Sept 19, 2010
NYC
Elevation: 80m
I am always surprised how the road we travel brings us back around again. Yet when you arrive back at that place again, you are different, you have grown and evolved so you see the same place with a different set of eyes.
I started photography when I was 18. My first teacher was a student of Ansel Adams, so traditional landscape photography was what I practiced. With time, I shifted my focus onto the world of commercial / advertising photography. I wanted to return to my first love with this new set of skills. I wanted to be a fashion photographer. I thought my passion for the actual fashion / clothes / the craftsman ship / the transformative magic of fashion would make me stand out as a fashion photographer. I deeply loved fashion and I wanted to revolutionized the way we perceive women, beauty and fashion.
I worked the Ralph Lauren Spring 2011 runway show this past week during fashion week. Over the last 14 years in the advertising world, I have seen / experience my fair share of high fashion / celebrity. All the shinny shinny of self assumed importance of what is happening there that day did not leave its mark on me. Instead what I walked away with is the same question that I have been wondering about over the last several weeks. How do we stay authentic and be true when we must work and function in a highly superficial world?
The first impulse is to disengage. The first instinct is to not participate anymore. To unplug myself from the equation, to go and live a quiet a life somewhere far far away. Yet I view that option for me (and for me only) as an act of cowardice. Ok, then what?
We are the authors of our lives. I like to propose this hypothesis, the issue of authenticity and authorship are intertwined. Authorship emerges from creativity, the same place as authenticity. To be authentic to our highest selves is to be creative and to tap into that source. To discover ourselves we must create ourselves. We are all a works of art in progress. We are what we in-vent and the vent-ion coming from within knowing oneself. Be awake, be compassionate, to not get stuck in the judgement of the superficial, to always return to that which provides ground and sanity. To have a deep understanding of ourselves, our nature is what I propose to be the first step in being able to function and engage in a superficial world while still remain authentic. Authenticity determines authorship and not vice versa. Authenticity determines the story we write for ourselves. If we understand envy and fear are the greatest enemy of authenticity and we don’t get stuck on either side of the spectrum of fear and envy then we might have a change of coming out alive and true.
This is a hypothesis at best. However, I am willing to give it a try. Are you with me?
What do you do to stay true and authentic?
