Reflections on a Photographic Life and Practice

On the Photowalk Podcast, listeners regularly comment that they have lost their inspiration, no longer want to make photographs, or feel that they have somehow fallen out of love with the experience of pressing the shutter. In response, I wrote to Neale James, who hosts the podcast, to suggest that it can be helpful to think more broadly about what constitutes a photographic life. Making photographs is obviously part of that life, but it is not necessarily the whole of it. A broader conception makes room for the many other activities through which we engage with, think about, and participate in photography. Part of that message was read on the Photowalk’s episode 546. I’ve reproduced it, below, with light amendments to fit it into this blog post. In my previous day job, I was a writer. These days, I am more often a director of writers. Something that has stayed with me since doing my doctorate is the realization that physically sitting at a keyboard, or putting pen to paper, or…