Collaboration with friends and strangers part-ii.

 

I posted “the first post for this series” about my collaborations two long months ago. The summer is already ended and the second part of it was too hot, so I had much less activity also due to the extremely busy time at my daily job place. What to say, I can’t finish two rolls of films loaded in the cameras, which I have with me daily for an already long time, and this fact just makes me crazy. I had a few ideas for the personal projects in my head, but these needed on-demand cooperation with people, not some candid or spontaneous, so I gave up for now and just waiting for the best time to accomplish all the “planned” and “wanted”

Well, I finished the words above for this post already a week ago and find myself too exhausted to continue with something much more interesting. And this “interesting” came to me as the Tzunami comes to continents without “nock-nock” before the visit. I’m following one documentary photography magazine on IG and this week I saw one of their posts-teaser about the interview with known photographers, which will be published in their next issue. One of these “known” photographers was asked:

“What advice would you give to a young photographer?”

And his answer was:

“Join workshops, attend classes, enter competitions, and ask other photographers for feedback.”

I read his “helping advice” and got the immediate feeling that I must answer:

“One doesn’t really need all this stuff. Learn your gear, be dedicated, learn your gear, and be dedicated. continue this years. The feedback from other photographers is always very subjective and on the personal taste oriented.”

So the answer of the magazine founder made me crazy:

“Our culture has this Romantic idea of the artist as a solitary creative genius who works alone and has his/her brilliant ideas alone. That’s a myth. Just like in sports, business, school or basically in any form of activity, a good mentor can help the amateur to improve faster.”

Well. This is really why we are overwhelmed with all this stuff that some people wrongly get as professionalism. I want to imagine Vivian Maier, Ansel Adams, Daido Moriyama, John Free, Sally Man, Grant Brittan, Tatsuo Suzuki, and Bruce Gilden attending someone’s workshop or class (and there are many other names). These real solitary creative geniuses created and are still creating the unique touch and face of the classic photography in different genres of it.

“To improve faster” is not always working to build a unique (again) way of seeing, but can destroy the “birth and growth” of something special in the personal perception of the future Artist. These infinite classes in many cases confuse people at the very beginning of their journey in understanding what they want from photography when someone who became a good marketing person (sometimes or almost always) is much better in marketing skills than in photography – not easy to be great in every field of activity, especially when these fields are too far each from other. Yes, I know that many people are willing to get the immediate skills and ready to spend their money and TIME for everything that supposedly can bring the result here and now. Nothing is work in this way – and sport is not the best sample when we are talking about ART.

Now I feel that I can publish this long waiting post!