On the Photowalk Podcast, listeners regularly comment that they have lost their inspiration, no longer want to make photographs, or feel that they have somehow fallen out of love with the experience of pressing the shutter. In response, I wrote to Neale James, who hosts the podcast, to suggest that it can be helpful to think more broadly about what constitutes a photographic life. Making photographs is obviously part of that life, but it is not necessarily the whole of it. A broader conception makes room for the many other activities through which we engage with, think about, and participate in photography.
Part of that message was read on the Photowalk’s episode 546. I’ve reproduced it, below, with light amendments to fit it into this blog post.
In my previous day job, I was a writer. These days, I am more often a director of writers. Something that has stayed with me since doing my doctorate is the realization that physically sitting at a keyboard, or putting pen to paper, or whatever, probably represents only 10 or 15 per cent of writing.
Writing also encompasses the research, thinking, conversations, interviews, editing, re-editing, and re-re-editing that make the words possible. The act of placing them on the page is essential, of course, but it is only one component of a much larger practice.
I think there is value in approaching photography in a similar way. We often define photography almost exclusively as being out in the world making images, while treating editing, looking at photobooks, watching or listening to conversations about photography, visiting galleries, studying other photographers, organizing our catalogues, and reflecting on our own work as separate or secondary activities.
I understand why we make that distinction, but I think it impoverishes our understanding of what photography actually is.
Making photographs is obviously essential, just as writing words is essential to being a writer. But it cannot be the only meaningful part of the practice. When someone feels that they are falling out of love with photography, or that they have not been “doing photography” because they have not recently been out making images, they may still be engaging with many of the other activities that constitute a photographic life.
That does not mean everyone must visit galleries, collect photobooks, or enjoy editing. Different people will naturally find meaning and pleasure in different parts of the process. But I think we too often judge ourselves according to the one thing we are not doing—the visible act of pressing the shutter—while discounting everything else that informs how we see, think, select, sequence, and communicate.
That overly narrow definition can also diminish the contributions of people whose photographic practice is centred more heavily on editing, printing, curating, teaching, writing, or promoting the work of others. It makes those activities appear secondary when I do not think they are. Such a narrow interpretation strikes me as, frankly exclusionary and unfair. More broadly, I think it bruises the way we talk about photography as a whole.
