For the past year I have been a full time student! Yes, a full time student at Savannah College
of Art and Design (SCAD) working on my MFA in Photography. While I have been at SCAD for two years this
year I was full time and on sabbatical from Columbia Theological Seminary. This was the first time in my educational
career that I wasn’t working full time and in school full time. For all of my previous degrees I had to work
full time to put myself through school.
I can’t tell you what a privilege it was to be able to dedicate myself
to the work of working on my craft and me.
I was able to immerse myself in a visual world and as a resul I see
totally different.
What I have found is that it takes giving yourself fully to
something if you hope to be transformed.
I had to let go of how I saw the world through the viewfinder and allow
the images and the work to find me. I had
to let go of trying to make a picture and let the picture make me. I spent as much time studying photography as
I did making pictures. These two go
together, doing the work and mastering the intellectual and visual history of
the field work in tandum. If you don’t give yourself fully to understanding the
field you want be involved in you have no base to work from and you need a
base.
As I have followed the transformation of Auburn Avenue I
have been transformed. I finished this
year ready for my thesis exhibition, which will be:
Faith in Sweet Auburn:
The Next Chapter
Friday, October 16, 2015 @ 7:00 to 9:30 p.m.
Apex Museum
135 Auburn Avenue
Atlanta, GA 30303
(404) 523-2739
This was a lot of work and it was more about me than it was
about the images, videos and blogs I produced.
I was transformed by doing the work, letting go and allowing the process
of study and making work transform me into a photographer. While this has been hard work it has been
very rewarding. What is that challenge
you need to take on at this point in your journey that has the potential to
transform you? Where is the creator
trying to develop you and grow you so that your work at this phase in your life
will have a greater impact than your former work? What is going in you that has the promise of
re-inventing you?
