Where do photo projects come from?
When you’re really invested in photography, eventually thematic and visual patterns start to form in your work. They can be planned (based on a vision or idea), completely unconscious or a combination of both.
For me personally, there are typically two ways how new projects emerge. I’m sure there are just as many origin stories as there are photographers, but this is how it happens, at least for this particular photographer.
It all comes from within
First of all, I think it should all come genuinely from within. I couldn’t be bothered to start working on someone else’s idea. If the photographer (or any artist) doesn’t have any inner drive, the work is going to be doomed. So if you don’t have a vision and have to ask someone else for ideas, I’m pretty sure it is not going to work out or at least it is going to lack depth.
Executing a pre-planned vision
A really common starting point for a new project is simply having a killer idea or a vision. Sometimes I have a ton of ideas and sometimes none. Unfortunately, even good ideas doesn’t necessarily materialise every time. Sometimes though the idea is so compelling that I get obsessed about it and would do anything to get it up and running. If that level of enthusiasm gets sparked, it usually is pretty promising, because I have a lot of initial momentum to begin with. It is a good indicator that the idea is going to give birth to a whole series of images that can be put together into a coherent body of work.
Projects that come out of nowhere
Half of the time how ever, projects get started without any pre-planning and aren’t based on a conscious idea or a vision. They just seem to come out of nowhere.
So let’s imagine that you’ve been shooting for a while and might find yourself looking at a bunch of ‘random’ photos that you’ve taken during a course of time and noticing, that they all share something that connects them without any conscious planning. Are they really that random? If a pattern emerges, it isn’t perhaps as random as you though, but rather, not just as conscious as you thought.
I’ve often noticed an unplanned thematic connection in my photos, that somehow seems to bind the images together without any pre-meditation. It occurs when approaching photography reactively and instinctively. Some of the most meaningful work might stem out of this method, when you don’t question yourself, but just take photographs whenever your instinct tells you. The instinct could be an unconscious impulse.
The world is a sensual overload
And just how these unconscious impulses make their way into photographs? We are constantly scanning our surroundings and our senses are picking up only a fraction of the so called reality. What we often think of reality, is basically a mental construction based on input, that our senses are able to pick up, and the conscious mind then to register and make an interpretation out of. There is loads of sensory information that goes pass this sensor, that is to say, left unregistered by the conscious mind, but we still, none the less, pick up a lot of the remaining information unconsciously. So in other words, you notice a lot of stuff without even realising it.
Similarly, in everyday life, you might get a bad feeling about a person without fully understanding why. You’re constantly picking up unconscious signals too, in addition to the ones that you’re able to consciously notice. More often than not, these bad vibes you’re getting, turn out to be true.
A walk on a street, for example, can be a total overload for our senses and in addition to that, you might be a completely absent minded little photographer, who’s mind wander while there is a plethora of things happening all around you. It is impossible to see everything, no matter how concentrated and sensitive you are. What you consider reality, is a very limited construction happening inside your mind, not the whole truth.
”I can’t explain it, but there is just something about it”
Needles to say that very often you, therefore, just see something that you are compelled to photograph without fully realising why. A fleeting moment that exists for a moment is already gone if you stop to rationalise it. That’s why it is important to shoot instinctively, when you get the hunch. It is important to listen and to respect that compulsion and to act upon it by taking the photo — to react with the camera and to think later. There is usually something that your unconsciousness noticed, but what is hard to point out exactly, until a later date. What are the things you reacted to and why were you compelled to shoot them? After a while, you might have ten or twenty photos that display a similar theme and the pattern is coming clearer, even though it might not make sense to you by the time of firing the shutter.
Half of the time I don’t necessarily realise that I’m working on a project, because I tend to fiddle around very instinctively. A personal project isn’t necessarily like a commission with clear set of specifications and goals. It can be almost anything at all, which is why I think it’s important to respect it and allow it to be what ever it wants. Let it give birth to itself by using you as an instrument to manifest itself. By going on instinctively, a body of work emerges and if there is a pattern, it will come together naturally when putting the images together.
