A new form of creativity
A few weeks ago, I went on holiday to Normandy for a few days.
In this crazy year, I needed a break, even if it was a short one.
I was only away for 4 days but I was incredibly creative and took a lot of pictures. I was very stimulated by what I saw.
It wasn’t the first time, and I had already vaguely talked about my “holiday” photos in a previous article, but this time it was even more intense.
And it made me think about my work and my use of photography as an artist.
In this article, I won’t talk about my creativity as a freelance photographer because in this case, I always create according to what the clients want to have, their wishes come first and then I put my personal touch to the works.
Here, I‘m going to talk about the (strong) nuance between my creativity as an artist and the photographs I make when I go on holiday, as these are two situations where I am the sole decision maker.
As an artist, my work deals with certain boundaries related to the photographic medium: especiallt those that (may) exist between reality and fiction, between photography and cinema, and between candid photography and staged one. In short, I really like to play with the codes of photography and ask questions to the viewer.
In my work as an artist, I am inspired by real life and then I create fictions (staged photographs). I imagine a story (as part of a series) and then I think about the composition of the image, the poses of the model(s), their expressions, their movements, their clothes…
At the same time, I also think about the setting, the light...
I don’t create images for the sake of creating images (of course, there’s always the pleasure of doing it) but also and above all I create them for the questions I want to raise.
For example, I’m fascinated by the way we recreate ourselves on social networks, constantly showing that we live a really cool life (when it’s totally untrue) and I know that this plays a big part in my work.
I like to make people think about how we control our appearances.
I always consider my images as tools to make people think.
This way of doing things came to me thanks to my studies (I studied at a fine art school from 2009 to 2014) as I was taught how to build my work through my own messages.
It’s hard to explain, but my creativity as an artist is always generated by that. There’s always a back-and-forth between my production and my intentions.
But when I came back from Normandy, and started editing my photos, I realised that I’d been just as creative, but in a very different way.
It wasn’t the first time, but in this case, it was even more marked in terms of inspiration and therefore quantity as well.
When I go somewhere, I don’t rule out the possibility of making staged photographs (I’ve done it before, but I’d thought of making this image long before I left).
But what usually takes precedence when I‘m on holiday are the photographs I take instinctively. I walk somewhere, see something that catches my eye (a blue piercing sky a dark alley, a bird on a wire, foliage that seems to be coming out of a house…) and immediately I take a picture.
These are photographic wanderings, which remind me a bit of a course I had when I was a student, where we had to walk around the city and had to photograph the elements that had been moved by human beings. We never knew what we were going to find, sometimes the hunt was good, and sometimes not at all. But I really liked this exercise.
There is a kind of “let it go” attitude in this kind of photography.
You’re not under pressure, you let yourself be guided.
I’m not saying that my work as an artist is necessarily done under pressure, but I know that I think much more carefully about the link between my intentions and my production. There’s no slacking off. I exhibit my work as an artist. It’s one of my main jobs, so of course I pay much more attention to it.
When I take photographs during these wanderings, I am not looking to convey messages, but I am not necessarily looking to make beautiful images either.
I take pictures because I like what my eyes see and because I want to freeze the moment (so cliché).
I like the idea of photographing events and details that people don’t necessarily pay attention to. Without any pretension.
I don’t interfere with what’s in front of me, and when the photograph needs to be retouched, I do as little as possible.
Reading my own words, I have the impression that these photographs are/were taken by two different persons. Day and night around the same medium.
At the moment, I still don’t know what to do with the images produced during my wanderings. For several reasons: I’ve considered putting them on my website but between my activity as an artist and my activity as a freelance photographer, I’m afraid that it would become too messy.
Moreover, the fact that there’s nothing behind these images bothers me a bit. I don’t have any explanation as to why I created these images, and other than saying that they are images taken from photographic wanderings, I don’t really know how to define them at the moment.
Yet I love these photographs as much as the ones I create as an artist, because in both cases I can challenge myself.
In fact, they do me good.
I like to do these wanderings without thinking about the final result, and then I like getting back to work and looking for the next staged photograph.
I leave you with a few more images from my walks in Normandy, don’t hesitate to give me your opinion.
