Deepthinking

Photography and Trust

Joerg Colberg on photography and trusting in one’s work

If a photographer mistrusts her or his photographs, a gap seems to appear - the gap between that which the photographer wants to express, and that which the photographers perceives as expressed. Attempts to bridge that gap almost always involve artistic overcompensation: The photographer will over-apply her or his craft, for example by applying way too many Photoshop filters, by dodging and burning the crap out of a photograph in the darkroom, by using so-called toy cameras, or by relying on archaic photographic processes. A good photograph doesn’t need those gimmicks.

Put another way, any of those techniques will become invisible if you have a good photograph. They only appear as a gimmick when they are used to overcompensate for a lack of artistic self confidence: You don’t trust your photographs, you don’t trust that your viewers will see what you want them to see. So you apply what you think of as your craft.