CONTEXT OF PRACTICE

What do people see/talk about?

"The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitring, stalking cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flâneur finds the world picturesque." - Susan Sontag, 1977 

Yoshiyuki Okuyama/Japan, The Town You Live In, 2017

• I really find Yoshiyuki's photographs appealing. There is nothing special going on or a statement he's trying to make. But it is that beauty of nature and life that he captures, something that I never really took the time to notice as I am too immersed with my own world.

“I decided I should take pictures of working class people and contribute to the movements. Whatever movements there were Socialism, Communism, whatever was happening. And then I saw pictures of Cartier Bresson, and realized that photography could be an art and that made me ambitious.” – Helen Levitt 

Helen Levitt,
 Kids on Doorway/New York, 1940

Helen Levitt/New York, 1980 

“I never had a ‘project.’ I would go out and shoot, follow my eyes—what they noticed, I tried to capture with my camera, for others to see.” 

• Perhaps disregarding what others think and photograph what catches my eyes would give a different result to my work. There is a moment in time where I should create work that I would proudly show to the public, a story that I would like to tell. 

• In reference to my essay, it made me wonder where would I take my practice? What is it that I would communicate/show people. Is what I am showing important? Ethical? Necessary? Different? Interesting? 

• Question of the day, am I taking photographs/creating art for the sake of it? Or am I making art that will affect, influence and inspire others?