Why i do photography

The first thing that drew me to photography was my need to create, a physical desire that makes me make things.

I have grown to think like a photographer, when I look at the world I see light and line, reality and the imaginary, it has changed the way I see photography.

I further believe that it has the ability to be a tool for self analysis, the fact that you can learn about yourself, as though it is a metaphorical representation of my mind.

I have also developed an Interest in philosophy, and how it can be visual representation by photography. This is part of greater Interest in ideas, a wish to know everything, a fervent curiosity about knowledge that increases for the more I learn the more I realise there is to learn. It transforms into a wish for truth, but my own inability to know what truth is holds me back.

I have a dislike traditional forms and values of photography, as I am to socially awkward to photograph people and don’t have the means of travel to take landscape photos I have found that outside of college I tend to photograph the street. But not traditionally method, more in the meandering manner during which I tend to end up photographing nothing.

When I take these photographs I try and capture beauty but I have developed a deep mistrust over it as I fear it detracts from truth, that it adds value beyond its use, also in reaction against the picturesque.

It ultimately adds up to an uncertainty over how to act as a photographer, I am lost, without purpose, I don’t know why I photograph what I photograph. I am a firm believer in the power of photography and its power to change things, but have no idea how I can use it.

It is also important to remember that I am constantly changing as I go through the education process, my interest in ideas mean that the way I look at photography alters. I am unable to know why I take photographs if my feelings constantly changing. This lack of a constant is highly reviling, if you bear in mind what I mentioned earlier about my need to consume knowledge and photography’s self analytical properties. The discourse of photography is a means of conveying information, the visual arts in particular could be described as a copy of the world. A copy that is clearer and more predictive than the original and from which I can discern the truth.

I am uncertain about the purpose of my work because I am uncertain about my purpose in life. It is a crisis of existentialism.