reinvention
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~Mary Oliver
So who’s more than a little tired of seeing the toddler in a diaper upon visiting this site? Surprising to me that anyone returns, and had I planned on exiting the way I did I would certainly have put more thoughtfulness into choosing my final image. But I suppose most of us never really know when the image we see in front of us is the last.
I quit photography. Not with a dramatic announcement or proclamation of intent (I’m not one to do anything in grand fashion), but little by little I wasn’t accepting appointments until it became clear to most everyone but me that I had in fact checked out. This strange turn of events had nothing to do with losing my deep love of photography, I simply no longer trusted my vision. And since a photographer isn’t worth much without vision I decided I was doing my clients a big favor by not scheduling appointments.
It was a crisis I guess brought on by the accumulation of events in my life over the past couple of years that left me questioning everything I thought I knew. It was as if I woke up one morning and everything around me had turned to obnoxiously colored cheap plastic. Plastic people living in a plastic movie-set world that I could observe from a distance but not participate in, or certainly belong to. It’s fair to say that it’s as separate and alone as I’ve ever felt in my life. And it was all my doing. I was asking questions that no one could answer to my satisfaction and this left me utterly lost.
The upside of breaking apart is eventually you can’t stand yourself any longer and are forced to come face to face with the inner demons which have been so carefully avoided for a lifetime. I thought I’d been able to look at myself in a fairly honest way prior, but this place most deeply in shadows had been off limits. I finally understood that every bit of the self-persona I’ve created…..the games I’ve played and the ways I‘ve tried to control how others view me, have all been to avoid going to this very place. But looking at and accepting the most unlovable parts of oneself births a new level of compassion. Learning to have compassion for the whole of me, not just the nice parts, is the thing I’ve never been able to completely embrace before. This is what I’m working on currently–forgiving myself my humanness.
The above quote has been in my collection forever, on page four of a massive conglomeration I’ve accumulated over a whole lot of years, so it goes way back. It hasn’t been one that particularly resonated with me before now, but since I like Mary Oliver‘s poetry I‘ve held on to it. One day recently the quote came to my mind and I wondered: what if Mary is right…..what if there is only one question: How to love this world? Well. Then it’s easy, and of course the answer can only come from inside me. Perhaps in my desperate seeking I haven’t been asking the right questions at all.
I’ve now returned to photography, and to life. From the first frame I shot once I picked up my camera again after the long absence, I was aware without a doubt that for me the art and craft of photography is one of the most liberating and precious ways that I can love this world. In the instant of beginning again, all that had appeared plastic melted away and there she was, this child before me an angel leading me home. I was so glad to be with camera again, loving her and the world in this way that gives such meaning to my existence. I am so grateful to be here now.
So begins the rather ominous task of rebuilding my credibility and my business in an economy that’s not exactly flourishing. But I’m up for the challenge and have decided to take this opportunity to sort of reinvent myself. I’m going to try to approach my photography work just a little bit more as a business and slightly less as a spiritual journey, as I‘ve done in the past. We’ll see how that goes. Who knows, maybe I’ll even begin marketing photo purses and jewelry and offering workshops on how to be just like me. Ü Then again, maybe not. I’m open to anything new and fresh at this point though, and towards that end I’ve made some immediate changes. I’m opening a new studio, and have a new, long overdue website. The website is in the early stages and will be completed and refined over the coming weeks, but it’s a start. It’s nice to know that we can begin again at any point we choose to do so, isn’t it?
Please visit when you have a chance (working on being okay with self-promotion in this reinvention):
~Cynthia
