EX115 Your artistic voice
Sometimes just loving photography isn’t enough.
We really have to identify what we wish to say with our work. I always knew I wanted my art to talk about environmental issues. Yet, it never seemed that I felt that my work really had anything in particular to say. I realise now that I misunderstood the word ‘Voice’.
Voice is really about the inner me that comes through my work when I make art for me, or even if I am to make art for others. For me when I spend so much time photographing trees, I am expressing my love, dependence and passion for defending their rights and battling their destruction.
When I photograph trees I also bring my own aesthetic, one that is a result of influences from many different art-forms, artists, mediums and individual artworks. I hope and strive to be congruent with who I am.
So my photographs of trees don’t have to literately say something do they? This is where I was getting confused. I though having a voice meant you the viewer could read what I was saying into my work.
Finding your own voice is about learning to become confident in your work. Being you. Knowing what interests you, what excites you and who you are.
In this weeks exercise I would like you to find out with some self reflection what it is that is your voice.
This is probably different to what we are reading in your work or literally what it is saying.
This is about finding in yourself what drives you, what fascinates you, what inspires you to work on photographically.
Find three different things you explore in your work. Write a paragraph about each after some thoughtful brainstorming. I am not asking for an artists statement. More just an honest reflection on what your photography is about for you. Post one photograph with each paragraph, that represents what it is you are talking about.
I am leaving this exercise suitably vague. So that you can explore so many things that you can consider 'your voice’ without steering you into a very specific thing.
All of these things could be part of your voice… which ones are yours?
Please post your three paragraphs and three photographs in our forum here https://lensclub.discussion.community/post/ex115-your-voice-11775220?pid=1326734316#post1326734316
