What is ‘cultural photography’? Is it a term you have heard before or is it something new? For me, it was a combination that grew out of necessity. I’d like to share a story about the challenges of defining my photography and how it might help you talk about your own work.
If we can paint a picture for a second … Imagine you are at a cocktail party and someone asks, “So, what do you do?”
You pause and say, as I do, “I’m a photographer.”It’s an easy enough answer I suppose, but then you are hit with the follow up, “What kind of photography do you do?”
When most people ask you that question, they are not trying to incite an existential crisis; they just want to understand what your life with a camera looks like. Do you take pictures of elephants, icebergs, or weddings? For the sake of conversation, they would like to have some idea as to what you do. It is innocent enough, but it can create a bit of internal turmoil, or at least it did for me.
Who we are and what we do can feel like defining characteristics. Most of us will spend half our lives trying to define who we are and the other half trying to figure out who we are when we are not doing the thing that defines us. It is a complex human dilemma that societies have wrangled with since the dawn of time.
When someone asks us about who we consider ourselves to be, it can create a range of emotions. For me, the question pointed to a gap in my professional career. I could not exactly put my finger on what I was doing. For a few years, I used to say I did ‘documentary photography,’ but the term never sat well with me. It never seemed to get at the root of my work, nor did it shed light on my approach, which I’ve always seen as different from documentary work because it is not objective. I am personally fascinated by people’s points of view and try to express my projects from my point of view, not an objective one.
After enough introductions and stalled answers, I started to listen to my own words and what I was really describing. I’d say things like, “I specialize in photographing master craftsmen.” As a former builder, my aim was to approach the world of craft as an insider. People would nod their head and say things like, “Hmmm… That’s interesting… Do you have any pictures I can see?” This is usually a good indication that things are moving in the right direction.
Eventually I started to understand that my main interest was in culture. My interest lies in the visible and invisible forces that converge to create something we call culture, that is historically put in contrast to the thing we call nature. But was ‘cultural photography’ a real thing? As I started my research, it did not seem to exist. There were ‘culture’ categories in photo contests – for photographers who spent most of their time with tribal culture – but the genre just did not seem to be out there. Google the term and see what you find. I found that culture did not mean just remote cultures. There is plenty of culture that exists within cities and densely populated places. The sort of exoticism that dominates photography of tribal cultures does not resonate with me.
As Chief Jimmy of the Naihne tribe in Tanna once said to me, “We have traditional dress, but we don’t wear it all the time, and we’ve stopped putting it on for photographers who show up wanting to see what ‘traditional culture’ looks like. Most of the time I just wear a t-shirt and this jacket. It is more practical.”
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