The why and so-what

A picture from Danya sent in the mail. I've been buying a lot of photographs from a small overpriced and bright yellow store off of Valencia at 18th called The Apartment. I like the owners, two older gay guys, but the fact that they try to charge a buck a pop for photos has been causing me to reevaluate my relationship with my photo collection-- when I was getting them for free in Portland, it was so much easier! On this particular day, I only had 10 bucks, and it took me an hour to figure out which ones I wanted. Fortunately, Danya was amused by the whole process... and the funny-looking baby pictures. This morning I met with an advisor and talked about how I wanted to work the photos into my artist practice. And what he said is true, photographs are problematic to work with because they're already so loaded and the idea has already been so worked over. For awhile I was collecting photographs where the photographers shadow was cast into the frame-- only to find out that a book had been published a few years prior featuring photographs of the exact same theme. Of course, this is the paranoia of all artists, especially art students-- that everything has potentially been done before. I think that this is a good awareness to have, but that I shouldn't get too derailed and should continue to try to articulate the why and so-what of what I'm doing.