Hi Godfrey,
I have seen the video and I've tried to understand it but my English level is "too basic". Sometimes he speaks too fast for me... but I think that I've understood the "principal idea".
He talks about a very interesting point: "why do you make photographs? or "why are you a photographer?"
I know why I make photographs: because it's the best way (for me) to discover what is around me and "tell" what I have inside me.
I love to take a camera with me all the time. Yes, all the time. There are days that I don't make any photograph. It doesn't matter. There are days I make a some photographs.
And yes, I like to share my photographs. And when people tell me they like them it's like a sweet hug for me. I think everybody feels something like that. We need to feel each other in this way.
Some years ago a man told me he thought my pictures were really special, that he shared some of my "Domestic Symphonies" portraits to a great Spanish photographer and that he told him I should share these portraits in a great "exhibition" and that they would help me for that.
It was a big feeling for me, but in my heart I knew it wasn't what I wanted to do in that moment.
Maybe you will ask "what was/is what I want?" OK, what I want is to capture the little things that I live in my life, things that touch my heart. Then, I hope, maybe, these pictures will touch viewer's hearts/minds. If it would be true, it would be great.
Sometimes I think I don't want to share little stories with the views... my dream is that my pictures could create some stories in the viewer's mind/heart. Then it would be like I would be a poet who wrote with light...
Yes, I dream too high. (a little smile).
After the Covid experience I'm living with from February I think a lot about this. There have been 4 months that I wasn't able to use a camera. At first I felt a real disgust when I thought of a camera. It's hard to explain it... In July, I began to make some pictures with my smartphone. My sons and daughter where so happy when they saw me making a picture... what an experience!! Some weeks later I began to make photographs with my X-T3... and yesterday was the first day I enjoyed with my heart/mind making photographs with my film cameras (OM-1n and M5).
In the last 3 weeks I have been thinking a lot about what I want to do with my photographs. And finally I've decided to share some of them "physically". I have made three little books, like "micro-books". Each micro book has 10 photographs. The series name is "Itsasertzetik" ("From the Seashore" in English). I have been choosing the photographs with my family, slowly. I think, each picture could create a little story in the viewer.
I will make a test with a friend. I will share with him one of these micro books I have made and I will see his reaction. When I showed the first book to my wife, she was looking at each photograph 20 seconds, more or less, with a little smile in her face. It was great for me. Yes, I know, she loves me a so, it makes a big difference... 🙂
I hope I haven't bored you with my words.
A little smile,
Xabier.
P.S.: I'm sorry because my low English level. It's very hard to share "deep" ideas/thoughts in English to me.
