2002 was an eventful year. i started to get successful as a photographer, and at the same time, my eight year marriage collapsed before my eyes in a flash of light. My photography was certainly to blame in some great part. i was too busy getting famous to pay as much attention at home as i otherwise would have been. Vacations merged with assignments, nights out were most often times because some band was paying me to shoot them and Linda spent a lot of time standing around at the catering table eating celery stalks, waiting. And my various projects were littering the house (usually with themselves and various psychophants) and the guest bedroom started to look like a homeless shelter for rock stars, photojournalists, and wayward girls. So after such an epiphany it's time to re-evaluate what you're doing in your life. i began with a massive purge of camera equipment and really still have to spend some time thinking why i'm doing this and what i hope to get out of it and, at the core, what is this worth to me? It's a time for peeling away layers that have been formed over the years without attention, maybe a time for giant leaps in new and different directions. One thing i find myself thinking is, "If i stop taking photos, what on Earth will i do instead?" "nothing" is not a viable option. And how does one reconcile career and home life? The obvious answer might be "with someone with similar passion about career" -- though that worked disastrously for Hemingway. (Like he should be the model upon which I gauge my life anyway.) 2002 was the time i think i took some of my best photographs, ever, the ones that started to define me as an "artist" whatever that may mean:
Though that statement should probably be true for anyone who's not stagnating. Certianly there is the occasional lucky shot which will endure for years but i hope to be able to empty my portfolio every year and replace its contents with newer, better images. 2002 was also the year that film died for me. I went all digital. The Leica's went into a closet and then joined the Great Camera Purge, the medium format stuff left, anything that didn't return instant gratification was gone. So, as the ashes and torn paper of 2002 swirl in the wind, 2003 ... anything could happen. Nobody reads this thing anyway. kyle cassidy
january 1, 2003 |
