The Status of My Artistry

And my attempt at a recap of last year

Back in November, I spent an afternoon in Winnipeg checking out local galleries downtown with my partner. And, out of sheer happenstance, most of the galleries we checked out had photographic exhibitions on. I thought about my photographic career. How I never had these sorts of exhibitions. My last showing was in late 2017. No solo shows. But, and I hope this doesn’t sound completely arrogant, I don’t think it’s for a lack of knack. I’ve been doing this in a semi-serious manner for nearly 15 years now, I kind of know what I’m doing at this point. I feel assured in the label of being a photographer. Sometimes I look at what gets exhibited, and it just reeks of privilege and the mediocrity it so often spawns. Which, maybe I shouldn’t be so critical of, as I know in many ways I’m quite privileged. But, yeah, I didn’t go to an Ivy League, I don’t get to live in expensive, trendy neighbourhoods of global cities, and I don’t have connections, like one of the artists in particular I saw exhibited. That’s mostly how things get exhibited. You do need to have some knack, but you’re nothing without connections. In art, careers, friendships, and so on.

This bothered me a lot more in the past. It still does sometimes, but I’m much more chill about my photographic career these days. Walking home from the galleries, I thought about how even if I have talent and prowess, I’m not photographing these days in terms of artist statements and projects. If anything, I’m doing the photographic equivalent of automatic painting. Albeit with more forethought than the Automatistes due to the tools being used. Photography has become an automatic appendage of my existence — I almost always have a camera on me and often look at the world like a series of potential photographs. Photography allows me to engage more deeply in my surroundings, forcing me to take notice of details and linger on them for longer than I otherwise would.

I don’t even know what to call this era of my photographic career. 2009-2011 was the early DSLR stuff, 2011-2015 was the street film era, 2015-2019 was the New Topographic faxes on Fuji, and 2019-2022 was the iPhone period. Now, I’m just shooting. What I do feels like an amalgam of everything that came before, rather than carving out something entirely new. I’m mostly just going where the wind takes me. Which, at least for now, feels right. There’s little to no pressure and I can just take the time to enjoy the photographic process after taking a break from it through the iPhone period. I appreciate how I can just make things without feeling incompetent because, again, I’ve been doing this for a while now. I’m mature in the skill of photo-making.

An acquaintance in Winnipeg suggested a little while ago that I should apply to try and be exhibited at a local photographic gallery in the spring. I’m still thinking about it because even though I don’t need it, I still think it could be nice. It’s just that I’m non-thematic beyond geographic localities these days and don’t use photography in the ways that many do. I find photography more therapeutic these days, and sometimes wonder if it’s helped me remain sane this year. But I’m not working towards a goal like many artists do. I’m just doing. Which isn’t better or worse, except for me, in this moment, where it does feel better.

It’s not like nothing is going on behind the scenes, driving my photography. The governing ideology of my photos, if there is any, is a melancholic rumination in the clash between place and memory. A futile exercise in preserving the present in a medium that cosplays as reality but is merely an abstraction of it. A fight against entropy. An attempt to understand places and the world at large. A document for the future. A reminder that I was here, and I was real, even if all that remains is flattened to 2-dimensional pixels.

I had a conversation back in September with a friend about my photo blog. She gave me a read of my photos that hit me so viscerally. It felt like the most accurate description of what I do in a way far better than I could describe on my own. In her words:

Your photos always make me feel a weird sort of way…a sad, empty kind of nostalgic. It’s completely weird, because sometimes they make me feel like it’s a place that never existed, or only exists in that photo, but also sometimes like I was literally there when you took the photo.

This gets me thinking about my nostalgia and the inherent relationship photography has with that sensation. Nostalgia is the main driver of why I photograph. I photograph to preserve an idea of someone, someplace, an elusive present reality against the existential fear that all will be forgotten. An inability to reconcile myself with mortality. The notion that I may die one day, but perhaps through these fragments of celluloid and megapixels, a small part of myself will live on. Of course, eventually, everything succumbs to entropy.

Arguably writing is an even better medium for preserving myself, which I’m slowly realizing. But I’ve used photography for so long that the process is instinctive. Plus, I’m a visual-first person. I don’t even read as much as I probably should. I like the idea of reading but the act of it takes a lot of willpower. But I’ve accepted that I’m more of a cinephile than a bookworm, so the idea of me as a writer feels extremely ironic.

Unlike photography, I still feel les incompetent as a writer. I don’t identify as a writer so easily in the way that I do as a photographer. I’m far less confident here and far less likely to talk about my writing with people because I worry that I’m terrible at this. The imposter syndrome is real and coming from within the house. I’m often embarrassed by what I write and fear I will be misunderstood and people will gather their pitchforks against me. I also find writing to be cringey.

Nevertheless, it’s very weird, but warming, to be told by either writers or people who read extensively that I might have a knack for this too. Me, with no formal training in this medium. Of course, I never had any formal training with photography, either, and now look at me — confident with nowhere to go.

As with pretty much any skill, you need to practice to gain any knack. You need to be muddied and scuffed to get to that polished state. As a friend of mine who took up painting last year said, “it sucks to know how bad you are at this and the only way through it is to continue making terrible paintings.” With regards to my writing, in case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been posting a lot more on here than usual. Gone (for now) are the days of the quarterly treatise (if you’re lucky). I’ve even managed to share essays that take less than 15 minutes to read. That’s character growth.

But, more seriously, I find that I’m finally starting to discover my voice as a writer. I feel more fluid, organic, and myself here than I ever have. I even feel less pressure to produce perfect works.¹ This all took a while to get to because I’ve been so used to academic writing for years. It was all I did for far too long. And I can see through my writing, that stilted, pretentious, neutral style slowly giving way and now it sometimes feels like all I’m writing is unabashedly me. Maybe that’s corny, but whatever. It means I find more joy in writing than I ever have which is good if you’re here because presumably you like what I’m doing here and this makes me want to do it more.

I still have dreams of maybe doing a book someday. Photo books, yes, but also texts. I’ve had ideas of doing an Edmonton equivalent to Owen Toews’ Stolen City or collabing with my Alberta history friend to highlight the leftist history of the province. I still think these are good ideas worth pursuing, but they feel more like work than the spawn of creative ecstasy. Which, like, this is all work. The photos, the essays — every creative pursuit is work. But I work best when the work feels less like work. Trite, I know. Right now my preferred idea for a book is a pithy treatise on cities, in the vein of Sontag’s On Photography. A more casual, less dense version of The Death and Life of Great American Cities for the 21st century. Urbanism’s a topic I’m passionate about and one of the few areas I have some original thoughts. The other book projects would primarily be me citing history and maybe weaving my opinion on those things here and there. But I like writing from the point of view of myself more than anything and I find it easier and more enjoyable to insert myself as much as possible into the process. The main roadblock to doing a book like that is it would require mingling with academia again. Which, like, why would I put myself through that again?

At any rate, I’m still not satiated creatively. I want more. I once thought that maybe I’d eventually branch out from photography to filmmaking, a well-worn path. In many ways, this feels more natural than writing. Like I said, I prefer movies to books. But Los Angeles would eat me alive. The lack of control, the requirement to compromise and collaborate, to produce compelling cinema, is also a huge turn off. I’m an only child and you’re expecting me to deal with set designers, producers, actors, cinematographers, foley artists, and endless others? Maybe if the drive were strong enough, but it isn’t. Not anymore. It feels a bit late, anyway.

But there are other mediums I’m interested in, too. I’ve been attracted to the potential of printmaking for close to 5 years now as a different creative avenue. Haven’t dabbled in it — except that one pop-up SNAP did at the Works in 2019. But that was barely anything. I think I’d be most interested in linos or maybe risos. Or screenprints. I’d also love to try a class that samples different kinds and I can see what sticks for me. There are certain things that I don’t feel like I am adequately able to express artistically with writing or photography. I feel like something visual, where I’m creating something from nothing. That’s where I’m drawn to exploring. I like the idea of trying something that involves working less with screens and more with my hands and love the look of various printmaking techniques. It all feels like a win-win. Just need to learn how to do it. I’m not much of one for New Year’s Resolutions, but I think a general goal for 2024 will be to finally try printmaking. It’s time.

There’s this fear of dabbling too much. Becoming a jack rather than a master. But I think this is just my brain making stuff up. Lots of artists dabble in different mediums. Usually they’re only really known for one kind of art, but that doesn’t mean they don’t dabble. And I doubt I’ll ever really be that known regardless, so who cares? As cliched as it is, we’re only here so long, so we may as well enjoy it, rather than fuss over things that don’t matter in the end.

Like writing, I still don’t feel completely comfortable with calling myself an artist. It’s not that I don’t think of myself as creative, but just that being an artist feels like something beyond the confines of photographer. Which is maybe my own internalization of how debased photography is, but also, if all I did was writing I would have the same reservations about the “artist” label. Same with if I only made linocuts. The only one that really feels synonymous with artist is painter and that’s just due to the cultural implications of that medium.

All of this is to say that I’m not totally sure where I’m going artistically but I feel like I have 3 different mediums that I feel completely different towards. Photography, the mature and well-worn path that’s fairly stable at this point. Writing, the frustrating one that I’m still in the throes of grappling while finding bursts of joy through epiphanies. Printmaking, the one I haven’t begun but has the idealism of dreams and potential to entice me. Hopefully 2024 will be a good year for creative growth.

Ok, the actual recap…

So I’ve been doing writing on Substack for almost 3 years now and I’ve never done a year recap, but I feel more connected to this and my other blog (the photography one) on this platform than in previous years. So here’s a few 2023 highlight reels that maybe you’ll find interesting.

My favourite essays I published (you know, in case you missed them)

Some of my favourite Substack blogs

Buildings I got to go inside for the first time that architecturally stunned

• International Village Mall, Vancouver

• Magrath Mansion, Edmonton

• Electric Railway Chambers Building, Winnipeg

• Bank of Hamilton Building, Winnipeg

• Guardian Building, Detroit

• Michigan Theater, Detroit

• Fisher Building, Detroit

• Cleveland Arcade, Cleveland

• Union Trust Building, Pittsburgh

• Carrie Blast Furnace, Pittsburgh

• Stadsfeestzaal, Antwerp

• Antwerpen Centraal Station, Antwerp

• Markthal, Rotterdam

• Stadhuis, Rotterdam

• Kasteel de Haar, Utrecht

• Pathe Tuschinski Theater, Amsterdam

Pathe Tuschinski, Amsterdam. Photo by author.

Films I watched for the first time that resonated with me in some way

• Sunset Boulevard (1950)

• Marnie (1964)

• Serial Mom (1994)

• The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)

• Before Sunrise (1995)

• Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

• Oldboy (2003)

• Lars and the Real Girl (2007)

• Frances Ha (2012)

• First Reformed (2017)

• Joyland (2022)

• Prey (2022)

• Past Lives (2023)

• May December (2023)

• Bottoms (2023)

• The Holdovers (2023)

• Poor Things (2023)

With all that out of the way, I hope 2024 is great for all of you! Thanks for your continued support and I look forward to seeing where I go with this silly little writing thing this year. If you feel like supporting me more directly, I do have a “paid subscriber” option which you can sign up for. All my posts are freely available at the time of publication, so if you don’t upgrade your subscription, don’t worry, but certain posts may switch to paid only over time.

1. I still have this pressure, but it’s waning.