The nub of living a creative life, as I see it, is to recognise that the only thing that is constant in our lives is impermanence. The way we see the world now, and the way the world is, is always changing and just because we said or felt or believed something one day, does not imply that it is still true another day. We are entitled to change and in fact we are always changing.
By accepting that things come and they go, gives me great comfort to understand that what I do, is just a transient expression of who I was at a moment in time.
– Bruce Percy in A Crisis of Abundance
I used to be a landscape photographer. Then I couldn’t get out to the landscapes and wildernesses. But I still considered myself a landscape photographer. I tried becoming a people photographer, a street photographer. But how could I? How could a landscape photographer be good at street photography?
It’s been about 5 years since I shot landscapes. Nowadays, I see lights, shadows, lines, splotches of color and I itch to make photos of these bizarre, fantastical, nonsensical things. So I am no longer a landscape photographer right? What am I then?
I mourned the loss of my identity – and then I realized: I made up that identity of “landscape photographer”. I can make up a new identity for this new me of today. So I shall become an itchy photographer – one whose photos scratch her itch-of-the-day.
January 21, 2017