The kind of photography that speaks to me

Anne’s question for this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge is “What’s your photographic groove?”. Well, that’s a question I’ve been asking myself quite a lot lately. And there’s a gap between the kind of photography that I’m currently doing (and feeling comfortable doing) and the kind of photography that would speak to me the most.

What I do right now is mostly landscape and street photography, with some touches of abstract. This is a legacy of how I got into photography:

as a way of capturing moments that stood out

of trying to make sense of my experiences outside the borders of the known and the familiar

of trying to tell the story of something that I couldn’t shake off, that would just stay with me

All this still makes sense, of course. But I’m not completely there anymore.

I want to work on long-term projects. I want to work directly with people. People that know about my project and agree to be part of it, not stolen snapshots on the street. I want to build on topics that speak to me, topics that I just know would keep me motivated. I don’t want to simply tell my stories. I want to be a witness and a voice for the stories of others and for our collective stories, those that hurt as well as those that heal.

I don’t know what genre/style of photography would best describe this approach and I don’t care too much. Some of the photographers I admire do documentary work. Some others do mostly portraits. Some others work with colors, layers, and textures across genres.

What I know is that I want to go beyond that self-centered approach to photography that is basically a reflection of that author’s dreams, wishes, interests, emotions, and ideas. I want to let the dreams and stories of others come to the surface in my work.

And it seems to me that our dreams and stories are interlinked like the roots of trees in a primary forest.