Months ago I wrote Forever Changing, this post is a continuation. It is also inspired by my friend and Jedi brother Christian Fletcher and his great recent post about Art Photography. I recommend reading it and the comments, a great discussion about pushing ourselves and art to a new level, click here to read it. I will also feature a few of my recent images in this post.
I have been on a two year inner and outer journey and myself and my photography has changed completely. I have lived outside my comfort zone for long stretches of time to push myself. I no longer have any interest in banal pretty landscapes. I love shooting people, I love shooting abstract arty landscapes, I love altered landscapes. I want to capture something new, I want to constantly push myself, and I love new ideas, new looks and new inputs. I want to capture stories, events and emotions. My images must have a story and a meaning and they must make me and everyone else look for the story and come back to the images.
I did Wide Open Spaces like an obsession and I’m over it. The change in my landscapes happened in USA as I became bored with shooting these pretty but banal epic wide open spaces. It was too much of the same. Featuring no challenge, no drama, no contrast of ugly versus beauty, no light versus dark. Nothing to make me and the viewer pause and go “wait a minute, that is both disturbing, thought provoking, pretty and ugly and everything in between and tells an interesting story”.
I cringe and feel embarrassed by looking at some of my work featuring my old hyper-reality saturated style. The USA images from last year in particular I really wish to re-do. I feel like re-processing them all. It’s a trait I have, re-do and re-invent everything once I tire of it. I kick myself so much for not shooting people and altered landscapes in USA, it was a heaven for it. But I shall try and follow a friend’s advice “look back, just be happy you have improved so very much since then”.
I am branching into two directions, photo documentary and reportage photo journalistic style with my people and street photography, very much story based. My landscape work is moving towards a minimalistic art approach, removed from reality as the image is created not taken and featuring altered landscapes – mankind versus nature. As photographers the important part is not what others think but what you think and really, you owe it to yourself to keep thinking, pushing yourself, trying new stuff. I have no interest in shooting what I shot last year, I wish to move forward at a fast rate.
I have much to learn and that is the exciting part. Some people argue “stick to what you do best” but there is no challenge in repeating the same work or images over and over again just because I can do that style well. I have said before that if I ever tire of learning I wish to be put to sleep like an old dog. I hope you will find the forever changing artistic journey interesting and be inspired to see the world with new eyes. A good friend recently told me “allow yourself to be great”. I like that saying.
-Flemming
