civilized ku # 2868 ~ finding an audience

tangle ~ Pittsburgh, PA • click to embiggen

In a recent essay / entry, On Trends, on Conscientious Photography Magazine, Jörg M. Colberg wrote:

Trends come and go, so in principle there is nothing much to be worried about. Photography, much like any other area organized around human activities, has been experiencing trends for a long time, older ones now firmly established as important historical episodes (think “Pictorialism”). And really, given that photography can be art (not is art per se, as I’ve argued before, instead it can be art), its practitioners might decide not to worry about trends – simply because the idea behind art is not to be trendy, but to be truthful to higher ideals that almost by construction exclude the idea of trendiness.

He also spent a great deal of ink writing about the pitfalls of not catering to trends, primarily the difficulty of finding an audience - gallery representation, book publishers, critics, social media followers, and the like - for one's work if it does not confirm to what's happening now. In other words, how does one find an audience if one's work isn't seen. While Colberg lists some possibilities one might under take in attempting to solve this dilemma, he also makes it very clear that those approaches have absolutely no guarantee of success.

So, what's a picture maker who follows his own prescription for making pictures to do?

Well, his suggestion is that if pictures are to be art, "What truly matters is for an artist to remain true to her or himself, and thus by extension to the work" which in and of itself is hardly a new idea inasmuch as, for just one of a host of examples, Brooks Jensen wrote in other words:

Real photography begins when we let go of what we have been told is a good photograph and start photographing what we see.

Colberg and Jensen are hardly alone in giving such advice but the hard truth of the matter is that most picture makers want to reach an audience and garner the occasional accolade even if it's from just family and friends. Consequently, most picture makers, 'serious' and otherwise, tend to drift toward the vicinity of what they have been told is a good picture. IMO, that holds true from the ranks of the neophyte amateur to the hollowed halls of the those educated in the trends of the academic lunatic fringe.

To be perfectly honest, I have always (to this day) had modicum - at times more and at times less - of ruminating about and being seduced by picture making trends. While I have never actually gone off in pursuit of mimicing or immersing myself in picture making trend, the temptation to do has almost always been the result of the desire to reach an audience. Specifically, an audience comprised of gallery directors.

That written, I have nevertheless stuck to my guns, re: picturing what I see how I see it. And even though I sometimes lose sight of the fact that, by sticking to my guns, I have had a fair number of exhibits (solo and group) of my work, And, I need to keep reminding myself of that fact despite my success in having my work seen. Nevertheless, that nagging thought of reaching an ever-bigger audience and even more accolades just doesn't seem to ever disappear.

Although, on the bright side, I have just about managed to stomp into dust the idea of following a picture making trend trend for any reason whatsoever.