How to move your work forward
Lately, I’ve been talking a lot to Bronques who runs LastNightsParty about photography, and the challenges of creating work that we’re passionate about.
Bronques is a bit of legend in terms of capturing and documenting nightlife, during the nougties, I discovered his work through a CD mix of electro house tracks, he’d produced a song called “Everybody On The Scene” I fucking loved that album, and that party night “OneLove” as it was called. I looked up every artist on it, but it’s when I discovered his photography work, that I went “ohhhh” it was a lightbulb moment because I realised the way I had grown and learnt photography wasn’t the only way of doing it.
Having these conversations is making me want to share this side of my work more. The process, the slug, the shit, that we go through to create.
With the internet, success doesn’t look anything like it did, five years ago, ten years ago, it’s not what it was. That’s not a bad thing, but we need to be defining success for ourselves, not by other peoples standards.
We have a lot of platforms now, and a we now have phones in our hands every waking moment, which have skewed how we see things.
There are so many things people define success by, here a few obvious ones:
Social Followings
Exhibitions
Successful Editorial Submissions
Shoot subjects
Money
This stuff can be really maddening, because often it’s out of our control, or requires us to game or learn a system and then contribute to it, or it’s just dumb luck sometimes, or hopefully in most cases skill.
So in order to do that, you need to do a few things.
Figure out where you want to go.
Why you want to go there
What that means for the goals you set (and the timeline for them)
Who will be your critics
What happens when you fail and when you succeed
I’ve laid these out because the where is important, because you need to have a compass, because without that, it’s easy to get lost, or side tracked, or say yes to things that don’t get you closer to where you want tobe.
The why is important, because it’s your fuel, the bad days will come, and when you feel like quitting, or you don’t get up, you’re going to need to remember why you’re doing it in the first place, or you’re gonna quit. It’s ok to be miserable, as long as you know why you’re putting yourself through it. Without that it’s just misery, you’re just being a sadist.
The goals you then set, are the path, you’re heading along, now, you already know where you’re going, but you need both short, near-term and long term goals.
Ultimately, I would like my pictures on billboards in time square, that to me is what success looks like, having photos I’ve taken in one of the most prominent commercial districts in the world. Commercial success is different from cultural though, so my other goal is to create real impact with my work. I would like to create a successful artist collective that fosters the careers of 50 emerging artists a year across a variety of disciplines (which is a good part of the reason I write).
So, because of that, I then have defined why I want to go there.
Why I want my work in times square is because it means I know and understand the value of commercial work, and have continued to improve my craft to a point where both the artistic and commercial merits have been rewarded. I want validation as well for my hard work as well, and I also want to set a high benchmark for the technical side of my work.
Collaborating for me, and moving forward as a group is the most important sentiment to my work, because it’s not something I can do alone. I love working with other people, even if I am a pain in the ass to work with sometimes. It also means I continue to write.
The near-term for my billboard goal is editorial submissions, 20 of them this year.
The near-term for my collaboration goal is to continue to write one of these articles a week, and contribute to a few select groups, I want artists meet-up established ASAP, but still in the process of hashing that out. I had a website that did that, but I want to do it again.
My critics, I have a list of people (it’s less than 10) that I ask for their opinion, every else can get fucked. I say that earnestly, because if you have more than 10 critics, you’re going to be pulled every which way by people who don’t truly understand you. Pick them wisely, pick people who you trust, pick people who want to grow with you, and can take your feedback on board as well, not people who aren’t invested in your growth, and who you aren’t invested in there’s.
I’ve learnt the pitfalls of arrogance, and how success can make you unapproachable, and unreachable. That’s not what I want. I want to foster growth whether I’m failing forward, or succeeding forward. If I don’t get the commercial success, then I’ll continue to work retail on the side, if I get the commercial success, I will use the money to pay off debts and improve my work, probably by a car/get my license, something I have failed to do in my almost 30 years on this planet.
The point is, the path forward isn’t one of success or failure, it’s just a path forward.
Good luck, and please ask any questions.
