Why I started photography
A time may come in your life that changes everything. Last year, I learnt about the importance of investing in my growth. I spent my 20’s not really paying attention to myself, not really growing, except coincidentally, here and there.
As someone who did well at school and university without… let’s say… the most consistent of effort, I’ve had a false sense of what success really entails. While adaptability, versatility, and natural affinity can get you far enough earlier in your life, eventually, you will find that hard work and discipline will always trump uncultivated talent.
Beyond this, I also learnt of my own vulnerability. I began to accept that I’m not someone who doesn’t require care and attention. It’s a difficult reality to confront when you’ve never needed to think twice about yourself. If you’re not used to being vulnerable, this realisation stings. It blows apart the very foundation of everything you built your confidence on. But that’s the best place to start.
Towards the end of the last year, I decided I needed an avenue for growth and change. A way to cultivate skills, and repair myself drawing on something within. Something which resonates with me on a personal, individual level. Something which creates for me a deeply personal space to reconnect with my passions and re-establish who I really am. So in January this year, I bought my first DSLR camera.
Photography strikes many chords for me on a personal level. I’ve grown up loving movies, technology, electronics, computers, anime, video games, and super heroes. In some ways, my interests were unique compared to many around me, and these things came together to form my own space, which was mine alone. I can trace my deepest influences to games like Final Fantasy, and to anime like Cowboy Bebop.
At university, I studied Urban Planning & Design. That is, the planning, management, design, and growth of cities. As a profession, it combines technical know-how, design, culture, sociology, politics, travel, history, space, and memory. For me, it’s the ultimate multi-disciplinary field which speaks to my ‘all-rounder’ sort of skill set. (Also, I can’t draw).
Photography, specifically street photography, is a form of creative expression that works for me in many ways. It’s a technical skill at one level, and an exercise in weaving meaning into space and time at another. Simultaneously, it opens up a space for me, both physical and psychological, to be alone with myself. I love nothing more than prowling streets at night. Street photography indulges my introversion, yet while giving me a meaningful way to connect with others.
Photography helps me interpret my memories of this city. It’s a way for me to show others how I see, and feel, my environment. It helps to generate new meaning and attach it to the world around me. To find the fleeting moments in which I truly feel a deep, universal strength inside.
Growth begins with learning who you are, and who you are not. My photography is a process of self-affirmation, self-determination, which for the first time is occurring in relation to no-one else. Going out with my camera is to find my story again. After a decade of ignoring myself, I’m picking up unfinished business.
