I have spent the week evaluating the direction of my work and asking myself what inspires me to create.
This has always been a hard question to answer as I feel that I have been creating since I could remember. Visual communication has always been a natural part of my life, and when it comes to breaking it down, it’s not always easy, as I have found over the years the balance between creating as an artist and creating as a professional photographer has been an overwhelming path at times. It can be easy to get stuck on work, without taking the time to connect with what really inspires and motivates me to pick up my camera.
I came across an article on Artsy and this quote resonated with me. I feel that for some time now I have had set my vision and passion aside to create for the sake of others. I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, but I feel that I let go of my own style, and therefore direction in my own work; and I feel that is why I have been lacking in a direction with this project.
“I just had to let go of the audience and just started thinking about what I wanted to see.”
-Lucy Liu
However, this week I have been discovering the work of Katrien De Blauwer. Using found/recycled images (she calls herself "photographer without a camera") she beautifully creates an atmosphere around her work that is intriguing and intimate, and you can’t help but be drawn in.
‘‘The collage effects a kind of universalisation, emphasizing the impossibility to identify with a single individual, yet allowing to recognize oneself in the story’’ - katriendeblauwer.com/about
She draws from her childhood, and the absence of her father, which I can relate to. Though my father and other family members were absent not by choice, but of circumstance I started to collect and make photographs to stay connected to my roots and help sort through how my new landscape was shaping me.
I feel High Desert is very much a look at life in the American West, a life that can me very romanticized and full of wonder still, but what I am also realising it is a way for me to take stock of my life. Though I have been here for almost 12 years now, I feel that life here is familiar, but it’s still a foreign land to me.