In the signature of my emails, there is my name, the place where I live, my phone number, the URLs of my website and this blog. And it says “Photographer, musician, and writer”. That’s who I am. That’s what I am.
I have been writing forever and at some point playing jazz guitar became my second passion. Those things have been sharing center stage for decades of my life. Sometimes the focus went to other things, but there’s a thing about passions – they just stay with you. Whatever I did, wherever I was. at some point I would write something and if it was only for me. And I always had a guitar.
The other day I was at the opening of an exhibition of my images and a reporter for a local newspaper asked me how long I’d been doing photography and I said I was sorry I couldn’t tell her something like I picked up a camera when I was nine and got instantly hooked and that’s that then. It wasn’t like that at all. I discovered photography for me about five years ago and it had become my major creative outlet. Although I kept writing as I publish a short text with each photograph. I try to get across what I was feeling and/or thinking at the moment of capture, while editing it or when I saw the final print. The text would serve as an invitation to whoever would be looking at the image. Now you tell your story.
But also music would have an influence on what I do and would be connected to what I write and how I feel about my photos. When I work on the images in Photoshop, I mostly listen to classical piano, but also Jazz. When I think about the moment I want to capture in an image and how I can tell the story about that very moment, I think about the moment in improvised jazz. The moment I hear something and react. When I hear the bass player talk to me or the saxophone quoting me, there is a story told together, communication taking place.
“Everything dovetails into everything else” Vincent Versace
Everything is indeed connected. From the environment I am trying to capture and me, the person viewing the image and the image, that person and me, that person and the environment. And photographing, writing and playing in me. Whatever creative skill you have, if you have others as well (which is very likely), don’t go and make one the only one you will cultivate. Those skills can and will benefit from each other as long as you are mindful about them, reflecting about what it is you are actually doing. There will be times when I am more of a photographer. There will be weeks when I need to write more than doing anything else. Or I will be happy enough playing a gig with my band so I am wiped out for days. But it will all be there all the time and make me a better photographer. A better musician. A better writer. And eventually a better person.
Basically Good 