There's an idea that it's hard to be a woman artist. People assume that women have fewer opportunities, less power. But it's not any harder to be a woman artist than to be a male artist. We all take what we are given and use the parts of ourselves that feed the work. We make our way. Photographers, men and women, are particularly lucky. Photography lets you find yourself. It is a passport to people and places and to possibilities.
Interpretation
The struggles of being a woman artist are often overstated; all artists face similar challenges, and photography empowers self-discovery.
Annie Leibovitz emphasizes that the notion of being a woman artist as more difficult than being a male artist is a misconception. She suggests that all artists face their unique challenges, but the medium of photography offers a profound opportunity for individuals of any gender to explore themselves, connect with others, and uncover a world of possibilities.
In practice
In a speech at an art gallery, I might quote this to discuss the importance of gender inclusivity in the arts.
Those who want to be serious photographers, you're really going to have to edit your work. You're going to have to understand what you're doing. You're going to have to not just shoot, shoot, shoot. To stop and look at your work is the most important thing you can do.
I was scared to do anything in the studio because it felt so claustrophobic. I wanted to be somewhere where things could happen and the subject wasn't just looking back at you.
I personally made a decision many years ago that I wanted to crawl into portraiture because it had a lot of latitude.
In a portrait, you have room to have a point of view. The image may not be literally what's going on, but it's representative.
The first thing I did with my very first camera was climb Mt. Fuji. Climbing Mt. Fuji is a lesson in determination and moderation. It would be fair to ask if I took the moderation part to heart. But it certainly was a lesson in respecting your camera. If I was going to live with this thing, I was going to have to think about what that meant. There were not going to be any pictures without it.
A lot can be told from what happens in between the main moments.
We have fallen in the dreams the ever-living Breathe on the tarnished mirror of the world, And then smooth out with ivory hands and sigh.
The art of creation lies in the gift of perceiving the particular and generalizing it, thus creating the particular again. It is therefore a powerful transforming force and a generator of creative solutions in relation to a given problem.
Writers write these male stereotypes, and it makes it ten times more interesting if a woman says the lines.
It is a skill we learn early, the art of inventing stories to explain away the fearful scared strangeness of the world. Storytelling and make-believe, like war and agriculture, are among the arts of self-defense, and all of them are ways of enclosing otherness and claiming ownership.
A minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.
The sunflower is mine, in a way.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.