Photo-Talk does more than entertain its audience with awesome images, it introduces the photographic community, offers insights into who they are and tells the back stories to their creative successes. Watching interviews of legendary artists allows the audience to see real people on the road to success. All have different personalities and each with a different path. As in nature, millions seek the light and life for their art. Those presented here have survived the test of acceptance over a period of time, but each has found success in a different way. Hopefully, the series creates a desire among its audience to be part of this community.
As a series of interviews, Photo-Talk allows us to see for ourselves that there is no single path to success and each of us follows an individual journey to achieve our goals… a lesson applicable to life in general. Photography as a whole is a sum of its participants. It’s dependent upon the community and all the individual efforts for it’s direction and success… much like our nation has. The variety within and strength of character is what makes it what it is. There are great visual creators that speak with their work and dedicate their life to doing so because that’s the way they can express themselves. Others have a different talent of writing or talking about the art and can even be as influential as the actual visual artists.
Many segments of the community interplay in directing its path. Teachers mentor and mold as they pass along the various needed skills to new blood entering the realm. Curators and publishers influence the trends. Retailers and marketers offer rewards for commercial endeavors. Engineers and enterprise steer through providing technological innovations. Most importantly, leaders in arts organizations do what needs to be done to further the medium. All work in unison to form cogs in the wheel. As a whole, its members have brought photography a long way.
As technology simplified and automated the photographic process, millions of nu-bees are now taking billions of pictures with a passion. Photographic participation and awareness has been phenomenal but without a learning structure to acquire fundamentals, history or an aesthetic base from which to interpret an artistic relevance, the growth may be lateral in nature rather than evolutionary. Unlike the previous century, there needs to be a larger community effort utilizing social media to lead photography into the Twenty-first Century.
As with any society as a whole, we benefit from the collective effort. Whether submitting an article, evaluating a workshop or uploading a link, it’s the sum of all the little contributions that makes the difference as a whole. Upload papers, rate articles, participate in poles or join the boards for a discussion… be a part of the community.
