"The unconscious obsession that we photographers have is that wherever we go we want to find the theme that we carry inside ourselves.” ~ Graciela Iturbide
I’ve noticed the theme often, but almost always a considerable time after the photograph has been taken and processed. My series Below/Above/Beyond is the best example of this. The images span 12 years and 6 countries… and until a year ago I didn’t know they belonged together. And every once in a while I still discover another old photo that once seemed to be an outlier but really belongs to said series.
Writing this makes me wonder… perhaps today’s insistence on churning out a baker’s dozen of portfolios as prompt after prompt arrives by email is superfluous. Perhaps we would be better off exploring the “theme we carry inside ourselves” and all the side roads we discover on the way.
The Door on Ninth Street
One Afternoon at 3:20