Hey all,
This is my first post of 2023, admittedly a little late! In early January, I prioritised travel, work, and then some rest. I was always looking forward to writing something new, but thought it best not to say anything if I didn’t feel as though it was important. In a way, it helped inform the topic I want to talk about here — waiting to share things until they’ve had some time to become special, wether that’s a creative output or otherwise.
Sharing Isn’t Always Caring
Every time I meet a new photographer, or follow someone online for a while, one of the most prominent topics we talk about tends to be how much work we’re producing that we haven’t even looked at yet. Some film photographers in particular won’t even develop their film for several months, preferring to build the delay into their workflow so that they can have fresh eyes on whatever it was they were working on at the time. In extreme cases, like Vivian Maier’s story, she left behind undeveloped film even after she passed away and never saw the results of her efforts.
In years past, that was a very uncomfortable idea to me. It’s the social media effect of feeling like you have to share what you’re up to feel productive, and going in the right direction. With Instagram’s slow shift-to-video death, and Twitter’s wild implosion, when a lot of us are transitioning back to personal sites (please, please bring back geocities) - it’s such a great opportunity to reconsider any feelings that immediacy equates to progress. It just doesn’t. The work that I’m finding the most compelling lately is work that takes time to become special.
The images accompanying this post were taken almost a year ago, but I’ve only just gotten around to organising and editing these images in the past two weeks. The wild thing is I remember looking through these rolls just after the trip, and I was a little discouraged by them - they didn’t feel special enough, it didn’t seem like I did them justice, and I was just a little down on them. Now though, with another year behind me, I’ve come to a better understanding of how these images not only fit together well - but also how they complement and build upon the work I’ve produced since then.
A perfect example of how we never know what kind of meaning our work will take on until we wait a while; I have a few photos from this Palma trip of some people looking at maps. I had no idea why I took them at the time! They’re a bit boring on their own, which I think is a bad thing when you’re trying to take great photos, and I’m just not personally cool enough to make up for that. But since this trip, I’ve found myself taking even more map photos and building up a little collection, which only improves these previously lackluster images. That contextual interest wasn’t present a year ago, but now it’s in place, and I’m looking at the whole of my work in new ways as a result.
(By the way, keep an eye out for more news on this ‘maps’ series soon - I really want to explore that idea more, and have some results I’m aiming for!)
Setting Your Own Standard
One of the most exciting things that comes with a slower, more deliberate process of sharing creative work is that you get to set your own standard of what people see and interact with. I was reading an article recently (editor’s note: it was almost definitely a tweet that I will never find again) that talked about how visual artists today are expected to share their process on social media as well as their result, which just perpetuates this harmful idea that how you’re making your work has to be as beautiful as the work itself.
The harm comes from the implication that you and your work are most valuable when you are highly visible, requiring you to be perfect consistently. No one could be, and no one ever will be. (My dog comes close, but even she rolls in shit sometimes.) It is absolutely imperative that you take your time with your own work and provide yourself the space to experience and re-experience every emotion it might elicit in you.
Do you hate it? Why? If you change one thing about it, does it make you hate it less or more? Why? Do you like it? Why? If you put it alongside something else you like, does it make it better or worse?
Actively holding back your work might not come with the kind of immediate satisfaction the internet is so good at providing, but it does allow us to set our own tone and imbue our work with value just through it’s display. When we’ve put so much effort into our work, why are we letting others determine how special we find it? If we hold back, study it, refine it and build on top of it — there is no reductive quality in that. It can only add, it can only make it more special.
The more we feel that, the more other people will feel it, too.
