Compromise

Electric Sunflower

As part of my on again off again quest to share (and fund) my photographic habit I like to submit entries for photography shows.  A couple of the shows I've looked at entering lately have been interesting but in the end I decided they weren't for me.  The concept of having to compromise what I'm doing in order to fit my work into the boxes provided by the shows doesn't sit well with me.

One show in particular was more about the artist's ability to describe what they were trying to portray in writing rather than through photos, and without the paragraph of explanation the photos were meaningless.  The idea of people trying to psycho-analyze flower photos, trying to assign some deep trauma or conflict beyond a couple of words strikes me entirely missing what I'm trying to convey.  Putting more analytical thought in front of an emotional response is not the point. 

My goal is to take images that speak for themselves, that allow each person an individual interpretation, rather than images that require some lengthy back story from me. 

Ideally I'd like people to look at one of my photos and become suspended in a moment of silence because that's what meditation is in the end is a moment of true silence where the analytical pauses for breath or is struck dumb.

One of the things that Osho talks about is the idea of people compromising in order to gain the approval of others, and through that approval they gain what they, and others, perceive as success.  And then once they feel they've achieved "success" they stop compromising and become more true to themselves.  I think I'd rather be true to me the whole way though, and if other people like what I'm doing then that's fine.  And if they don't well that's fine too.  Which is probably why I have a day job in a non-conformist field :-)