What do I want to say or convey to the people who look at my art? First, I’m not going to discuss the need to “make things” that others have already described so well. I think all or most of the people in this group have a drive to create, otherwise they wouldn’t be here. This is just part of our DNA, part of what makes us “artists”. I’m also not sure this is the right question. “What do *I* want to say or convey?” I think a better question might be “What am I trying to make my *photographs and images* convey?” But I think a better way of getting at this is to ask, “What drives my art?” We all bring our life, our experiences, our views of the world into our art-making in some way. These are the lenses that drive what we care about, what we pay attention to, and ultimately what we “see”. This can be purposeful or subconscious, but we can’t separate who we are from what we make. I’ve been thinking about this a lot since the topic was first posted and I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t know. To be more precise, I do have some idea what drives my art, but I feel that I’m still a caterpillar. I’m still exploring, experimenting, and building my artistic identity. When I first started doing mobile photography in 2011, I was just filled with joy to be regularly making art again after a 20 year hiatus since leaving art school. But now I want more. I know I can make visually interesting images. What I’m working on now is creating images that will make people think and feel. I want to create art that matters, art that impacts myself and others. I hesitate to say “art that has meaning” because the word “meaning” is completely subjective and therefore useless. To be honest, I would like to sell some of my art. I would like my work to be shown in the world where others can see it. I know this isn’t everyone’s goal and that’s OK. First and foremost, it’s making things that is the most important—whatever those things may be. But that doesn’t really describe what drives my art making. I’m interested in the world in front of me. The messy, imperfect, beautiful, surprising every day world. Part of what I love about mobile photography is the imperfections. I always thought I wanted a fancy DSLR, but now that I have my iPhone, I don’t. My son offered me his old DSLR and I told him I didn’t want it because I wouldn’t really use it. I didn’t want it because it was too big. It just got in the way. It felt like it was in between me and that messy every day world. I love the shortcomings and imperfections of my iPhone camera. This is another reason I don’t want to use a DSLR. So much about those cameras and the culture around them is about getting the perfect shot. So much is about using the best lens, getting the best light, shooting the most amazing and breathtaking places. I’m not interested in perfection. To me, those kinds of photographs are sterile and lifeless. Focusing on perfection makes the craft more important than art, but I care more about the art. Just to be clear, I’m not judging people who take these kinds of photographs and have these photographic skills. If that’s what you love, then that’s what you should do. It’s just not what drives me. I’m not interested in going to the most beautiful places on earth and photographing them. To me, capturing those places is not a challenge. They are already amazingly unique and beautiful. If you have a good eye, it’s almost impossible to take a bad photo of something that everyone instantly recognizes as beautiful. This is a very important point for me and it carries through to everything I photograph. I’m always mindful about why I’m shooting something. Am I taking an interesting photograph or am I just photographing a thing that everyone finds interesting? Let me try to explain what I mean. If I see a beautiful sunset, my natural instinct is to take a picture, which I often do. Everyone around me can see that same sunset and they can photograph it too. In fact, all over the world, at almost every point in time, someone is watching a beautiful sunset and taking a picture of it. To me, this is not an interesting photograph. It’s just a photograph of something interesting, something beautiful. It’s a snapshot to say, isn’t this thing I saw cool? Another good example is taking a photograph of your kid or your pet. If you share the photo with your family, that’s fine. But if you share it on a mobile photography site, are you sharing it because it’s a good photo or because you love your dog? Most of the time, it’s because you love your dog. I’m also not interested in setting up things to photograph, staging elaborate shots, or creating complex sets. Don’t get me wrong though, these can make for very interesting photographs. I just feel like there’s so much to see in the everyday world that I don’t need to artificially manipulate it. Plus, I just don’t have the time. I have a full time job and a family, which is why the iPhone works so well for me. If you’ve seen my Instagram, EyeEm, or Flickr feeds (you can find me as dbrondeau on most everything), you know that I photograph a wide variety of subjects in a variety of styles. This includes everything from straight photographs with little editing to highly manipulated images that bear little resemblance to a photograph. They may seem disparate at first, but I think there is a common thread, a driving force behind them. It can be seen in all my photo series; the straight B&W series Shadows of the Past, about historic sites in Boston; my unedited flower macros; my slightly manipulated series of an Abandoned Greenhouse; my heavily edited photos of gravestones; or the completely altered images in my current project, the History of the Digital Future. What I’m trying to do in all of them is to change the way something is seen. I’m trying to take everyday things that anyone can see and show how I see them. I want to give people a new or different way of looking at these common things. For example, in my gravestone series, I knew I couldn’t just show straight photos of gravestones because there is so much more to them than just the image of the stone. Instead, I edited them and altered them slightly to raise up the human history and the human story that I imagined in each stone. How much I edit or alter an image depends on how I “see” it and how I think people could see it differently. For me, this was a terrifically valuable exercise. If I want to have my work in galleries, I feel like I need to have some clarity about what drives my work. This has helped me start doing that! Now I just need to learn how to market my work. Unfortunately, that’s something I am completely clueless about and also something that doesn’t come naturally to me. Thank you Carol and Arthur!!
Posted on: Fri, 26 Sep 2014 23:33:27 +0000
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