There was a time when I was happy in sharing my photos. I am still happy sharing photos but now I tend to limit the audience. It’s not a whim; it might seem oddly elitist but the audience seems less and less interesting. You know those bad photographers who say they are taking photos just for themselves to actually cover up how bad their photos really are? There is a small truth particle in there.
I borrowed a small photo printer and started to print photos from a project I’ve been working for a few years. It will probably take a few more to finish it. I am so so bad at curating my own photos and so not into sharing them. I am doing exactly what photographers must not do: curate their own photos and keep them for themselves.
Nowadays people are trained to mindlessly feed and devour. Anything. Everything. Basically, photographers must be laying-egg machines constantly feeding the masses. Photography is a victim. You have the choice: to feed the masses with easily digestible crumbs in form of snapshots or take a step back and try to create something remarkable (that probably nobody will care about).
After I finished printing the last batch of photos I went to bed, hit play and last song of the day was Leonard Cohen’s By the rivers dark. Ironically enough, my project is about darkness and a being of light trapped in a Babylonian realm.
The next day I found out about the passing of mr. Cohen. It was a sad day. But not very sad. Hmmm… odd. I wandered why and the answer was clear as daylight: the amount of beauty left behind by him was more than one can hope for. He will always be remembered. He has done remarkable things. Remarkable: worthy of being or likely to be noticed especially as being uncommon or extraordinary.
These remarkable things only come from within. Even if within there is a great loneliness or tremendous vast green meadows, an infinite abyss or an immense sea of light, everything remarkable comes from deep deep within. I only hope more of us will be able, with a little help, to get there.
“And he covered me,
And I saw within,
My lawless heart
And my wedding ring.”