On Being a Photographer

Minor told us to photograph our essence. “Don’t photograph your personality,” he explained. “Try to go deep into the core of your being. Photograph who you really are.”

For each image, I’d ask myself: What are the elements that make this good? Why did someone choose this image over the hundreds that must have been available? Technique was critical, that was obvious, but at this level, technique was a given. What elevated an image?

Regardless of how unsuccessfully my amateur photographs might live up to this promise, I find the experience very affecting. It has become a shortcut for me to this experience of permeability or porousness. There is the detachment, the centre-of-gravity-within-oneself that we are aiming for, but also an empathy and sense of free flow. It’s normal,

You pick an artistic direction—perhaps you start working on platinum studies of nudes—and you begin to accumulate a portfolio of work. Three years (or bus stops) later, you proudly present it to the owner of a gallery. But you’re dismayed to be told that your pictures aren’t as original as you thought, because they look like knockoffs of the work o