#2504U

A clutch of thoughts after an interesting evening at the theatre:

I’ve heard it said before that every photographer (at least every good photograph) is a self portrait at its core. Also read somewhere that every artist has one topic, one theme, one story they are continually telling in their works thought their life.

This is in my thgouths contrasted with the fact that I’m continuously searching for a theme, a style, a topic, a story, something interesting, something that captures my attention. Something I feel passionately enough about that I will keep working on it for a long enough time to make something meaningful.
Then there is the one “meta project” I’m orienting everything else by: HUNGARIAN DREAM. I usually say that it’s an examination of what it really means to be Hungarian, of Hungarian identity, of the atmosphere, the true face of the country. And ultimatly, I tend to say, it is about my relationship, my ambiguous feelings about being from here and living here.

So far, I wasn’t able to figure out the shape, the form, the approach of this work. I keep going back to street photography and reportage as tools. I want to capture the Hungary I see, I think, so I should show it, the people, the events, the typical visuals of my Hungary.
But what if the point isn’t this at all?

I say that this work is about my feelings, my experience, my Hungarian identity. That sounds like a personal work, not a documentation, however subjective. So I need to photograph this from a truly personal perspective.

I exist in a dycothomy of what I think is “serious” or “real” work. Something is either a neutral depiction, a presentation of the real world or fully universal symbolism.
Now I think there is a third way: personal symbolism shown in a universally understandable way.

An example: if I want to make a picture that speaks about a city boy’s relationship with the countryside, the first approach is to find a subject that experiences this (eg. through his family moving to a village) and photographing him.
But what I really want to speak about is my own experience. Remember, all art is autobiographical. So I can go to the specific village where I spent my summers as a kid, and photograph a place there that I myself attach my experience of countryside to. I need to clearly show the experience of “village” in that picture, so that it’s understandable by a viewer who is not me, but it should also be about my own experience.

I’m not sure I’m explaining this well, but in my mind it’s very clear. I hope I will remember this tomorrow. If not, here is a shorthand for myself:
I’ve always been most interested in photographing my life, my experience. There’s a reason for that and I should trust that interest. Follow that gut feeling, that leads to what is truly my own work, rather than pushing myself to do objective, documentary work because that feels like a more “serious” approach.

Well, anyways.