Artist Statement, Foot In Mouth

Artist Statement Anyone?


Always puzzling is the desire by those in creative arts academia to possess a photographer’s ARTIST STATEMENT. The danger being that much of what makes an image powerful is neatly defused in the explanatory prose. And some of the fun, the mystical, is removed from the equation. I love the feeling when an image stirs up questions; when it taps into some great internal resonant current of wonder. How disappointing it is to read an over-worded statement of creative intention that reduces a potentially magic property into a thesaurus of junior college art school ho-hum. In this day and age too many things are over-explained. Look into why any of the great photographers why they did what they did and chances are they’ll say that they just wanted to see what a particular scene looked like on film. (Of course, you are free to completely ignore my OWN artist statement, ahem.)

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