A life’s work
All too often we look at the photography that we produce in the small term. The single photograph, the small portrait sitting, a day out shooting or a full wedding shoot. Even working at a project, it often has defined parameters and an end point, it’s not often we consider the full output of our productivity and what people will look back on it and think.
© Vivian Maier, Courtesy of John Maloof
Those of us that cover weddings or family events will usually know that their work is appreciated during the subjects lifetime. What happens to it afterwards? Will it become part of the family photo history, brought on on rare occasions as people are rifling through a drawer, looking for a specific photo or document?
All photographs, and genres of photography have a different values and to a certain extent a “lifespan”. Indeed, many photographs will have their value fluctuate as time passes. Take for example, wedding photographs. These will be immediately valuable to the couple and their immediate family, but once they have passed on the value will drop, apart from maybe one or two of the photos held dear by their children. Once we have passed that generation their value will more be of a record of the “times” in which the photo was taken, the styles of dress, fashion and rituals of the time. This is not to make light of wedding photography in any way (I have and do cover those events), but merely an observation and musings on the lifespan of photographs.
What brought me to this? Well I recently stumbled upon the works of Vivian Maier. The blog of her work is run by John Maloof who acquired her work in an auction, some 30-40,000 negatives, many of them undeveloped. He’s had a great and inspirational experience looking through, and developing the films in the collection.
To see such a large body of work, devoid of a commercial angle or bent is interesting. You are seeing through the photographer’s eye without the wishes of the client having any impact. This appeals to me, mainly as I have had several discussion with family and friends over the years, about what I’m “Going to do with my photography”. With a lot of it centering around people not understanding my reluctance to make money from what I do. It’s not from a lack of aptitude, or from a lack of confidence, but from what I want to cover/show and how I feel, mainly that the work I want to cover is not something that’s going to be commercially viable, and a commercial aspect could get in the way of the meaning behind those photographs.
© Vivian Maier, Courtesy of John Maloof
I’m interested in the non-commercial aspect of photography, the documentary and telling of a story unfettered by commercial concerns. This comes back to looking at the parameters to your work. There is the real danger that without any parameters or goals a life’s work can become formless and hard to manage. 40,000 negs is a lot of images to catalogue, edit and narrow down! Imagine how bad it can be these days with the numbers of digital images that we take! Vivian Maier’s work appears to have avoided this, she has a strong vision and central theme, one that is communicated excellently through her archive. Her work centers around the streets of Chicago and New York, and the people that inhabit them. It is a good example to look at as inspiration for work driven by a vision and goal.
Looking back at the shots you have taken, will you be happy with your “life’s work”? Are you happy with what you have shot to date? I feel I’m on the right tracks, in a few cases I’m shooting what I want to shoot and, where possible, working to doing more of that. Do I want fame and money? Surprisingly, no.
Ok, an exhibition in a major gallery would be nice, it’s always nice to have your ego boosted like that, but it’s not why I do what I do. I enjoy the act of photography, and I like the idea of a comprehensive and impressive body of work* that’s driven by what I want to cover.That is what I’m aiming for, with a few side goals where individual projects are concerned of course.!
*it still needs some work admittedly 
If you have yet to browse Vivian’s work then do so, there’s a lot of inspiration to be had there.
I must admit that the freedom afforded by being purely amateur is a wonderful luxury – it keeps the hobby enjoyable, make what you do a pure hobby in fact.
I’m starting to see it as an escape from a career path I’m no longer enjoying though – IT was once good fun for me, but that was in the days when you’d spend hours crafting classes in C++ to do fairly noddy things in new ways. That’s all changed now, and it’s no longer got any interest for me – I get that horrible feeling of life ticking by in a place where I’m not fulfilled; a waste of life.
So whereas you’re happily doing the amateur thing that we’ve all been enjoying, I’ve started to ponder how I can eek a living out of this crazy business. I’m going to put together a business plan soon too.
My worry is mainly that I’ll never be able to pay the mortgage from it.
My hope is that I’ll spend my working days doing something I love – even if it is teaching photography and not actually creating.
I can feel another blog post coming on… but not at 23:42
I like to think of myself as an Amateur in the early traditional sense, in that it is not driven by money, but can be seen as more than “a hobby”, which can have very negative connotations.
I must admit, if I could get a job at say National Geographic I’d jump at it, however, as like you I have seen something I enjoy (IT and web design) have its soul and enjoyment driven out of me through working at it for the past 10 years, photography is something I am loathe to risk tainting like that.
Am I missing out on something by doing so? Maybe!
I think it’s the IT industry, it’s trying to kill us all off
Still, this was a great collection to go through 