Act Natural

In a recent "what your daughter should do with her life" conversation with my dad (his choice of topic, not mine), he mentioned that he thinks some of my digital photos are better than the ones he's seen in museums. "You need to put them in a book," he suggested. "I'd buy it."

Yes, but you're my dad, I responded. That's his job. I really think my parents would buy my junk mail if I stuck it in a frame and signed my name. (Sidenote: one UH studio art masters candidate recently exhibited a few junk-mail themed sculptures. One friend thought they were a little too "pollution is bad" preachy. I thought they were pretty. There's no pleasing everyone.)

Which is not to say that I'm not proud of some of the pictures I've taken. Digital photography makes it easy for someone with minimal training to take good photos. Andrew Brown of the Guardian Unlimited agrees (via Mom.)

I started taking pictures after I graduated college, when I realized that entire years had passed and I had no proof of their existence. The pictures, like these blog entries, follow no clear narrative or artistic vision. Last night in an exercise of poetic futility ("I'll never be as good as her; why try?") I read Louise Gluck's Ararat--a series of poems dealing with the death of her father. What struck me was how well her collections work as books: looping around and inside each other, each poem adding something new.

I have to assume that sort of clarity and focus comes with age and experience. Most twenty-somethings I know are trying in vain to find that one perfect career, failing, and then winding up frustrated and unhappy. Andrea, who is wise beyond her years, put it this way: Out of so many possibilities, you just have to pick one and say to yourself, "I'm going to TRY this for now."

Or, as we say in the teaching biz, fake it 'til you make it.