travel

‘just a photographer’

by admin on Nov.25, 2008, under Personal, travel

Hunters and Collectors
China in 2008

I would never like to be known as ‘just a photographer’. You can read an image and walk past it in a split second. I would not ‘choose’ the term photographer because it doesn’t allow me to explore more then a moment of time, it is meaningless without thought. In reflecting on my journey’s through China I found a conflict between the words of ‘choose’, ‘choice’ and the statement ‘just a photographer’.

I left Australia bored with myself, waiting for the world to throw me a hook so that I might be engaged with my existence. Living an easy life is hard when you look in the mirror comfortable with your own photographic style of taking photos of no one but yourself, wrapped in a cosy bubble.
Safe in my bubble I arrived in a strange land, covered in a blanket of 18% grey card coloured smog trying to find my grounding point where I would be able to throw myself into the deep but still hold onto the edge.

I knew that taking photos in China wasn’t actually about the pictures my camera was storing on my expensive memory cards, it was about the connection I have with my subject and I feeling I had at the time I pushed down that little piece of plastic shutter. Knowing safely that it was my choice when I was going to take that photo. But I left the country unsatisfied with myself.
The problem I had was I never really had a connection with my subjects. Reflecting on my photos I see people, places and moments of time, but I see ‘just photography’. Like imitation cream, China is full of sugary whipped goodness but you know it’s not the real deal.
The problem I have is one of critical thought, whereby a person analyses outside the situation in front of them. To make use of such thought processes you have to have been taught how to think independently and be given the ‘choice’ of reaction. In my opinion creativity is based on knowing the limits of critical thought and having a choice to break that mould.

In a crude way I am trying to explain that level of control put the people of China tends to have a limiting effect on an individual’s creative expression, as I found out in the students of Jinan.
In my own experiences I felt stifled creatively. Unable to think clearly I wondered around being ‘just a photographer’. Photos of farmers, photos of children playing. I thought of myself as a ‘poor sap’ wondering around the countryside trying to express myself in a land sea with the red cloud infecting my vision.

On return to Australia I looked at myself, my ‘choice’ of being an artist and my professional development as a photographer. I left ‘just the photographer’ behind in a cold countryside in Jinan, because he doesn’t have anything important to say to the world that hasn’t already been said.