Fine Art Photography and Another Thing
(aka Self-Expression)
There's No Title …
but the woman on the right looks like Mum
I thought I’d finished diving into the different elements of fine art photography when I wrote the previous section on ‘Something Else.’ There can’t possibly be anything else to dig out, I thought. But, when I was re-reading this entire unit (before writing a summary), I realised I was wrong – self-expression was missing. It’s implicit throughout but never actually mentioned by name.
The concept of self-expression is never paramount for my engineering persona. I know there’s an element of it in everything we do – how we talk and dress, in our body language – but my engineering mind is more concerned with solving technical problems. So, it’s the fact that I’m even thinking about self-expression which, above everything else I’ve thought about and written over the last two weeks, brings home what fine art means to me – the emergence of my creative persona. Slowly and quietly, without me being fully aware, a different side of me now sees the light of day. A side of me which, presumably, got left behind about 50 years ago when maths, science and hockey(!) took root and then took over.
I broached this idea last year when I wrote about my ‘Engineer to Artist’ journey (HERE …) but, with hindsight, I feel I was being premature in discussing my artist-credentials – there was still too much of the engineer in me, in evidence. Yes, I can show you some good signs of my creative development but, in a lot of cases, I was like a child dressing up, trying things on for size! – 'acquiring' some of the emotion, for example, from snatches of songs and song-titles. By the end of the journey, I was looking at the body of work I had produced, deciding it looked artistic (rather than technical or literal) increasing its emotional and expressive significance, and then concluding I’d become an artist.
A year on, and things feel different. I have less concern whether or not I’m an artist; I’m more excited to be welcoming the emergence of my expressive, creative being – and knowing that it’s now so firmly established that it can play nicely with my engineering persona.
What an outcome for my lockdown quest – finding my creative persona and knowing I can hear its creative voice.
And that creative voice is telling me to think more deeply about the ‘self’ in self-expression – because it’s not about conformity or emulation. That voice is giving me encouragement to believe in myself, have more confidence – permission, too; it’s reminding me that only I know how I’m feeling; how I see these encounters with this messy, imperfect world; what emotions are unresolved inside me.
And only I know – my self – how to express it all.
So I’m sitting here at 6am, looking out of the window as the morning sun lights the garden, trying to find the words to explain how I feel right now, as I’m confronting the idea that I’ve an expressive, creative persona not just as an engineering one.
Wonderment. Amazement. Surprise.
And excitement.
Yes, they’ll do to start with