Can you share a little bit about finding your artistic voice?
It can be difficult to find your true artistic voice, just as it can be to find your place in the world. While these explorations of the soul are different in nature, I believe they both have overlapping characteristics that lead to the same discovery.
For me personally, a lot of these findings came from moments outside of photography. From losing loved ones, to heartbreak, struggle and grief, all these moments have been pivotal in learning more about the person I truly am, just as much as love, happiness, success and peace have.
What are the reasons for my happiness? What are the reasons for my disappointment? I put a lot of emphasis on taking notice of internal feelings and keeping these thoughts in the front of my mind, this has led me to an overall sense of clarity. With time and lived experience you begin to understand more and more about the reasonings for your existence and build upon the person you wish to become.
Luckily for me, photography has always been one of these reasons, but what I lacked for many years was feeling true emotion within the work. Once I concluded that I was unhappy with the photographs I was taking and the ideas I was chasing, I went to search for the moments that made me happy. And just as I did when learning to understand my emotions, I began looking for not only what takes my eye, but what makes me hold it.
There was a lot of trial and error during this period, many photos that have no place in the world, but it was the key to erasing the work that didn’t provide me with the sensation I was after. This process of elimination and exploration led me to create work that I feel evokes emotion within the audience and myself.
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