Enjoying the acrobatics
I am slowly walking my way out of illiteracy. Yes, illiterate is how I’ve felt from the moment the MA classes started and I realized how little I know about photography.
And, as there is only one way to go over that, I am spending long hours reading, hoping to soon wake up my student brain. Well, the process is slow. Work, picture taking, picture thinking, picture reading, picture everything, more work and then a little bit of friends, family… life. It turns out that my life is currently kind of an acrobatic exercise: a continuous struggle for balance, lots of adrenaline, scary and very stressful at points, yet so joyful.
I started the reading having in mind the list of essay topics we’ve been given, hoping that, at at some point, something would click in my head to let me know what I would write about. It certainly did. For a couple of weeks now, I’ve been obsessed with Eugene Smith’s life and work. But, because I cannot get hold of some important bibliography (the books are out print and second hand copies are very expensive), I made an attempt to find another ’obsession’. No, it didn’t work. It looks like Smith came to stay and so, he’s the one despite the shortage on book resources.
His extraordinary essays on regular people, have made me doubt a lot on the photo essay I’ve chosen to work on. Suddenly I wanted to follow one person just as he did. And well, I do have a story along those lines which, for a year now, is urging me to find its way out.
I know there is a story behind her, and it’s not just about boxing, but, so far, boxing it’s all I’ve managed to portrait. I’ve decided I will let that story mature at its own pace.
It’s time to focus on ’those papers’ that are making me drive around at insane hours. Waking up at 4:00 am, or staying up very late to take pictures it’s proving a hard test on my driving forces. I won’t lie here, when the alarm clock sets off, I do no more but wonder what’s the point of it all. There are very few things in life I enjoy more than a long night sleep. And yet, so far, in the hard battle ’sleep’ vs ’the great feeling of coming home with the photos done’, photos win.
