Dear Aspiring Photographers – on reading – II

Dayanita SinghLeave a comment

Dear Aspiring Photographers,

My second advice to you is to READ.

To read the history of the medium, of course (Geoff Dyer, John Szakowski, Sontag, Barthes…) but also fiction, poetry, non fiction, shayari, biography: what ever your interests are, but do read. Read to gather that immense life experience to bring to your work. The kind of experience decades of travel might bring. Then it might be possible to find a voice of your own. Read also to study form, to understand editing, sequencing, and withholding. All key words for me in my work.

Many of you write to ask me to look at your work, you write to ask if you can intern with me (I am sorry I do not reply to each one of you, so this is my reply). I would say to you: choose very carefully the people you show your work to because once you decide who your mentors are, you have to listen equally to their criticism as their praise. Many of my most formative conversations have been with writers, thinkers, publishers, very few photographers.

Reading and conversation are my two keys, for those of you who ask me for my advice on how to be a photographer.

****

Post Script:

* On Restraint – Restraint the beauty of art by Chandrima S. Bhattacharya in The Telegraph

Submitted by dayanita on Thu, 07/16/2015 – 18:05

Dear Aspiring Photographers – on reading – II

Dear Aspiring Photographers – jobs -I

Dayanita SinghLeave a comment

Dear Aspiring Photographers,

My first advice to you is, please get a job.

Yes, photography is magical and addictive and a language of its own, thats why we all get hooked. When one cannot find the words, there is always a photograph. But it’s challenging times ahead for Photography as a career. Photojournalism (as in paying photographers to go out and get the story) is, unfortunately, no longer the need of the hour. I am not even sure what it will mean to say one is a Photographer, some years from now.

But if you had another job (another source of income), then you could really push the limits of what photography can do: use it as raw material, as a tool, challenge it as a medium and its brief history. And, most importantly, find new forms for it. In a way Photography is just starting, it is finally democratised, and many new forms/structures will emerge.

That in my very subjective opinion on what Photography as a career is now. A question many of you seem to be asking me.

******

Post Script:

*please remember this is my very subjective opinion, to all those who are desperate to make careers as photographers, at huge costs to themselves and their families, when that very notion is changing completely

*the idea of the photographer as we thought of it until now is going to change, photography will be used in very different ways, by a range of people. It is becoming the universal language, it set out to be.

*Photography as Passion will always be there, the image was our first language,and even more so now than ever before. Photography as a Profession needs some hard thinking. New Professions using Photography perhaps?

Submitted by dayanita on Sat, 07/11/2015 – 20:23

Dear Aspiring Photographers – jobs -I