First you study photography, then you practice photography, then you serve photography, and finally one becomes photography.
Interpretation
The quote outlines the progression of becoming a true artist through education, practice, service, and ultimately integration with one's art.
Ralph Gibson's quote reflects on the journey of mastering photography as an art form. It emphasizes that one must first learn the technical aspects of photography, then dedicate time to practice, followed by sharing their knowledge and skill with others, before finally reaching a level where photography becomes an intrinsic part of their identity. This illustrates a deep commitment to the art and shows how personal expression can evolve from discipline to embodiment.
In practice
A photographer might use this quote to inspire students at a workshop about the stages of becoming an artist.
Even though fixed in time, a photograph evokes as much feeling as that which comes from music or dance. Whatever the mode - from the snapshot to the decisive moment to multi-media montage - the intent and purpose of photography is to render in visual terms feelings and experiences that often elude the ability of words to describe. In any case, the eyes have it, and the imagination will always soar farther than was expected.
The truest writers are those who see language not as a linguistic process but as a living element.
Elemental Music is never just music. It's bound up with movement, dance and speech, and so it is a form of music in which one must participate, in which one is involved not as a listener bust as a co-performer.
In music, you ain't really got to be able to sing. In comedy, you may be cute, you may be able to add a little extra to your routine, but if you're not funny, no one's really rocking with you - and if you're a black woman, you better be hilarious. As usual, we always have to do the most.
It's an honor putting art above politics. Politics can be seductive in terms of things reductive to the soul.
Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand - a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods - or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values.
For two extraordinary years I have been working on it - learning to write - but mostly learning how to tell the truth. At first it is quite impossible. You make yourself better than anybody, then worse than anybody, and when you finally come to see you are "like" everybody - that is the bitterest blow of all to the ego. But in the end it is only the truth, no matter how ugly or shameful, that is right, that fits together, that makes real people, and strangely enough - beauty.
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