Seen on the 100 Eyes blog, a post Great Advice for Photographers, written by Dawoud Bey and originally published on his own blog, What’s Going On.
It’s worth looking at and reading, even if much of it is things we already know (Bey originally posted it as ‘Advice to a Young Artist‘) and some of it at least we have already taken to heart and put into practice. I’ve also given and written similar advice myself many times over the years, but it’s still good to see it pulled together so well.
Bey’s second point is ‘Put in 10,000 hours’, which may not appeal to those hoping for instant success, but hard work is needed to develop your ideas and to keep on growing. But five years of full-time work (less if, like many artists you are a workaholic) is a good basis for success, though not of course a guarantee.
Another sentence that stood out for me in the piece was this:
Your work should be something that you would be doing regardless of whether the larger market ever responds or not. Making art has to be your own particular obsession.
But what I think comes out time and again in the piece is the importance of working in a community, and taking a part in that community, sharing your work with other people and also sharing your ideas. It’s something that applies not just to the ’emerging artists’ Bey is writing for, but also to the author himself.
When I started in photography, there was very little advice available, and most of us floundered, while a few, often through just happening to meet the right people at the right time, made great strides.
If you’ve not yet seen 100 Eyes, the ‘beta issue’ of a “new web publication aimed at bringing compelling photography to the web” founded by Andy Levin a former Contributing Photographer at Life Magazine who lives in New Orleans, do take a look. Most if not all of the work in this issue is from photographers in his area, and I particularly liked the grittily abused HP5 of Kevin Dotson, not least because the soundtrack to his slide-show is for once both appropriate to the subject matter and also one of my favourites, Petite Fleur by the incomparable soprano of the great Sidney Bechet. And I’m pleased that we get the full track, although the pictures begin a reprise before it ends.