Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/06/18
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]on 6/18/01 10:03 AM, Kyle Cassidy at cassidy@netaxs.com wrote: > as to whether or not i deserve my leica or if i just have it, i've spent > some time putting together what i think is my best recent work: > > http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/cassidy/pix/portfolio/ > > this represents the first time i've really, seriously, gone through the > backlog and tried to sort anything out of it. the results are not > displeasing, but it's painfully obvious i'm not publishing any books out > of this. It's a very good portfolio, Kyle. Very, very good. You are right to say you aren't publishing any books out of it but that's not because of any deficit in the quality of the photographs, only that it doesn't have a booklike depth of concentration on any one subject. You are clearly perfectly capable of producing a book. I think the very question you asked probably means you have already taken the biggest step a photographer can take, which is to engage with the medium, to go into battle with it if you like. The fact that you are dissatisfied means that your wheels are turning. You are going somewhere. What IS very interesting about your pictures is that they reveal a different Kyle from the one who throws up the PAW. They are considered, elegant, balanced, technically very polished. Things you probably don't consider yourself as a photographer. But they are RIGHT there in the images. I think maybe they reveal that you are a different (better) photographer than the one you thought you are, or would like to think you are. It might already have happened, or it might not, but at some point a subject (not Emily) is going to suggest itself to you and make the hairs on the back of your neck rise like there is a ghost in the room every time you think of it. When it does, and it could be literally ANYTHING, run after it with all your strength and stamina. Pursue it relentlessly and keep churning away in your gut all those questions you just asked. Go at it like a dog at a bone. Don't give yourself any excuses like "I'm not really a photographer" or "these are just some pictures I took" or "It doesn't matter if this doesn't turn into anything". That is all crap if the subject is the right one. What is really clear is that you have served your apprenticeship. When you edited your portfolio, you proved that beyond discussion. Whatever you do from now is for real. A long while ago my photographic mentor and I got very drunk in a Howard Johnson somewhere in Connecticut and just before we passed out he said "John, you gotta decide if you want photography to be a girlfriend or a wife". It sounds to me like you have the nerves of the groom before a wedding. - -- John Brownlow http://www.pinkheadedbug.com