Delight

I read a blog post this morning (https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2023/04/10/photography-what-is-it-for/?fbclid=IwAR04VGXR6EdPFTcBfaGMOnCLLRKxN3ibDEdJ2tNw9fsxmU5XtCzNZ7HS_Fo) where the question of ‘what is art for?’ (or more particualrly what is ‘this’ art for, because the blog writer’s companion was clearly confused by what they’d been looking at. It’s a question I sometimes wrestle with in regard to my own photography. It’s pretty clear cut when it comes to product or portrait photography but less easy to define when asked of the work I tend to make for myself. I could see very little of it working on anyone’s living room walls for example.

I take a lot of pictures, but not all end up on my website or in any of the books I create or even necesssarly just put out on social media. I was thinking about that this week as I sought to create a photograph that would tie in with recent images put up on Instagram. As luck would have it, or not have it, I didn’t take anything that really ‘fit’ and I worried that I didn’t have anything important to impart, nothing that I’d thought deeply about or cared about all that much. And then it struck me that I used to enjoy taking picutres just because it was fun, because I wanted to capture something that had caused me to feel deilght. I didn’t used to worry about what it said or made you think about or if it were important enough. For today, I have decided that feeling delight is important enough.