What moves me to take photographs? Despite the hard work, risks, and difficulties involved, why do I insist on it? Why insist on rigor, quality, and sincerity that photography calls for?
These are questions I’ve been asking myself. For a photographer, it’s an important question—in fact, I think most photographers should ask it to themselves. I’ve had conversations about this with several other photographers and with friends, and I don’t usually get a clear answer right away.
In my case, I photograph for many reasons, and I could answer this question on many levels. But mainly, the essential answer to the question—without getting overly existential about it—is that I photograph for the following reason: to satisfy my curiosity. In virtually all instances where I photograph for myself, I am curious about whatever it is that I am photographing. The photographic act is an exploration of this curiosity, an attempt to satisfy it. In most cases this attempt to satisfy my curiosity only seems to intensify it instead of satiating it, revealing further layers to be uncovered, further questions to be asked, further details to be explored.
In some cases I am looking for answers to a particular question, to understand a certain issue or to find a reason for it existing, some sort of mechanism that can be shown by images. In that sense, my photographs are like answers to the questions I am asking. But this is not true of every case. In fact, there are many times (perhaps, most times) where I find that photograph without the intention of obtaining answers, without a determined mission to find a cause or mechanism, as if acknowledging that there is no particular answer nor question to ask. In that sense, photographing is a more honest alternative than asking questions—it is an exploration, an experience, recorded visually, of my own curiosity.
I once read a statement that went something like this: the best photographers are those that are moved to photograph because they have lost something in the past, and have become psychologically wired to seek those things from their past, and try to retain them. I may be paraphrasing this statement incorrectly (It can be found in Susan Sontag’s “On Photography”, pages and the exact quote will be posted on a later date), but I can certainly identify with it. The only issue I have with the statement is that I don’t necessarily agree that this makes us “the best” photographers (this may just be due to the incorrect paraphrasing, issue to be fixed), but perhaps it does make us the most passionate photographers, the most ardent workers, the most determined to chase our curiosity through photography so that we can guard it’s answers or lack thereof.