Evolution, Not Revolution. Photography As A Process of Growth

I often speak out when people say that they are looking for a ‘style’, that they are looking for ‘their style’, that they don’t understand how to find ‘their style’. What I say is, stop using the word style! Because style is transitory and therefore to be avoided.

Let’s use a pair of jeans, as a metaphor for photography and let’s start in the 1970s. At the beginning of that decade jeans were wide, flared and occasionally so wide, they had inserted triangles of fabric to make them even wider (I know, mine did!). By the end of the decade Punk suggested that the same fabric should be fashioned into the shape of a drainpipe. In the 1980s we were meant to wear ripped Levi 501s, but by the beginning of the next decade baggy was in! Then it was designer jeans, flares came back and went, skinny jeans arrived and now it’s boy-friend, bootleg, ankle-length and barrel-legged shapes, that are the trend. I hope that my brief history of denim legwear makes my point. Styles come and go. They are not to be relied upon. They make you look dated if you don’t move with them, and yet you have no say in what will be the next ‘flavour of the month’.

A good pair of classic jeans will last for years and always look good. I think that is what you want for your photography. If you agree, then here is my suggestion. Ignore styles, fads and fashions and focus on language. You don’t need to worry about finding your style, because you don’t need one. The choice of a style can be an easy ‘quick-fix’ based on images replicating the work of others, but it doesn’t fix anything. Your photographs just look like someone elses, until they move on and you are left behind. So what is a photographic language? Well, its a slowly evolving approach to your work based on who you are as a person, not as a photographer. Doesn’t that sound more interesting?

I thought so, but it will not come quickly, and that is why it is a far more rewarding experience when making photographs. As the saying goes, “nothing worth doing, comes easily” and that is the case with photography, which requires introspection and resiliance. Two attributes that can be rewarded, but which cannot be bought or copied. Does that put you off photography? It does many, who think it is easy, but soon find that it is not. Photography requires a basic level technical competence and creative energy, two diverse skill-sets that can often find themselves in conflict. The issue is to find a balance and respect between the two. Technical comptence can be learnt, but creative energy has to be found and it has to be found from within.

No one can give you sustained creative energy. You can get inspired, you can be informed, but you will have to maintain that inspiration and act upon that information. Photography is all about you! How much you are willing to give of yourself in understanding and benefiting from its complexities. That cannot be done quickly. It’s a process of growth, that should be savoured, not rushed. Often people say to me that they make analogue photographs becausethe process slows them down. It makes them more considered they say, as it has a financial implication attached to failure. I don’t understand this argument. Was this the case when film was cheap? I am certainly no quicker or slower with digital capture as I was with analogue. However, a realisation that the long-haul with photography benefits from a slow apprciation of the medium, that is something I do agree with.

Dr.Grant Scott
After fifteen years art directing photography books and magazines such as Elle and Tatler, Scott began to work as a photographer for a number of advertising and editorial clients in 2000. Alongside his photographic career Scott has art directed numerous advertising campaigns, worked as a creative director at Sotheby’s, art directed foto8 magazine, founded his own photographic gallery, edited Professional Photographer magazine and launched his own title for photographers and filmmakers Hungry Eye. He founded the United Nations of Photography in 2012, and is now a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, and a BBC Radio contributor. Scott is the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Routledge 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Routledge 2019), and What Does Photography Mean To You? (Bluecoat Press 2020). His photography has been published in At Home With The Makers of Style (Thames & Hudson 2006) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.