I believe we are all different and everyone is unique yet in some ways we are all the same, constantly trying to understand the world around as well as within us better and even though we sometimes have no idea why we do something, many of us feel somewhere inside that it's the right way or thing to do. Have you ever felt that way?
Well I have. But let's be a bit more specific and talk about photography. There are times I am not absolutely sure why I am taking a certain photograph, yet I still make one because somewhere I feel and somehow believe that there is a good reason behind each and every click of my shutter button. And that's something I decided to explore throughout this past summer.
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Being a photographer I could do nothing else than to use a camera for this kind of personal journey and once again I chose my trusty medium format Holga. I picked it for its lightness, portability, capability to shoot film, its battery independence and finally for its simplicity. Simplicity? Wouldn't I rather want a camera with the most control available to mankind enabling me to create each photo exactly the way I see it?
Well, no. Even though we might think otherwise, the most complex things in life are usually not very complicated. Furthermore they are as simple as they can get. So I didn't want to spend time coming up with some intricate schemes and boggling my mind without being able to enjoy the simple first. Everyone can learn to operate a camera and once we figure the complicated is not as complicated it all somehow becomes simple again so why go the extra way around?!
This photograph is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
The wise among us say that in order to receive, we have to let go first. And for that reason a simple camera, one stock of black and white film, one focal length, ... It all seemed perfect for this kind of project. And it was.
But to be honest I didn't think about any of these choices during the summer as all of those had been made before the beginning of this photography project. Which I am glad I did because I didn't have to think about all of it and I could enjoy making photographs of whatever I felt was important to photograph. Which I believe was the most important.
This photograph is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
And after all the clicking and looking and seeing with my black plastic friend by my side I finally had all the film developed and scanned into my computer and I started to go through all the negatives in the beginning of this month. After a while of browsing through my work and seeing the photographs for the first then the second and also the third time I suddenly started to notice a common theme in the images. There were photographs of various doorways.
Doorways to Understanding.