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Dec. 12, 2024
How Photography Has Betrayed Me
Photography has betrayed me.
It’s given me an out under the facade of going in.
It’s become an emotional to do list too long to ever conquer.
Just as I brain dump my ideas and to do tasks onto a paper in an effort for relief and fake accountability, I take pictures when I’m seeing something that feels too much, thinking- I’ll feel this later.
My friend asked me the other day in response to my photographic frustration- “can’t that moment be enough? The thisness of that moment and why you photographed it?”- can’t it be whole on it’s own without feeling like there’s a further emotional processing that needs to happen?
It was such a wonderful question that felt like buoyant possibility.
And I immediately felt the answer I didn't want...nope.
Today I ask you one of the most important questions anyone can be asked in life- the same question that revealed my sophisticated subconscious self sabotage that made me consider putting the camera down for a while.
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Transcript
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I have felt like photography has betrayed me.
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it Has given me an out under the facade of going in.
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It's become this huge, overflowing, emotional to do list that's too long for me to ever quite conquer.
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These pictures that I take are like folding the page of a book.
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Okay, yes, this.
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I will revisit this.
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Yes.
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I must revisit this.
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This is so important.
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With this knowing that I must revisit for processing later.
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It's the moments that feel complicated and heavy those are the ones that I feel like I, I can't right now.
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Later.
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Later.
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Later.
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I'll come back later.
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I'll sit with this photograph, this feeling, later.
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Repeat that about a bajillion times and now we got a bit of a fucking problem, okay? Like, I'm backlogged.
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I'm backlogged.
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I'm backlogged.
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But of course, this is not photography's fault.
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It is my own emotional acrobatics.
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Help Me See is a podcast dedicated to the art of seeing.
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It's a space for the restless visionary with an insatiable desire to create the life and work you're meant for.
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My name is Bianca Lea Mora, and I'm a photographic artist, a mother, and a coach who's transformed my fear of loss into power, art, and philosophy.
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One of the scariest quotes I never want to say is, I wish I knew at the time, but I truly believe that we have the innate ability to bring our wise 2020 hindsight to our now.
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You can deeply experience your nostalgia now, while it's actually happening, with no regrets.
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All you have to do is see.
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In this show, we laugh, we cry, we get inspired, we overshare, we have life changing conversations around making meaning, self discovery, and shedding all the BS layers in order to reconnect to our own sacred vision.
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Seeing yourself is an essential key to living powerfully.
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You are the vessel, the lens that filters absolutely everything in your life.
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What are you filtering for? Whether it be conversations with fellow artists and visionaries, or my solo audio journal style introspective ramblings, each episode is meant to feel like an exhale, an unraveling of truth, a moment for you to be able to put your finger on something that you haven't been able to for far too long.
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Come exactly as you are.
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It's perfect.
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Honor your instincts.
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Let's uncover some of the most important things in our lives which all too often can slip out from our view.
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Let's commit to seeing and consciously creating what only you can in your one and only life.
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Let's dive in.
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Hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Help Me See.
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Today I'm coming to you from my kitchen where I am making smashed potatoes for the first time.
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So you will hear the fixings of dinner in the background.
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the thing I want to talk about today, I had actually wrote about.
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I took a few days and I was writing.
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And then I decided, oh, maybe I'll just read the writing, maybe that will be my podcast episode.
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I'll just read my writing.
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And then I tried that, and then I felt like a robot.
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So, I will redundantly speak what I've already written to you.
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And if you're interested in reading, The original form of this head to the sub stack, which would be great too, because there's also the picture element the pictures that I chose to pair with this piece of writing are pictures that I took of my kids and partner playing in the snow with the flash that drives me crazy.
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I love the use of flash and also it drives me nuts as I'm using it at the same time.
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But it was perfect for what this conversation is about.
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And this conversation is about the fact that I have felt like photography has betrayed me.
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Yes.
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Yes, I do feel like photography has betrayed me.
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And I feel like that because it has kept me outside under the facade of going inside in my life and in my emotional processing.
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Of my life, and I knew better.
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Let me just say, I know better than that, like a year, maybe two years ago, I wrote a post about the dangers of a photograph and how it creates an illusion that you're inside of your life instead of The reality oftentimes of just witnessing it outside and while that's not exactly what has been going on here it's definitely a similar conversation.
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So photography has given me an out under the facade of going in.
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It's become like this huge, overflowing, emotional to do list that's too long for me to ever quite conquer.
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I don't know about you, but I am a list maker.
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I make a ton of lists, to do, want to do, all types of lists.
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Grocery lists, um, items for the house, things I want to accomplish, things I'd like to get done today, things that I want to get done in my lifetime, project ideas, everything, just the relief I want to get it out of my head, onto the page.
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Gives me this false sense of security, this fake accountability, that's so fake, because 99 percent of the time, I just go ahead and lose the list itself.
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And these pictures that I take are like folding the page of a book.
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It's like, okay, yes, this.
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I will revisit this.
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Yes.
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I must revisit this.
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This is so important.
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I must revisit this.
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Uh, with this knowing that I must revisit for processing later.
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I must.
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And, um, I was talking to a friend, uh, and in response to this conundrum, me, oh my gosh, manically trying to describe this phenomenon, she said, well, can't that moment just be enough? Like the this, the thisness of this moment and why you photographed it, can't it be whole on its own without feeling like there is a further emotional processing that needed to happen? And in that moment, it felt like.
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Like a breath of fresh air.
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It felt like this, this vibrant possibility of like, maybe it can, maybe I'm just overlooking them And then I had this just very matter of fact visceral, like, no, it ain't it.
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It ain't it.
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The fact is, yes, the stupid annoying fact is, yes, that it can be so.
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And it is so, oftentimes, for me, when I'm, you know, in a moment of joy or something that's like very pure and clear and kind of singular in, in the feeling capacity in my emotional landscape.
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But it's the moments that feel complicated and Different and, um, a little heavy and mixed and those are the ones that I feel like I, I can't right now.
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Later.
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Later.
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Later.
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I'll come back later.
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I'll sit with this photograph, this feeling, later.
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Repeat that about a bajillion times and now we got a bit of a fucking problem, okay? Like, I'm backlogged.
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I'm backlogged.
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I'm backlogged.
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But of course, this is not photography's fault.
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It is my own emotional acrobatics.
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It's very easy to go through the motions.
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It's very easy to resist and avoid in the mask of productivity, and even deep creativity.
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And it takes a radical honesty to acknowledge that this is happening.
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Because you have the photographs.
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It's like, but look! Photographs! Proof! Look, I'm here! I'm this is This is I'm I'm feeling.
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No.
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I actually reject the notion that photographs are inherently proof of presence.
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Because, especially in 2024, the photographs themselves, I mean, even even the most unintentional, misaligned, whatever, careless, whatever, are incredible mirrors for us.
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For our subconscious, they show us ourselves, and if we look long enough, they speak to us and tell us truths that our ego eventually cannot deny.
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But the photograph itself isn't proof of an emotional state.
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It's not proof of how deeply we were in a moment.
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That's an internal range.
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That's a personal experience.
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That is a responsibility unique to every moment and unique to every person.
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And unique to the situation.
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And the time of day in life of, of everything.
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No, I, my first ever course that I made manifest your memories, like is all, it's like the foundation of my heart.
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That course, the very first thing I ever did.
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And I'm actually right now in the process of updating it and converting it over to Substack instead of on a separate platform.
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Um, so more to come on that soon, but that course is.
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Deeply and passionately for the everyday person to be able to live into their lives more through the act of photo taking.
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It's emotional excavation.
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It's deep seeing and harnessing that vision for living life now.
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That's the core of the work.
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Now.
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Now, now.
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Manifest your memories.
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Like, that active, uh, not passive, that active, manifest, manifest.
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A memory that we're typically used to thinking of something that happened far, you know, long ago, like, it's the thing that's happening now.
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And lately, it just feels like I've vacated the premises.
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Like, a purposeful choosing of not entering a moment while I'm photographing it.
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An actual desire to stay on the surface because I do not have the energy to go below.
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And I've gotten pretty good at this, but there's only so long we can avoid ourselves.
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The photographic act is swarming with overwhelming magnitude, utility, and all your personal shit.
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My newfound mastery of staying in this practice whilst avoiding myself has made me want to switch mediums.
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I've just become disenchanted for XYZ reasons.
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I have felt lately so friggin tired and, you know, I'm kinda not someone that is able to roll with the season in that way.
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I'm someone that has to create this grand narrative around it because it makes me uncomfortable to lose any ounce of my life.
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Passion or inspiration or creative energy in an area.
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I either put nowhere near enough olive oil or way too much.
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There's no in between.
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I don't know.
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Isn't that exactly what I'm talking about what I do in life anyway? Um, oh.
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Parsley just completely dumped all over these potatoes.
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Okay.
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So, I know better.
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I know the photograph, I know the medium, the photography has not betrayed me.
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It's me.
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I know it's me.
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Just like it's not about these beautiful pitbulls.
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It's about the owners.
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I have a pitbull boxer.
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I just need a backtrack for a 2nd.
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Back to seasonality, though, of course, the standard mix of life, and especially being a mom, raising 2 little boys.
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Can play a serious role in, in the conversation we're having, but underneath the low hanging fruit of excuses like that, those of which magically disappear whenever I really want them to, hint, hint, right? It's like feeling like you have to juggle a katrillion things, but all of a sudden, if you're actually sick, everything gets wiped off the schedule.
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It's weird, right? Like all of a sudden, all of those commitments get to go away.
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Okay.
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Because you don't want to get someone else sick or you literally physically cannot.
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We always, always, always make time for what we actually really, really want to do.
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And I think that's hard to hear and that's hard to face and that's hard to look in the eye.
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So with that knowing, I'm left with something I always knew.
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shocker.
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Sit with one foot Photograph one, it barely even matters which one and it will tell you everything you need to know.
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So I did a workshop with Alec Soth earlier in the year and it still feels completely unreal for me to say that.
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And during that workshop, we were fortunate enough to have some One on one critique time with some visiting guests and one of which is a gentleman named Vince Leo.
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And he was absolutely a gem of a human being.
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You know, I typically do not seek out or want in any capacity.
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Um, a critique, and it's not just because I'm scared of them, although, yes, I am very tender and, um, would not go unfazed by a situation like that, but more so because I just have a, a general suspicion for them, because it, I've heard so many stories about how it's either trivial and, you know, Irrelevant or leans over to deeply and painfully damaging to a person.
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And, um, you know, I've, I've heard stories that will smolder rage in me until I die.
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For people that I'm not even close with, just like these horror stories from critiques.
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And anyway, that's a whole nother soapbox and can of worms that I don't want to go into right now.
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But.
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This was not that, this was not that experience.
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Uh, I show up to this critique with a shit ton of photographs of my family projects.
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I don't even know what I want out of this critique.
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I don't even know what question I have.
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I don't, I just am there.
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This is just like a benefits of going to this workshop and okay, so I'm there.
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And he's quietly sitting there looking at all the pictures.
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I mean, I had a goal to narrow them down, and I actually even added more.
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I am like a maximalist when it comes to pictures.
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Uh, just this firehose feeling of more, more, more.
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Even though I know less is more, but I just can't help myself, and I won't help myself with that.
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I don't know.
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Just give me all the Jim Goldberg collages of a million different photographs and let me drink it in and register it as its own thing.
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I don't know.
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That's where I'm at with that.
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But he's sitting there, um, quiet and curious and warm.
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And he told me to sit with one, sit with one image.
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And I burst out crying.
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Like I, I mean like crying, like I need a tissue crying.
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And it came out like I, like it was just hanging right beneath the surface the whole time, ready to spew.
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I had no, I like choked it out of me.
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I had no reason to believe I was about to cry.
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And it was immediate.
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Tears are truth.
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Tears are truth.
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He was right.
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He was so right.
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When do I feel clarity? My monthly Nostalgia Now templates, the photographic journaling that I do every month, where I look at a shit ton of photographs from my month, and I only pick three to five.
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Then I burrow into those via the prompts and journaling, and that's when the dots are connected.
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That's when the connections feel integrated instead of purely subconscious or briefly seen.
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Briefly, like the amount of time a shutter takes to open and close.
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But I only do that ritual once a month.
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And it's mostly with the more casual cell phone photos of my life.
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Vince's wise words are still with me, and I have, for the most part, avoided them.
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Probably because the few times I did it and I sat with a picture for a long time, I cried and felt too overwhelmed.
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What is on the other side of sitting with a picture? I made for 10 fucking minutes.
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Wow, isn't it so interesting? What will I do? Instead of just doing that.
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How long has it been? It's been months.
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Why do I act like I don't have the time? Why must I look away? Probably the same reason that I have this resistance to morning pages journaling.
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It's like, uh, what is this for me? I just want to get to writing what I want to write about instead of just my stream of consciousness.
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It's like, was there anything more important than clearing that stream of consciousness? That is what I'm doing with the photographs.
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Oh my God, it's so hypocritical.
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Oh my gosh.
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So yesterday, yesterday, I started a new ritual for exactly this and I call it One Picture and it is now going to be its own section in my substack.
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One Picture.
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With this I choose one of my photographs and I sit with it for an uncomfortable amount of time and then let myself write whatever curls out of me.
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Prose, poetry, free writing, nonsensical, redundant, whatever, I don't give a fuck, I just let it come out.
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And when I did this, it felt like exhaling a breath I knew I was holding.
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Like, have you ever played that game in the car where you hold your breath until you pass the cemetery? It's like that.
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Here comes the cemetery.
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Here comes the picture.
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It's here.
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Okay.
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Deep inhale.
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Okay.
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It's here.
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Sit with it.
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Holding your breath until it passes, holding my feelings until I let myself see it.
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I got this.
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It's not so hard.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get the gist.
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I know why I took this.
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I see it.
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I feel it.
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Yes.
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This is getting hard.
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I need air.
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This image is starting to feel fleshy.
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I'm starting to see four million other pictures and moments of my life in this picture.
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Okay, this hurts.
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Holding this breath in for this long actually actively hurts.
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Words demand their birth in response to listening to this image.
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It's past.
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I can let this stale air out and breathe again.
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I didn't even have to hold it in in the first place.
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The feeling stops looming.
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It can rest in its felt acknowledgement.
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And avoidance only prolonged the haunting.
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I think a lot of the issue here is in the limbo, it's in the incomplete expressions, the incomplete processing, the incomplete feeling, the incomplete life, and of course there are never neat and tidy, perfect, complete endings, nothing ever really really really really really feels finished, for the most part, but we know when we feel satiated and when we do not.
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I never want to stop taking pictures, but, and.
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I don't want to be beholden to an outdated version of my own truth.
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Does putting my finger on this cure the discontent that's been eating at me? I'm not sure.
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But I am sure that my commitment keeps me curious.
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The tools are the most minor details when you have something that you must create in order to breathe.
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The pictures that are on the post for this episode are pictures I took while it was Bellowing snow.
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I was in the house.
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Ben had played the good daddy role of going outside, even though he definitely didn't want to, to make a snowman.
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And, uh, I was staying inside to make hot chocolate.
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And it was less because I was wanting to be a good mommy and more because I was like, look that I do not want to go out in the snow.
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And, um, I was inside.
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And I kept looking out there because they were being very cute and very sweet and it was already dark because it gets dark at like noon these days.
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And I couldn't look away from the scene.
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Like I was completely magnetized to it.
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Just like my overhead, um, blood lamp light.
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Barely illuminated them because they were so far back, but it made all of the snow glow bright in front of them.
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And so I had to walk really close to it to even get the chance to glimpse them.
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And for the first time in a long time, I, against my low energy meh ness, went to get my camera.
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Because I had to photograph it.
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I just had to.
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And had to, not in the sense of like, I felt obligated and I should because it's cute and what, but had to in that primal, I am being drawn in this impassioned way to be in this, with this, make something of this, a compulsion.
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And it was a pain in the ass and it was fucking cold and uncomfortable.
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And I'm pretty sure I damaged my camera because I've since done a shoot, um, a random shoot that I wasn't, that wasn't, whatever.
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It doesn't matter anyway.
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Um, and now there's something on all the images and I don't know what's wrong with whatever, anyway, the point is, Oh, it felt refreshing.
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To have that feeling again.
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It felt refreshing to be Frustrated with my camera flash that I rarely ever use Because it doesn't jive with my heavy trigger finger when it comes to It's making pictures.
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The recycle speed is just trash, but it also invites this element of like helplessness for me that I'm masochistically drawn to.
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It's like, what will it let me have? What moment will it let me have? What art will it let me make? And what will I see in that? And how is that going to be perfect? It's like freshly falling in love and then being Deeply in love and then monotonously being inside of love, the spinning out of control whirlwind, the safe, content, cozy place to land, and the profound, enduring commitment mixed with mundane ignorance of feeling like you know all there is to know.
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In my eyes, the point of this medium is to be here now.
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I am human.
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And I am tired, and I am admittedly slightly jaded and frustrated.
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Photography hasn't betrayed me.
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I betrayed myself, and I knew I was.
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And it's okay.
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We don't need to burrow into every emotional nook and Cranny of our lives.
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But we need to be tethered to ourselves, close enough to know you're home.
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When it's becoming a problem, and it was becoming a problem for me.
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No, it's never the tool.
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It's never, it's never the problem.
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It's never the thing you're looking at.
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It's the refusal to look something in the eye.
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It's in the looking away.
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It's looking everywhere but here.
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And in my case, it's looking everywhere but here for more than 1 250th of a second.
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So I ask you, I ask you with deep love and care, I desperately ask you, what are you pretending not to know? What are you pretending not to know? Every ounce of power is all inside of us and we can be tired and we can even be jaded, but when we have the energy to be radically Honest with ourselves.
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We know what we have to look in the eye.
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I love you.
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See you next week.
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This has been an Awkward Sage Production.
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,360
I have felt like photography has betrayed me.
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it Has given me an out under the facade of going in.
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It's become this huge, overflowing, emotional to do list that's too long for me to ever quite conquer.
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00:00:16,633.900226757 --> 00:00:21,253.901226757
These pictures that I take are like folding the page of a book.
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00:00:21,303.901226757 --> 00:00:22,263.901226757
Okay, yes, this.
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I will revisit this.
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Yes.
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00:00:24,503.901226757 --> 00:00:25,573.901226757
I must revisit this.
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This is so important.
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With this knowing that I must revisit for processing later.
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It's the moments that feel complicated and heavy those are the ones that I feel like I, I can't right now.
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Later.
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Later.
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Later.
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I'll come back later.
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I'll sit with this photograph, this feeling, later.
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00:00:44,293.901226757 --> 00:00:51,533.801226757
Repeat that about a bajillion times and now we got a bit of a fucking problem, okay? Like, I'm backlogged.
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00:00:51,614.001226757 --> 00:00:52,7.201226757
I'm backlogged.
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I'm backlogged.
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But of course, this is not photography's fault.
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It is my own emotional acrobatics.
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Help Me See is a podcast dedicated to the art of seeing.
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It's a space for the restless visionary with an insatiable desire to create the life and work you're meant for.
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My name is Bianca Lea Mora, and I'm a photographic artist, a mother, and a coach who's transformed my fear of loss into power, art, and philosophy.
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One of the scariest quotes I never want to say is, I wish I knew at the time, but I truly believe that we have the innate ability to bring our wise 2020 hindsight to our now.
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You can deeply experience your nostalgia now, while it's actually happening, with no regrets.
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All you have to do is see.
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In this show, we laugh, we cry, we get inspired, we overshare, we have life changing conversations around making meaning, self discovery, and shedding all the BS layers in order to reconnect to our own sacred vision.
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Seeing yourself is an essential key to living powerfully.
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You are the vessel, the lens that filters absolutely everything in your life.
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What are you filtering for? Whether it be conversations with fellow artists and visionaries, or my solo audio journal style introspective ramblings, each episode is meant to feel like an exhale, an unraveling of truth, a moment for you to be able to put your finger on something that you haven't been able to for far too long.
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Come exactly as you are.
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It's perfect.
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Honor your instincts.
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Let's uncover some of the most important things in our lives which all too often can slip out from our view.
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Let's commit to seeing and consciously creating what only you can in your one and only life.
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Let's dive in.
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Hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Help Me See.
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Today I'm coming to you from my kitchen where I am making smashed potatoes for the first time.
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So you will hear the fixings of dinner in the background.
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the thing I want to talk about today, I had actually wrote about.
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I took a few days and I was writing.
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And then I decided, oh, maybe I'll just read the writing, maybe that will be my podcast episode.
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I'll just read my writing.
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And then I tried that, and then I felt like a robot.
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So, I will redundantly speak what I've already written to you.
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And if you're interested in reading, The original form of this head to the sub stack, which would be great too, because there's also the picture element the pictures that I chose to pair with this piece of writing are pictures that I took of my kids and partner playing in the snow with the flash that drives me crazy.
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I love the use of flash and also it drives me nuts as I'm using it at the same time.
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But it was perfect for what this conversation is about.
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And this conversation is about the fact that I have felt like photography has betrayed me.
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Yes.
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Yes, I do feel like photography has betrayed me.
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And I feel like that because it has kept me outside under the facade of going inside in my life and in my emotional processing.
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Of my life, and I knew better.
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Let me just say, I know better than that, like a year, maybe two years ago, I wrote a post about the dangers of a photograph and how it creates an illusion that you're inside of your life instead of The reality oftentimes of just witnessing it outside and while that's not exactly what has been going on here it's definitely a similar conversation.
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So photography has given me an out under the facade of going in.
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It's become like this huge, overflowing, emotional to do list that's too long for me to ever quite conquer.
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I don't know about you, but I am a list maker.
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I make a ton of lists, to do, want to do, all types of lists.
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Grocery lists, um, items for the house, things I want to accomplish, things I'd like to get done today, things that I want to get done in my lifetime, project ideas, everything, just the relief I want to get it out of my head, onto the page.
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Gives me this false sense of security, this fake accountability, that's so fake, because 99 percent of the time, I just go ahead and lose the list itself.
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And these pictures that I take are like folding the page of a book.
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It's like, okay, yes, this.
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I will revisit this.
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Yes.
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I must revisit this.
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This is so important.
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I must revisit this.
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Uh, with this knowing that I must revisit for processing later.
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I must.
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And, um, I was talking to a friend, uh, and in response to this conundrum, me, oh my gosh, manically trying to describe this phenomenon, she said, well, can't that moment just be enough? Like the this, the thisness of this moment and why you photographed it, can't it be whole on its own without feeling like there is a further emotional processing that needed to happen? And in that moment, it felt like.
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Like a breath of fresh air.
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It felt like this, this vibrant possibility of like, maybe it can, maybe I'm just overlooking them And then I had this just very matter of fact visceral, like, no, it ain't it.
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It ain't it.
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The fact is, yes, the stupid annoying fact is, yes, that it can be so.
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And it is so, oftentimes, for me, when I'm, you know, in a moment of joy or something that's like very pure and clear and kind of singular in, in the feeling capacity in my emotional landscape.
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But it's the moments that feel complicated and Different and, um, a little heavy and mixed and those are the ones that I feel like I, I can't right now.
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Later.
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Later.
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Later.
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I'll come back later.
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I'll sit with this photograph, this feeling, later.
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00:08:38,372.72476045 --> 00:08:45,612.62476045
Repeat that about a bajillion times and now we got a bit of a fucking problem, okay? Like, I'm backlogged.
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I'm backlogged.
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00:08:46,86.02476045 --> 00:08:48,82.72476045
I'm backlogged.
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But of course, this is not photography's fault.
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It is my own emotional acrobatics.
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It's very easy to go through the motions.
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It's very easy to resist and avoid in the mask of productivity, and even deep creativity.
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And it takes a radical honesty to acknowledge that this is happening.
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Because you have the photographs.
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It's like, but look! Photographs! Proof! Look, I'm here! I'm this is This is I'm I'm feeling.
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No.
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I actually reject the notion that photographs are inherently proof of presence.
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Because, especially in 2024, the photographs themselves, I mean, even even the most unintentional, misaligned, whatever, careless, whatever, are incredible mirrors for us.
96
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For our subconscious, they show us ourselves, and if we look long enough, they speak to us and tell us truths that our ego eventually cannot deny.
97
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But the photograph itself isn't proof of an emotional state.
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It's not proof of how deeply we were in a moment.
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That's an internal range.
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That's a personal experience.
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That is a responsibility unique to every moment and unique to every person.
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And unique to the situation.
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And the time of day in life of, of everything.
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No, I, my first ever course that I made manifest your memories, like is all, it's like the foundation of my heart.
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That course, the very first thing I ever did.
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And I'm actually right now in the process of updating it and converting it over to Substack instead of on a separate platform.
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Um, so more to come on that soon, but that course is.
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Deeply and passionately for the everyday person to be able to live into their lives more through the act of photo taking.
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It's emotional excavation.
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It's deep seeing and harnessing that vision for living life now.
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That's the core of the work.
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Now.
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Now, now.
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Manifest your memories.
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Like, that active, uh, not passive, that active, manifest, manifest.
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A memory that we're typically used to thinking of something that happened far, you know, long ago, like, it's the thing that's happening now.
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And lately, it just feels like I've vacated the premises.
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Like, a purposeful choosing of not entering a moment while I'm photographing it.
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An actual desire to stay on the surface because I do not have the energy to go below.
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And I've gotten pretty good at this, but there's only so long we can avoid ourselves.
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The photographic act is swarming with overwhelming magnitude, utility, and all your personal shit.
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My newfound mastery of staying in this practice whilst avoiding myself has made me want to switch mediums.
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I've just become disenchanted for XYZ reasons.
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I have felt lately so friggin tired and, you know, I'm kinda not someone that is able to roll with the season in that way.
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I'm someone that has to create this grand narrative around it because it makes me uncomfortable to lose any ounce of my life.
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Passion or inspiration or creative energy in an area.
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I either put nowhere near enough olive oil or way too much.
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There's no in between.
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I don't know.
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Isn't that exactly what I'm talking about what I do in life anyway? Um, oh.
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Parsley just completely dumped all over these potatoes.
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Okay.
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So, I know better.
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I know the photograph, I know the medium, the photography has not betrayed me.
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It's me.
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I know it's me.
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00:14:09,114.01627746 --> 00:14:12,246.28285116
Just like it's not about these beautiful pitbulls.
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It's about the owners.
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I have a pitbull boxer.
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I just need a backtrack for a 2nd.
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Back to seasonality, though, of course, the standard mix of life, and especially being a mom, raising 2 little boys.
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Can play a serious role in, in the conversation we're having, but underneath the low hanging fruit of excuses like that, those of which magically disappear whenever I really want them to, hint, hint, right? It's like feeling like you have to juggle a katrillion things, but all of a sudden, if you're actually sick, everything gets wiped off the schedule.
143
00:14:58,996.48185116 --> 00:15:05,26.48285116
It's weird, right? Like all of a sudden, all of those commitments get to go away.
144
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Okay.
145
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Because you don't want to get someone else sick or you literally physically cannot.
146
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We always, always, always make time for what we actually really, really want to do.
147
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And I think that's hard to hear and that's hard to face and that's hard to look in the eye.
148
00:15:25,381.48285116 --> 00:15:29,201.48185116
So with that knowing, I'm left with something I always knew.
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shocker.
150
00:15:35,401.48185116 --> 00:15:46,851.48285116
Sit with one foot Photograph one, it barely even matters which one and it will tell you everything you need to know.
151
00:15:50,781.48285116 --> 00:15:56,511.48285116
So I did a workshop with Alec Soth earlier in the year and it still feels completely unreal for me to say that.
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And during that workshop, we were fortunate enough to have some One on one critique time with some visiting guests and one of which is a gentleman named Vince Leo.
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And he was absolutely a gem of a human being.
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You know, I typically do not seek out or want in any capacity.
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00:16:24,61.01799855 --> 00:16:52,261.0189985
Um, a critique, and it's not just because I'm scared of them, although, yes, I am very tender and, um, would not go unfazed by a situation like that, but more so because I just have a, a general suspicion for them, because it, I've heard so many stories about how it's either trivial and, you know, Irrelevant or leans over to deeply and painfully damaging to a person.
156
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And, um, you know, I've, I've heard stories that will smolder rage in me until I die.
157
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For people that I'm not even close with, just like these horror stories from critiques.
158
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And anyway, that's a whole nother soapbox and can of worms that I don't want to go into right now.
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But.
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This was not that, this was not that experience.
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Uh, I show up to this critique with a shit ton of photographs of my family projects.
162
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I don't even know what I want out of this critique.
163
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I don't even know what question I have.
164
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I don't, I just am there.
165
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This is just like a benefits of going to this workshop and okay, so I'm there.
166
00:17:39,326.0189985 --> 00:17:42,956.0189985
And he's quietly sitting there looking at all the pictures.
167
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I mean, I had a goal to narrow them down, and I actually even added more.
168
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I am like a maximalist when it comes to pictures.
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Uh, just this firehose feeling of more, more, more.
170
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Even though I know less is more, but I just can't help myself, and I won't help myself with that.
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I don't know.
172
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Just give me all the Jim Goldberg collages of a million different photographs and let me drink it in and register it as its own thing.
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I don't know.
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That's where I'm at with that.
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But he's sitting there, um, quiet and curious and warm.
176
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And he told me to sit with one, sit with one image.
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And I burst out crying.
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Like I, I mean like crying, like I need a tissue crying.
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And it came out like I, like it was just hanging right beneath the surface the whole time, ready to spew.
180
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I had no, I like choked it out of me.
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I had no reason to believe I was about to cry.
182
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And it was immediate.
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Tears are truth.
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Tears are truth.
185
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He was right.
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He was so right.
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00:19:04,136.0189985 --> 00:19:23,146.0189985
When do I feel clarity? My monthly Nostalgia Now templates, the photographic journaling that I do every month, where I look at a shit ton of photographs from my month, and I only pick three to five.
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Then I burrow into those via the prompts and journaling, and that's when the dots are connected.
189
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That's when the connections feel integrated instead of purely subconscious or briefly seen.
190
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Briefly, like the amount of time a shutter takes to open and close.
191
00:19:46,416.0189985 --> 00:19:47,986.0189985
But I only do that ritual once a month.
192
00:19:48,346.0189985 --> 00:19:53,296.0189985
And it's mostly with the more casual cell phone photos of my life.
193
00:19:56,766.0189985 --> 00:20:02,36.0189985
Vince's wise words are still with me, and I have, for the most part, avoided them.
194
00:20:03,526.0189985 --> 00:20:09,346.0179985
Probably because the few times I did it and I sat with a picture for a long time, I cried and felt too overwhelmed.
195
00:20:12,546.0179985 --> 00:20:19,351.0189985
What is on the other side of sitting with a picture? I made for 10 fucking minutes.
196
00:20:20,761.0189985 --> 00:20:29,411.0189985
Wow, isn't it so interesting? What will I do? Instead of just doing that.
197
00:20:30,781.0189985 --> 00:20:33,481.0189985
How long has it been? It's been months.
198
00:20:33,961.0189985 --> 00:20:47,291.0189985
Why do I act like I don't have the time? Why must I look away? Probably the same reason that I have this resistance to morning pages journaling.
199
00:20:47,291.1189985 --> 00:20:53,611.0179985
It's like, uh, what is this for me? I just want to get to writing what I want to write about instead of just my stream of consciousness.
200
00:20:53,611.0189985 --> 00:20:59,969.963443
It's like, was there anything more important than clearing that stream of consciousness? That is what I'm doing with the photographs.
201
00:20:59,969.963443 --> 00:21:02,876.4967763
Oh my God, it's so hypocritical.
202
00:21:02,876.4967763 --> 00:21:03,901.0189985
Oh my gosh.
203
00:21:03,901.0189985 --> 00:21:12,921.0189985
So yesterday, yesterday, I started a new ritual for exactly this and I call it One Picture and it is now going to be its own section in my substack.
204
00:21:13,41.0179985 --> 00:21:13,821.0189985
One Picture.
205
00:21:16,21.0189985 --> 00:21:23,761.0179985
With this I choose one of my photographs and I sit with it for an uncomfortable amount of time and then let myself write whatever curls out of me.
206
00:21:25,111.0189985 --> 00:21:31,341.0189985
Prose, poetry, free writing, nonsensical, redundant, whatever, I don't give a fuck, I just let it come out.
207
00:21:33,306.0189985 --> 00:21:41,426.0189985
And when I did this, it felt like exhaling a breath I knew I was holding.
208
00:21:48,306.0189985 --> 00:21:56,356.0189985
Like, have you ever played that game in the car where you hold your breath until you pass the cemetery? It's like that.
209
00:22:00,16.0179985 --> 00:22:01,256.0179985
Here comes the cemetery.
210
00:22:01,366.0189985 --> 00:22:02,306.0189985
Here comes the picture.
211
00:22:04,156.0189985 --> 00:22:04,566.0179985
It's here.
212
00:22:04,566.0189985 --> 00:22:04,876.0184985
Okay.
213
00:22:04,876.0184985 --> 00:22:05,436.0189985
Deep inhale.
214
00:22:07,616.0179985 --> 00:22:07,906.0179985
Okay.
215
00:22:07,906.0189985 --> 00:22:08,236.0179985
It's here.
216
00:22:08,236.0189985 --> 00:22:09,435.9179985
Sit with it.
217
00:22:11,316.0179985 --> 00:22:18,546.0189985
Holding your breath until it passes, holding my feelings until I let myself see it.
218
00:22:20,586.0189985 --> 00:22:21,346.0179985
I got this.
219
00:22:21,606.0189985 --> 00:22:22,576.0189985
It's not so hard.
220
00:22:23,576.0189985 --> 00:22:24,946.0189985
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get the gist.
221
00:22:24,946.0189985 --> 00:22:25,886.0189985
I know why I took this.
222
00:22:25,886.0189985 --> 00:22:26,376.0189985
I see it.
223
00:22:26,376.0189985 --> 00:22:26,916.0189985
I feel it.
224
00:22:27,196.0189985 --> 00:22:27,646.0189985
Yes.
225
00:22:29,296.0189985 --> 00:22:30,806.0189985
This is getting hard.
226
00:22:31,556.0189985 --> 00:22:32,816.0189985
I need air.
227
00:22:34,356.0189985 --> 00:22:36,426.0189985
This image is starting to feel fleshy.
228
00:22:36,926.0179985 --> 00:22:43,876.0179985
I'm starting to see four million other pictures and moments of my life in this picture.
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Okay, this hurts.
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Holding this breath in for this long actually actively hurts.
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Words demand their birth in response to listening to this image.
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It's past.
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I can let this stale air out and breathe again.
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I didn't even have to hold it in in the first place.
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The feeling stops looming.
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It can rest in its felt acknowledgement.
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And avoidance only prolonged the haunting.
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I think a lot of the issue here is in the limbo, it's in the incomplete expressions, the incomplete processing, the incomplete feeling, the incomplete life, and of course there are never neat and tidy, perfect, complete endings, nothing ever really really really really really feels finished, for the most part, but we know when we feel satiated and when we do not.
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I never want to stop taking pictures, but, and.
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I don't want to be beholden to an outdated version of my own truth.
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Does putting my finger on this cure the discontent that's been eating at me? I'm not sure.
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But I am sure that my commitment keeps me curious.
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The tools are the most minor details when you have something that you must create in order to breathe.
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The pictures that are on the post for this episode are pictures I took while it was Bellowing snow.
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I was in the house.
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Ben had played the good daddy role of going outside, even though he definitely didn't want to, to make a snowman.
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And, uh, I was staying inside to make hot chocolate.
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And it was less because I was wanting to be a good mommy and more because I was like, look that I do not want to go out in the snow.
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And, um, I was inside.
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And I kept looking out there because they were being very cute and very sweet and it was already dark because it gets dark at like noon these days.
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And I couldn't look away from the scene.
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Like I was completely magnetized to it.
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Just like my overhead, um, blood lamp light.
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Barely illuminated them because they were so far back, but it made all of the snow glow bright in front of them.
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And so I had to walk really close to it to even get the chance to glimpse them.
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And for the first time in a long time, I, against my low energy meh ness, went to get my camera.
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Because I had to photograph it.
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I just had to.
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And had to, not in the sense of like, I felt obligated and I should because it's cute and what, but had to in that primal, I am being drawn in this impassioned way to be in this, with this, make something of this, a compulsion.
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And it was a pain in the ass and it was fucking cold and uncomfortable.
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And I'm pretty sure I damaged my camera because I've since done a shoot, um, a random shoot that I wasn't, that wasn't, whatever.
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It doesn't matter anyway.
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Um, and now there's something on all the images and I don't know what's wrong with whatever, anyway, the point is, Oh, it felt refreshing.
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To have that feeling again.
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It felt refreshing to be Frustrated with my camera flash that I rarely ever use Because it doesn't jive with my heavy trigger finger when it comes to It's making pictures.
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The recycle speed is just trash, but it also invites this element of like helplessness for me that I'm masochistically drawn to.
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It's like, what will it let me have? What moment will it let me have? What art will it let me make? And what will I see in that? And how is that going to be perfect? It's like freshly falling in love and then being Deeply in love and then monotonously being inside of love, the spinning out of control whirlwind, the safe, content, cozy place to land, and the profound, enduring commitment mixed with mundane ignorance of feeling like you know all there is to know.
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In my eyes, the point of this medium is to be here now.
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I am human.
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And I am tired, and I am admittedly slightly jaded and frustrated.
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Photography hasn't betrayed me.
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I betrayed myself, and I knew I was.
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And it's okay.
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We don't need to burrow into every emotional nook and Cranny of our lives.
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But we need to be tethered to ourselves, close enough to know you're home.
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When it's becoming a problem, and it was becoming a problem for me.
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No, it's never the tool.
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It's never, it's never the problem.
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It's never the thing you're looking at.
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It's the refusal to look something in the eye.
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It's in the looking away.
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It's looking everywhere but here.
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And in my case, it's looking everywhere but here for more than 1 250th of a second.
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So I ask you, I ask you with deep love and care, I desperately ask you, what are you pretending not to know? What are you pretending not to know? Every ounce of power is all inside of us and we can be tired and we can even be jaded, but when we have the energy to be radically Honest with ourselves.
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We know what we have to look in the eye.
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I love you.
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See you next week.
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This has been an Awkward Sage Production.
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