Photography & Emerson’s Self-Reliance

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To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost..

— Ralph Waldo Emerson; excerpt from his essay Self-Reliance

When I read this essay back in high school, it really reverberated with me. I was raised to be independent–both in thought and action–and this essay supported that upbringing.

When Emerson wrote this essay, it captured the hearts & souls of a people (Americans) who had established a new nation and were moving West setting up new homesteads out on the prairie.

What has self-reliance got to do with photography?

There’s a modern infrastructure of sorts beckoning photographers with the message that they need editors/experts/contests/portfolio reviews/feedback to determine the worth of their work and the direction they should take with it. Instead of learning from trial-and-error and trusting their own opinion of what worked and didn’t (and then incorporating judged outcomes into future work), photographers are wholeheartedly encouraged to seek outside direction at nearly every juncture; and this outside direction usually comes with a price tag (fees payable to contests, editors, reviewers, etc).

You–the photographer–can’t possibly judge your own work. The worth of your work must be judged by others. ‘Worth’ is a social construction.

Something like the preceding quote seems to be at the basis of this need for external affirmation when it comes to judgements of value or worth. I get the impression that many people pursuing photography end up quitting when external affirmation stops or even subsides a little.

In short, there are photographers pursuing photography in order to get praise from others. And when it comes to selecting their best work (for an exhibition, book, contest, etc.) they absolutely need feedback from others to make their choices–even tabulating social media “likes” to make their final determinations.

Producing an artistic work with any sort of internal integrity or purity of vision cannot be done by committee or the crowd-sourcing of feedback. It requires the utmost focus and alignment of values, beliefs, and experiences within the mind of a determined individual.

This is not to say multiple individuals cannot produce a work of art. The vision and direction, however, must come from and/or go through one person in charge of the ultimate outcome or be at high risk of losing artistic integrity.

In practice, I have gotten feedback from others and used it to make decisions in some of my photo series (though only occasionally). However, I have found it almost “suicidal” to simply accept feedback without questioning it. Instead, I view it as “advice”–as another source of “data” really–and incorporate it into my decision process, wherein the final decisions must still be my own.

Relying on yourself to evaluate your artistic work is not easy, and lots of photographers have a hard time editing their own work, both in terms of lacking confidence in their own artistic judgements and just finding it difficult and unpleasant to do!

What do you get from self-reliance in photography anyway? Here’s what you get: