More Than a Rock, 2nd Edition. Guy Tal
becoming serious to the point of obsession about photography, I didn’t “ruin” a good hobby; I discovered a better life. I discovered, in the words of Bill Evans, “the real mission of art.”
2My Audience
Discourse on virtue and they pass by in droves. Whistle and dance the shimmy, and you’ve got an audience.
—Diogenes Laërtius
A marketing maven (which I am not) suggested to me that I give some thought to who my audience is, and to target my writing and images to that audience. Despite such advice, I continue to favor the notion that it is more honest and more rewarding to write and photograph what I believe to be important and useful, which also has the added advantage of defining my audience as the people who also find my work important or useful. However, I am not one to dismiss good advice, by which I am referring not to the advice to target my work to a predetermined audience, but to the advice to think about who my audience is.
I believe that a useful way for artists to approach an understanding of their audience is not by deciding arbitrarily what their audiences should be and then bridling their work, but rather through a process of elimination. By explicitly acknowledging those who may not necessarily appreciate my work, I am also able to unburden my work of certain undesirable constraints and compromises. Like it or not, you cannot please everyone, and as an artist you should not try to.
Business goals generally favor appealing to the largest possible audience, but such an approach is inevitably biased toward some low common denominator, misrepresentation, obfuscation of negative aspects (which, alas, are a part of any life and any endeavor), and avoiding heady or contentious topics. Regrettably, such considerations are in contrast to my above-stated goal of making my work about things I consider to be important and useful. And so, rather than compromise my work, I prefer to restate my business goal in a manner that might make marketing professionals cringe. My primary business goal—my “mission statement,” if you will—is simply to sustain the life I already have. I am not interested in growth but in stability, and in maintaining my freedom to pursue meaningful and rewarding experiences, which, among other things, are meaningful and rewarding because they are decidedly disconnected from considerations of business, profit, growth, and marketing.
In an interview for the Institute for Philosophy in Public Life, Deborah Brandt, author of the book The Rise of Writing: Redefining Mass Literacy, made the provocative suggestion that most writers today do not write for readers, but rather as a means of interacting with fellow writers. I believe that the same is also true for photographers. It likely will not be difficult to make the case that most of us photograph (and/or write about photography) in order to interact with other photographers. In thinking about it further, I realized that in my case this is only part of the story. Photography to me is a vehicle, and recognizing that my photographs and writings may primarily draw other photographers, I still consider them more as delivery systems, rather than as goals—as means, rather than ends.
My work is also not specifically aimed at publishers, galleries, or collectors. Although such interests are welcome, to specifically create for institutionalized buyers always comes at the cost of creative compromises and the requirement to play by some arbitrary rules of these markets that do not appeal to me (e.g., limiting editions, keeping up with trends, or the bewildering pseudo-language some refer to as “artspeak”). Such buyers are also often interested in artists as brands—eccentric, gifted, or even mythical figures, rather than as fallible human beings navigating the stream of life with the same joys and fears, convictions and doubts, gifts and flaws, as anyone else (brands often founded in a degree of aggrandizement that I am admittedly not comfortable with). It would be hypocritical of me to misrepresent myself as a great artist or as a great writer or as a great anything. Bach and Picasso and Strand were great artists; Faulkner and Tolstoy and Hesse were great writers; Einstein and Nietzsche and Russell were great thinkers. I am not in that league. To the extent that people wish to purchase my work, I hope they do so because they appreciate it for what it is and for what inspiration they find in it, and not as a financial investment or as a conversation piece.
Although I revel in beauty, I do not create solely for aesthetic reasons. Artists ultimately trade in two things: decoration and inspiration. In my work I choose to emphasize the latter because I consider it more important. I do so with the knowledge that it is both harder to accomplish and generally less profitable as a business model.
A piece of advice often given to budding artists is this: create primarily for yourself, and not for others. Perhaps an antithesis to the calculated approach of marketers, it is sound advice for those who wish to reap the greatest personal benefit from the making of art. There is, however, a more nuanced version that is more relevant to those who wish to create professionally, which is this: create for those with whom you have things in common. What I mean by this is that you can create for yourself and still make work that is useful to others who may share some ideas, feelings, or sensibilities with you.
Even though we are each unique—each a product of certain circumstances, experiences, sensibilities, and interests—there will always be others who share at least some of the things that inspire you, some of your interests, some of your sensibilities, or some of your philosophy. I believe that the best of all options for artists who wish to pursue their work professionally while maintaining artistic independence and integrity is to create work to satisfy their own muses, make it accessible, relatable, and available to others, and to trust that at least some will find it sufficiently interesting and rewarding to spare some of their disposable income in trade. This makes the relationship between artist and audience one of mutual support and symbiosis, rather than one founded strictly on commercial interest: on give-and-take, or on competing over some price point for decor.
I create not in order to grow my business beyond my needs, but with the modest goal of sustaining myself as an artist, and with the added benefit of knowing that others may find value in my work. That, to me, is more than enough. I do what I do not because I care for any recognition from the “art world” or from some establishment, and not because I believe I have some power to change the course of photography or art or humanity. Rather, I pursue my work because it is important and satisfying to me, and because I can think of times in my own life when what I know today would have been of some value or given me some comfort, perhaps even hope or courage; and because I may be able to offer the knowledge I have gained over the years to someone today who is in some way like me, and might be where I was years ago.
I had the good fortune of standing at some difficult crossroads, facing difficult choices, not knowing until much later where these choices would ultimately lead; and, whether by skill, fate, or dumb luck, I somehow ended up in a good place. It is my hope that my work finds its way to those who face similar choices, as well as those who may be in need of inspiration as they work through their own challenges and who may gain a useful perspective from the musings and experiences of someone else who has given thought to such things, whether or not they end up making the same choices. I know firsthand that such inspiration was (or would have been) helpful to me, and I am grateful for the times in which I found it and for the people who offered it, whether in books, essays, or images. Over the years, I have purchased many books and works of art, not only for personal benefit but also as expressions of gratitude to their authors.
And so, it comes down to this: my audience consists of those who might benefit from my experiences, thoughts, and skills as I have benefited from those of others along my own journey. This is not to say I have any special authority regarding such things, but merely that I have thought about them and reached some conclusions and made some choices (and mistakes), and I feel that my life is better today for having done so; and that my experience may be useful in informing others. If you are such a person, and among my audience—thank you! And if your situation is such that you are able to purchase my work in trade for what value you gain from it, allowing me to continue to pursue my work—thank you, again!