Hunter Gatherer Mode

I’ve been enjoying photography this year — or, more accurately, professional anxiety spun the big wheel of interests in my head, and landed with full force on photography. Picture making has been a treat, to be sure, but I’m very much addicted to reading, comparing, learning, buying (gulp), and all of the activities around photography. The research of the craft, one can say.

Even so, I have been taking photos. I’m not yet in the mindset of “making pictures,” the phrase that’s a dead giveaway for someone who has studied photography, but in accordance with the singles hitter philosophy, that’s alright by me. The ideas will come, the body of work will emerge. Frankly, I don’t know that I care that it does? Making things without the pressure of work or portfolio as a destination is liberating, and also a lot more fun.

I’m in the process of waking up from a camera buying spree, which is the spiral that will sneak up on you and accumulate if you don’t have your guard up. My guard was not up. I now have a lot of very cool, very expensive gear — not top of the line, and certainly inexpensive as far as cameras and tack-sharp lenses go, but it’s a not insignificant outlay for what right now amounts to a hobby. Not very Zen minimalist, We Jam Econo, use the tools you have of me, but I also find so much joy in the handling of these objects that I almost don’t care right now (almost).

The next step is to make enough photos that my wallet don’t mind. I feel pretty guilty and regretful that I did not take a single image while I was in Italy last summer; I had convinced myself that it’s better to be present than to spend my trip looking through a viewfinder, that I would be able to appreciate and observe and be in the moment, but I ended up doing neither. I could have had some cool images! I could have documented a very special time in my life! Alas. I won’t make that mistake again. It’s too strict to say I’ll always have a camera on me, but I think that’s the antidote. You never know what you might see, and having a camera strapped to your neck is a terrific excuse to dial up your powers of observation.

Photographers often get lumped into two big buckets - those who find, and those who construct. I’ve always been uncomfortable with the former, and mostly too lazy for the latter. I’m not one to go full Bruce Gildan, street photographer mode — my shyness has always been an inhibiting factor. Even in the studio, I feel more self-conscious than flow state, and find myself wanting for subjects (other than self-portrait, which is a valid way to go. Somehow, I had not heard of or seen Gillian Wearing’s work before this new photo mode, but she’s a terrific example of some really weird shit you can do with the self-portrait.). I tend to understand the world through the computer, through collecting and repositioning and recontextualizing images, rather than creating them from reality.

In other words, I’ve been more of a gatherer than a hunter. But rarely out in the world! Almost never away from the screen. Let’s see if this new gear gives me an excuse to be outside, to explore a place, to understand my environment in a better way. I think Jason Fulford is a nice model to use as someone who’s entire practice is built around this idea of collecting and observing. What do I see, and how can I see it differently with a camera? As Martin Parr says, creating fiction out of reality.