annus horribilus

Am glad that this year is over – being nominally an academic naturally I mean the school year – and while this hasn’t anything really to do with the WGAS, like business people who have their own year, I tend to base mine from September to May.

Following examples of other roles models that I come in contact with – maybe this does have something to do with the WGAS after all – I tried to be a real artist.

Except finding teaching so burdensome that I can only do it one semester a year, I have tried to be more cynical, show little enthusiasm for not only my medium but in the arts in general. I have tried to make sure that no craft was involved in the making of my pieces what so ever and whenever possible farm the work out. I also made sure that what I said about the work was more important than the work itself and that I made sure of the paradox of how involved the process was while at the main time stressing that I did none of the nitty gritty work needed. Being a photographer, I made sure that a good dose of the technical was there to counter act the vacuity of my ideas.

Of course I followed the maxim of if you can make it good make it big.

It didn’t work. While the images seem good and could pass for art, and they certainly fit on a gallery wall now without being lost, there is no satisfaction in what I have produced from the mural archival pigmented prints, to the self-published book. They all have the same feel to me. Oh so very professional while being about as personal as a morning Tim’s double double.

So it comes with great relief that the results of a Google search of all my aliases now fills less than a page for I can now go back to being the Obscure Photographer From Away, and make things that I like the way that I like. Not feeling the burden of trying to live up to the repute of the WGAS now that the dean Carl Pecker and his henchmen have left the scene, I can go back to simply making things and sending them out.