This is an Arcanum post from February 2015.
Why Create?
Recently I was challenged to think about what motivates me when I go out and shoot. What drives me? I've been hitting these walls lately, and it's been tough, trying to figure what's going on. So many questions and so few answers. I've been mulling over all of it since last week, when +Ron Clifford and I had a chance to talk.
Today was something of an epiphanous day. I tend to pick up little snippets of information, ideas etc, from a lot of different places, and sometimes they all coalesce into something concrete. Various things I've read lately along with my conversation with Ron all pointed to getting to the heart of things. The truth of what drives me. Being totally honest. What is it about creating that I love? For me it's the process, it's not the subject, it's the whole deal, the hunt for a shot, all of the thought processes involved, seeing the intention, then editing and finishing the image. The entire process is zen for me. But that still leaves the "why".
I tend to do a lot of free form thinking, especially when I'm walking. I have lots of opportunities, since I walk nearly every day. Today the free form thinking and all those snippets coalesced into a sort of personal revelation. It's funny, when they happen, they're earth shattering (and in this case, painful) , but in hindsight, they're so damned obvious, you wonder how the hell you didn't see them before.
So forgive me if what I'm about to say is blatantly obvious to all of you lol.
I create to explore relationships.
But at the heart of it, I am exploring myself. Poking the tender bits to gauge the reaction and seeing if they can be mended. Attempting to prove to myself that I have worth. Realizing it left me a bit dumbstruck. Having some time to think about it more, thinking back on my past images, and it's so stupidly obvious. But more than that, the most exciting part, is that now I have a much clearer view of what I'm doing and how I shouldwill move forward. I feel energized now, even thought it's subzero January.
Ok... so that was the distilled version. I’m going to expand on it a little bit now, without spilling the entire can of worms (or is it beans, I don’t know.... mixed metaphors lol).
This question of why goes to our core beliefs, and everything we think and do and feel stems from it, whether we are aware of what they are or not. (The question of can we change those beliefs is another discussion, and I’d love to know the answer, because my core beliefs are not positive ones.) At the heart of my core beliefs is the rejection by my mother that goes back as far as I can remember. That rejection had a lifelong impact on my sense of myself, and my sense of my own worth, and by extension what I perceive to be my worth to everyone I meet. It made me very sensitive and attuned to the undercurrents of interactions between others. I create to explore those interactions. I’m compelled to capture what I see because I’m exploring myself.
"In this love you are like a knife, with which I explore myself"
I by turns need validation from others and don't care what people think. I don't necessarily need praise, but it takes very little to shake my belief in myself. (Not caring what people think is my defense mechanism, I think... a sort of passive aggressive oppositional defiance) Criticisms are internalized, examined, worried over, gnawed at, and put away, added to a lifetime of perceived verbal slights and attacks. It's almost as though I'm validating my mother's knowledge that I am, on some level, repulsive. She was right, she was right, she is right.
Fear of rejection is something that we all deal with on some level. It’s probably one of the most common fears people have for not starting a new venture. Fear of rejection for me goes beyond that to hitting the core of my belief system. I am only now at the beginnings of being able to push back on that. There are days when I fully believe in my ability to push through, and then days when it’s an impenetrable wall I feel I’ll never scale.
“Ultimately photography is about who you are. It's the truth in relation to yourself. And seeking truth becomes a habit.”
So my “why” is this. I create to explore relationships, yes, but that’s a broad statement. By exploring relationships, I explore myself, to understand myself and to heal myself. Photography is the vehicle for that exploration and that discovery.
