We are tickled pink to be sharing this excerpt from Susannah Conway's new book, This I Know: Notes on Unravelling the Heart.
Words and images have always been the currency of my creative life, but it was years before I could stand up and say, Yes, I am a writer, Yes, I am a photographer, as if I had to achieve a certain level of success before I earned the right to call myself either. When I say I am a writer I mean I use words to convey the truth in my heart. When I say I am a photographer I mean I use cameras to record and interpret the world around me. Of my two passions it’s my photography skills I feel most confident about. For as long as I can remember I have “seen” photos wherever I go, noticing small details, colors, the lines and shapes that marry so well in a flat image. I notice how branches scratch across a blue sky; how the space between the cushions looks so soft and safe. There’s a list in my head of my must-take shots, and I can’t walk past a construction site without snapping the side of a rusty truck, a constellation of colors found in deceptively mundane places. My eyes don’t judge what they see—there’s no hierarchy of beauty when everything piques your interest.
For a time I thought that being a real photographer meant I needed to join associations and offer my hourly services to paying clients. So I tried it for a year, making postcards and advertisements, networking with the mothers at local schools, photographing christenings and birthday parties and families on the beach. And there were moments of real fulfillment—when clients loved their portraits and called to thank me, when I felt I’d captured something truthful in a family group—but the work drained me more than any job I’ve ever had, my introverted self, exhausted by having to be “on” all the time. I’d turned my passion into a job, trying to fit into a mold that wasn’t designed for me. So I spent less and less time on the marketing, until the phone stopped ringing and I recycled the postcards. Although it felt like a failure, I couldn’t ignore the relief.
Photography is more accessible than perhaps it’s ever been, with camera phones and social media feeding an unending stream of images into the ether. While potentially we’re all photographers now, in truth it’s never as simple as owning a camera. For me, a photographer is a person who expresses themselves using the photographic medium. They don’t have to sell their images, or have clients or commissions—they are simply compelled to translate what they see and feel into a photograph. Most forms of creative expression require specific tools, but if you were to take away the paintbrushes and the cameras, the loom, the guitar and the stage, you’d be left with a bunch of people who are compelled to act on their creative impulses.
You are left with artists.
I believe we are all artists at our core, all of us endlessly creative, using our lives as canvases, our imaginations as tools. Children are born artists, seeing the potential in every cardboard box and dried leaf, remaking their world as fast as they discover it. We don’t lose that innate creativity, but many of us repress it, weighed down by all the grown-up responsibility adulthood brings. But with a camera, a pencil, a ball of yarn, we can make something out of nothing; dinner served with a flourish, a bed made with vintage linens, a garden border planted with red tulips. We simply need to open our eyes and put some thought into the details. We are the curators of our lives—we decide what they look like.
Susannah Conway is the author of This I Know: Notes on Unraveling the Heart (SKIRT!, June 2012). A photographer, writer and e-course creator, her classes have been enjoyed by thousands of people from around the world. Co-author of Instant Love: How to Make Magic and Memories with Polaroids (Chronicle Books, 2012), Susannah helps others reconnect to their true selves, using photography as the key to open the door. You can read more about her shenanigans on her blog at SusannahConway.com and connect with her on Twitter: @SusannahConway.
Share with us some carnation pink details from your world today as we continue to celebrate color month! When you leave your comment here between now and Wed midnight EST, you'll be enetered to win a copy of Susannah's book This I Know.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012 by 
