Pouring all of my being into my photography

From memory, it was my first autumn as a photographer when I started to question myself. Photography was too new for me to have developed my own thinking, nevertheless, the lack of a personal vision was making me feel incomplete. This void led me to a long introspective journey to uncover my true artistic desires.

Pouring all of my being into my photography

I believe that in the world of Arts, a purpose does not need to be material; it can be an immaterial destination that while maybe staying forever elusive can guide our hearts and our hands consistently toward itself. 

A personal vision is, to me, none other than a guiding light preventing me from losing myself in the sterile darkness of impersonality where my photographs will be just the by-product of a camera, a tool, or a process.

Pouring all of my being into my photography is my romantic aspiration to guide me to a photography that would be an expression of all my being: my personality, my feelings, my mental states, my subjective reality, and everything else that is a part of me.

The principles I follow to create my photographs

A Photography Liberated From Human Thought

It is strange but I am unable to create photographs in my normal state. I need to first free myself from the prison of my thoughts—these are doubts, chaos, and anxiety, in other words: noises—by reaching the non-thinking mental state. It is only within the peace of the non-thinking state that I can embrace my creativity and I believe, my true self. 

Creating Only In The Moment

I tend to say to myself that photography is a breath. The photography I am in love with is the one I live in the moment. When I am creating my photographs, it is like a dream: I do not think, I do, I am in the zone. I feel like I am someone else. 

Digital photography with artistic integrity 

Truth is the foundation and reason of perfection and beauty; a thing, of whatever nature it may be, cannot be beautiful and perfect, unless it is truly all that it ought to be, and has all that it ought to have.

— From Reflections or Sentences and Moral Maxims, 1665 by François de La Rochefoucauld

I am not judging those who are doing it but I refuse to digitally alter my photographs to artificially improve them after the fact. I want my photography to be truthful to my being resonating with the place and the atmosphere, in the moment. All my photographs are straight out of my camera created and finalized in the moment when my being—material and immaterial—is immersed in the atmosphere of the place and in the ephemeral infinity of the moment.

Personal Expression Over Rules

Photographic rules are important but should any external laws be absolute when it comes to artistic expression? To make my photography an emanation of myself, I have decided to put my personal expression over rules. I reject any aesthetic and ideological constraints that are not born out of my own desires.

Focusing On Forms First, Not On Functions

I noticed once during a walk in Paris, that I had a form of detachment from the world. It took me some time to realize that this detachment came from the way I look at the world: often focusing solely on its essence (forms) rather than on its appearances (functions).