Tuesday, January 31, 2006

My artistic crisis

Twenty years ago I was admitted into the Center for Creative Studies-College of Art and Design. My interest in photography began when my grandfather gave me his cameras and darkroom equipment when I was in the ninth grade in high school. While my peers were doing the things that interest teens, I cloistered myself in the world of darkrooms and viewed the world behind a lens of my creation. I was a geek and a freak for doing so. Adolescence is a cruel period.

My hobby became my obsession while I controlled it but as soon as I lost control in art school it became something to grieve about. What kind of career would photography lead to? What kind of unique vision would I develop and be recognized for etc, etc?

But the true artistic crisis was the limitations that photography sets. Lack of direction and money contributed as well. My photography evolved from documenting interesting found subject matter to constructing images. But those constructed images still were limited by meerly being a recording of the subject and not an interpretation of my vision. Painting offered more.

Student shows infuriated me. Photographers were viewed as second class artists to the painters and sculptures. The automotive graphic designers were destined to have secure careers. And so I began to doubt photography, painting must be the new direction for me. But I can't paint. Never tried it. I am sure to fail at it so I gave up at being artistic for 15 years and tried to be a normal person, pragmatic.

And so my crisis is; remain a relatively content normal disengaged person, or fall into an artistic but obsessive, neurotic, manic lifestyle. My crisis not yours.
Posted by ME :: 8:30 AM :: (full post) 5 comments

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