Tag: definition
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Labeling and Defining Photographers and Photography
As a professional photographer, I am often labeled—even pigeon-holed—using simple titles like stock photographer, documentary photographer, photo-essayist or fine-art photographer. That makes sense to me, because people want a quick way of knowing who I am as a photographer, and what kind of work I can do. A student recently asked me to explain how
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Poets not painters
Why is it that so many photographers aspire to be painters (or at least want their work to look like paintings?) I never understood that since I never wanted to emulate painters. I always wanted my photographs to have the presumed veracity that we attribute to photographs. The fact that they are derived from reality
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A big, what is the meaning of life, kind of a question
A former student/intern wrote me with a big, “what is the meaning of life” kind of a question. The process of answering her ended up becoming something of a dialogue within myself about photography and “meaning” for me. After I sorted things out in my own thinking, I wrote her an answer I could also
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The important process of naming a project
The members of a critique group that I head recently had an email dialogue about what to call one of the member’s ongoing projects. As the process unfolded, I thought about my own struggles naming my projects and how the naming of a photographic project is arguably the most important step in the process of
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Photo-essays, past, present and future
I have been producing photo-essays in one form or another for a couple decades. In that time, my approach to them has changed, as have the various ways that photo-essays are seen. After a long, slow decline in outlets, a new and exciting one has appeared.