with embedded “baggage” that come along for the ride.  We have our own understanding of what an “impressionist” painter is, and we have the aficionados and critics telling us what this style “should” be.  In addition to this, no matter the hobby or profession, there is also the expectation and pressure to fit in one of the pre-defined buckets.  And if you don’t readily fit in to one of buckets, it can be upsetting to the order of the world for some folks, needing to organize and classify the world around them.  Faced with people or work which doesn’t easily fall within a bucket, well, some folks choose to reject or ignore this because it will upset their orderly world.  Others of course will embrace the “non-conformity”, welcoming a breath of fresh air.  In my opinion as I’ve seen the world and our society develop, it seems even more so that we stress conformity over originality, much more than in the past.  Don’t worry, I won’t get in to the reasons why I think this, that’s for another time.

So as I thought about how I would describe myself to the group, I of course felt the pull to find an easy bucket to slot myself in to describe myself and my work. I went down the list of descriptors for what I can call myself, how I might self identify today.  Photographer is the first thing that came to mind.  Then Landscape/Nature Photographer was the next thought that came to mind and best describes the majority of my work.  Should I self identify as this, I thought to myself?  Hmm, it just doesn’t feel right, doesn’t feel honest to my body of work.  I shoot a lot more than just landscape/nature subjects and am passionate about most types of photography even if I don’t practice them.  So then, what do I call myself?  A visual artist?  Yea, that can work but it’s a bit vague and hoity-toity in my opinion.  Perhaps a “creative educator and storyteller that communicates through visual imagery”.  Hmm, a bit of a mouthful, but feels a bit better at encapsulating how I see myself.  Brief side note:  I also had to check myself and take a look at how I saw myself and do a bit of a reality check on that too.

As I thought about this topic and my photography, I focused in on what gives me energy as an artist, how I like to photograph and what I like to photograph. My thoughts progressed and then I found myself really focused on what I like to photograph, hoping this might yield an easy answer to how to self identify.  Of course, landscape and nature scenes are my focus and a large body of my work.  But then I started thinking about all the photographs I have of barns, Americana, cars and airplanes.  Then I started thinking about all of my abstract photographs.  Perhaps my flower images?  I ticked through all of the different subjects and categories of images I have and found that I didn’t want to be classified as being in a particular genre.  I realized that I’m not particular about “what” I photograph!

What I realized, after figuring out that I wasn’t necessarily concerned with what I photograph, was that I am almost equally passionate to photograph anything that has certain qualities that motivate and inspires me. I distilled them down to these (not all, but the most important ones).  I don’t need all of these at once, but if a scene or subject has even one of these I am an enthusiastic photographer.

• I can tell a compelling story about
• I have an emotional reaction to
• Has texture, shape, pattern or color that I can craft in to a meaningful composition
• Great design
• Will challenge my artistic abilities

That’s it.  That’s what makes me tick right now as a photographer!  It doesn’t matter if its landscape, automotive, city streets or random blotches of paint. It can be an actual subject, like a waterfall, or no subject at all, such as a cool pattern or design. If it ticks one of those boxes, I’m all for it. And I say “right now” because this has, and will continue, to change over time as I mature as a person and an artist.

Which brings me back to how I self identify to others about what kind of photographer I am and what I did for the camera club.  Well, to be honest all of this thinking got me no closer to deciding on how exactly I best introduce/represent myself to others.  For the club introduction, what I said was “photographer, workshop leader and creative educator”…going no further to put myself in to one of the defined buckets that exist today in the photo community.  Did I chicken out on settling a tough topic?  Yea, maybe.  Or maybe I just didn’t want to decide because then that might force me to settle on a bucket and thereby constrain my shooting to only that genre, afraid to branch out because it wasn’t what I said I was.  I don’t wanna play that game.  I just want to shoot whatever inspires, motivates or moves me creatively.

I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on how you self identify, or just on my rambling thinking on the topic.