On Love and Determination

Recently, I have been thinking about two statements about photography, which I heard from two, teachers, later mentors and now friends of mine. It was maybe seven or eight years ago when one of them told me that my pictures were boring (and not good boring), he said that they were boring either because I have a boring life or no connection with my subjects whatsoever . I was shocked and, honestly felt that it was a really rude thing to say — no undergrad student wants to have a boring life. He advised me to go and take pictures of things I really love or I am really passionate about. I struggled with it for many years to come after and only now came to some kind of understanding why is it so important — probably because I stopped doing things I felt I was expected to do as a photographer.

The second thing was even more significant and possibly more shocking — „How can you even aspire to photograph fashion editorial or food if you know nothing about these things?”. As it turns out there is elementary knowledge that you have to acquire and I don’t mean technical how-to things — these come with practice. All that counts is the meta stuff — if you want to photograph food you have to become a real foodie, learn to cook yourself, learn to style food, understand the products, eat, eat and eat, build relations with chefs and restaurant owners then eat some more. You can’t fake it. You want to become a new Bruce Gilden you need to get punched in the face for invading people’s privacy on the streets of New York, you want to be new Terry Richardson — well go figure yourself what to do with your life — I’d rather be boring. All in all, have you ever seen good art which does not tell a story? I know I haven’t.

I can see a severe shift in my thinking about photography — its relation to art and connected with it notion of pleasure. I guess some people could say I am becoming much less radical and much more for the joy of making things. If you asked me why I would say that this is mostly because being loaded with smaller or bigger commercial projects I no longer have time not to photograph things I love and I am passionate about. I had to experience photographic disconnection, when I only took pictures of things I couldn’t care less about, to understand what can be found in my photographic core. But don’t get me wrong — along the way I learnt about a few new things. which helped me to grow. Love and determination — these ingredients are what good photography is made of.