Goals For The New Year

Preface: I feel that writing these things down is the first step to commitment.  If I have this as a reference, I can hopefully convince myself that these feelings and insecurities have persisted and continue to feel galvanized to make positive changes.  The most pressing insecurity that I feel is that I am being shaped into a person who I do not want to be.  This can be based on a number of factors.  Instagram has become what Facebook used to be for me: A fake world with contrived personalities that deliver a message to nearly strangers before having a real interaction in the tangible universe that WE ALL LIVE IN.  I by no means wish to quit taking photos, but this platform does nothing to benefit what I want to be as an artist or who I want to be as a person.  IG puts us in constant passive conversations.  

The next significant piece that relates to my unstable identity is my environment.  I have lived in Columbus for five years now, and have fallen into a circle of people and places that I frequent.  I do not dislike these proper nouns by any means, but everything has become KNOWN.  "Known" leaves no room for knowing.  I do not want my identity to be decided by how I dress, who I hang out with, who I photograph, or where I like to drink beers.  Again, I enjoy everything that I just listed, but by keeping my followers informed of these things creates a persona, and consequently, I feel forced into that persona by perception.

Another insecurity that I have finally acknowledged is my mollification of internal battles and an unwillingness to help myself.  I have faced some very real reoccurring feelings (such as those I have just expressed) that I have failed to confront due to my daily focus on the issues.  I allow the day to determine how I feel rather than consider the frequency of such emotions and make a healthy change for myself.

Here are my goals:

1. Give up Instagram for the entire month of January.  Do not look at it AT ALL.

2. Be brave.

3. Drink less.

4. Consume less.

5. Exercise and eat as you know you should. 

6. Be less stressed out and stop pulling out your hair.

7. Consider what you want to do after Columbus.

8. Read more.

9. Seek out a humanitarian endeavor.

Without Feedback

What would Instagram be without feedback?  This is a question that many of us should ask ourselves.  We all love those validating likes and comments that make a photo worth posting.  The meaning of a photo has been transformed in this medium.  Julie and I want to strip the superficial, five-second-attention-span of the IG photo and take it back to its primitive roots.  

One passage by René Magritte comes to mind:

"A painting hanging on the wall may be a disturbing factor; this disturbance is only superficial; it is caused by life; it is inevitable; fated; in the deepest sense it is order: law. There is nothing more peaceful than a plain surface, but the life of a good picture is more precious than the wall's silence. The train does not spoil the scenery." 

Good photography demands reaction. Like the train that cuts across the landscape, it must cause some form of disturbance that transports the viewer to a psychologically significant place. Photos, or art for that matter, does not demand feedback.  Photography should be something that happens to the viewer.  Feedback is trivial to the power of the photo. 

(I will make a point to say that we naturally enjoy feedback, but my point is that it is inessential to photography and should hold no importance when deciding whether a photo is "good" or not.  The value is determined by the utility.)

Also, these photos are not good lol just including them because they were documented during the creative process.