{"id":61,"date":"2008-10-27T22:12:18","date_gmt":"2008-10-28T06:12:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/?p=61"},"modified":"2010-02-28T09:31:08","modified_gmt":"2010-02-28T17:31:08","slug":"defining-myself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/2008\/10\/27\/defining-myself-61\/","title":{"rendered":"Defining Myself"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently read Cay Lang’s “Taking the Leap: Building a Career as a Visual Artist<\/a>.” Then I read it again. I got a lot out of the book, both from its high-level guidelines and nitty gritty details. Each of these is blog worthy, but one was a genuine\u00a0epiphany.<\/p>\n

\"Alley\"<\/a>

Alley<\/p><\/div>\n

The term “artist bio” is a misnomer: It has virtually nothing to do with the artist’s life and everything to do with their exhibitions and education. It is the artist statement<\/em> in which one can wax nostalgic about a person or event that had a profound impact on their development as an artist. When I was preparing for my solo show “In Plain Sight”\u2014comprised of\u00a0subjects that\u00a0would ordinarily be overlooked, such as spider web-laden clothespins and an apparently nondescript alley\u2014I wrote an artist statement that defined what I was interested in photographing, and why. Moreover, it defined me as an artist:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Driving with my mother down a freeway in Los Angeles when I was six or seven years old, I suddenly started laughing. My mother asked me what was so funny, and I replied that I’d just realized that traffic was made up of cars. As an adolescent deconstructionist I was beginning to realize that while the whole may be greater than the sum of its parts, the parts are interesting, too…. When you get up close to the perceived ordinary, or glance around as you hurry to work, you may be surprised by the subjects hidden in plain sight.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This year I had the opportunity to take some very different photos. One group of these was concert photos of musicians, both at a heavy metal festival and at a country show.\u00a0 Another was a set of portraits\u00a0that\u00a0were neither typical “family photos” nor “glamour shots,” but an attempt to draw out something in their subject which lurked below the surface. I really enjoyed taking these photos, and\u00a0I wanted to take more like them. And I felt guilty about it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Machine<\/a>

Machine Head<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I had heard many times that an artist needs to be able to present a cohesive body of work, because providing a mishmash of images demonstrates (professional) immaturity. It suggests that you have not found your “voice.” Lang writes in the introduction to her book:<\/p>\n

In order to market your art, you need a body of work to market. A body of work is a series of pieces that holds together in some way, that seems to have something in common…. The art must be united thematically or stylistically, and usually both….\u00a0It should show an in-depth exploration of a single idea, or related ideas (p. xviii).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This reinforced my belief\u00a0that I was “supposed” to be taking only one kind of photo, and that the music and portrait photos were a distraction causing me to lose\u00a0touch with my “voice.” This was further amplified in\u00a0the chapter “Creating Your Artist’s Packet,” in which\u00a0Lang writes:<\/p>\n

If you are an artist who works in several mediums or in more than one style… you will have to decide which body of work to send to each recipient. Mixing different kinds of work is one of the first marks of the dilettante and is the kiss of death to your proposal. A gallery wants to know what it is getting when it gives an artist a show (pp. 43-44).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

However, later in the book,\u00a0tucked away\u00a0in the chapter “Creating Your Command Post”\u00a0was a gem which could easily have been overlooked: In\u00a0a list\u00a0of materials to keep on hand Lang\u00a0includes, “… your artist statements (one for each different body of work)…” (p.108).\u00a0That parenthetical note triggered my epiphany.<\/p>\n

This simple comment, which did not even warrant an entry in the index under “artist statement,” clarified for me\u00a0that a statement is specific to a particular series. This sounds so simple, but it was a revelation.\u00a0The statement\u00a0defines a series of photos; it does not define me. My photos of quotidian subjects, which I will no doubt continue to take, were captured in my series “In Plain Sight” and defined in its artist statement, but they don’t define me.<\/p>\n

\"Model:<\/a>

Model: Antonella Aste<\/p><\/div>\n

Permitting myself to be convinced that I was only “allowed” to continue taking certain photos makes me sound kind of stupid. Even worse, it makes me sound cowardly, like I was suppressing my creativity to conform to market pressures. I know I’m not stupid, but I was suffering from the naivety of the “emerging artist” trying to learn the ropes of the business of art. And I don’t consider myself a craven; I always\u00a0intended to explore the portrait and music photography\u2014indeed to photograph whatever I like\u2014but now realize that it would not undermine my identity as a photographer to exhibit them as well.<\/p>\n

Many years ago I took drum lessons. I am reminded of\u00a0one lesson where my instructor played a piece with the notation that it should be performed with a free rhythm, not in strict tempo. I asked him, incredulous,\u00a0and with complete sincerity, “Can you do that?” Yes, you can.
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n

In “Taking the Leap” Lang suggests\u00a0writing down ideas before you go to sleep. I had shrugged that off with the conviction that I take photos of subjects hidden in plain sight, period. I can’t plan for this, so I don’t need to think about what kinds of photos I would like to take. “Conviction” is a particularly appropriate word: I had been convicted and sentenced to taking a certain kind of photos. Now I am released on my own recognizance\u00a0to explore anything that strikes my fancy.<\/p>\n

Michael Singman-Aste
\nPostdiluvian Photo<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently read Cay Lang’s “Taking the Leap: Building a Career as a Visual Artist.” Then I read it again. I got a lot out of the book, both from its high-level guidelines and nitty gritty details. Each of these is blog worthy, but one was a genuine epiphany.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[14,13,16,75,15],"class_list":["post-61","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings","tag-artist-bio","tag-artist-statement","tag-cay-lang","tag-postdiluvian-photo","tag-taking-the-leap"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pPxQO-Z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":888,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions\/888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}