ISSP 2019 Publication - Photography and the World

their own story when it’s viewed. They
will relate to what they see within
the personal works. As storytellers,
it is important to know that once we
produce work and once we are ready
to let go of it and show it to the world,
it’s not ours anymore. It belongs to
the world. We don’t own it. And once
a picture is out there, it's open for
interpretation and our words, our captions,
our letters can only say so much.
This is a blessing and a curse for an
artist because maybe some people say
that the work is selfish but, for other
people, the work can offer hope. It can
be a way of telling a story for someone
who didn’t know how.
I feel like guilt is the hardest part of our personal
work but it is also important because it forces us
to have a message. It doesn’t need to be a grand
message; a form of activism could be as small as
selecting a certain type of font. But if we share it we
can reach and help more people.
But let’s flip the coin: Why do we
always feel we need to have a message?
033
Why should I care about your
instagram account?
Why are we putting such responsibility
onto us when the work is ours and why
does it have to relate to other people?
It is the time that we are in: the world is on fire and
we have limited time to make a difference. It’s so
much responsibility and we as artists are very sensitive
to the pain of the world. I can’t move big things
and it makes me feel stuck and paralyzed, and then
I can’t see that even with a small individual personal
work I can have an impact. Maybe that impact
doesn’t stop the construction of an airport but it
could help someone who has never talked about his
trauma to be able to now find the words for it. This
is a big impact but I don’t count it as a big impact
because the world is on fire and it just makes my
work so irrelevant and introspective.
Just because we do personal
work doesn’t mean we have to
do something for the world, like
about plastic or taking care of an
old person. As an artist, you are
even more sensitive about what
is going on in the world because
you are interested and you are
making an individual contribu-
034 Have you seen my instagram?