We all have many identities.
An easy illustration is the many roles we move through in a single day: significant other, parent/caregiver, worker, bon vivant, and/or ?
Saying I'm a photographer is a statement of an identity.
When college students saw the identity of the photographer protagonist in the film Blow Up, enrollment in college photography programs increased.
The Blow-Up photographer's work is indistinguishable from his leisure; his utopian pad is at once boutique, laboratory, harem, and house beautiful.1
What's your photography identity?
The answer is in every chapter of PATH.
Remember how self-conscious you may have been as an adolescent?
Many adolescents report feeling that they're in front of an audience.
This is due largely to a healthy narcissism that's required for their growth into adulthood.
In part, the being-in-the-spotlight feeling is because they're trying on new identities.
Many of my students are moving from being snap shooters to being photographers.
They often report feeling self-conscious on the street when they're doing their first assignment.
Their thoughts and feelings, such as Who am I as a photographer? and Can I do this? put them on stage.
The self-consciousness passes quickly as they button up their photographer identities.
Later in the book, we'll discuss how you may now have two audiences for your photography and your photographer identity:
1) The lay audience, snap shooters
2) Those who are applying their visual aptitudes with more awareness and effort.
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1 Originally published in the Village Voice in 1991: Hoberman, J. (1995). Blow-Up at 25: After the orgy. In P. Keough (Ed.), Flesh and blood (pp. 31-36). San Francisco: Mercury House.