I have been waiting a long long time to start this blog, stream of consciousness, diary-esque writing project but I decided if I don’t just start it is never going to come to fruition. I haven’t quite figured out what I want this to be, but for now I am going to start with what feels natural and go from there. There is going to be a lot of discussion about my weekly notes and things I’ve been studying or thinking about. A ton of photography content, but also a lot of thoughts on fitness and well-being in general.

Starting is always the hardest part…..that might be the most overused and truest idiom that I have been learning to take advantage of this past year and a half. From James Clears’ “Atomic Habits,” taking imperfect action is one of the most important steps for growth. It sounds rather obvious, but the first step is the first step, and if you are constantly “avoiding by optimizing,” the diminishing part of your brain may convince you that you aren’t ready for this new change. So I am just starting.

This week I listened to an amazing lecture from the School of the Visual Arts in New York City where a young documentary photographer, Rahim Fortune, talked at length about his perspective while making two books. With one being self-published (“Oklahoma”) and the other made in collaboration with Loose Joints publishing (“I can’t stand to see you cry”), I was struck by the discussion on why self-publishing has the pitfalls it does. I often hear these intense conversations taking place in photographic spaces about how self-publishing is king and “no one is gonna give you a shot so you have to do it yourself,” but I have always thought about the photographic book as a collaboration. Little to no well-known photographic books are without designers, editors, writers, or general help, and going it alone can be a very scary notion to a lot of young photographers. 

When talking about his first book “Oklahoma,” Fortune says “good photos bad book.” There were aspects to the work that needed to flow through him naturally, but are then given no context within the larger story he is trying to tell about this lonesome loving place he grew up. The view of the road in front of his grandma’s house doesn’t come off as an important landmark within the syntax of the photographs. In my own work I find myself looking for photos that work well together visually and forgetting that the internal thoughts about a document are my own and for others they must be explained. Fortune uses the Zora Hurston quote, “a story is a terrible thing to keep inside,” and if working with an editor or designer can take this abstract story and whittle it down to its most salient and understandable parts, well isn’t that the point of the documenting. Therefore, after working with Loose Joints, taking the entirety of his photo archive from Texas, and shooting more photos while visiting his ailing father near Austin, a book that was supposed to be about his dad’s battle with ALS became much more conceptual. “I can’t stand to see you cry,” reads much more like a cultural anthology about how post Jim Crow Texas has mixed with contemporary issues, and while paying homage to his father, Fortune allows the work to take on a larger definition of what southern Black suffering and community is like.

I see these struggles reflected in my own photographic experience quite often, with photos I take seemingly having no meaning or purpose to anyone other than myself, and thus becoming a scar on my credibility as an artist. Reworking an archive, personal or otherwise, can lead to the recontextualization of these moments and oftentimes is helped along by other sets of eyes. So keep shooting those in-between moments that draw your eye in and perhaps later they will take the form of something more important than you could’ve imagined.

SOURCES:

Clear, J. (2018). Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones. Avery, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

School of Visual Arts. Fortune, R. [SVA] (2022, December 6th). Rahim Fortune - Fine-Art & Documentary Photographer  [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fH2AgmM5vw&t=5492s

Fortune, Rahim. 2018 “CR3735, Coalgate, Oklahoma” [Photograph]. https://www.rahimfortune.com/books/oklahoma-self-published-2020

Fortune, Rahim. 2021 “Untitled” [Photograph] https://www.rahimfortune.com/books/new-portfolio-item