{"id":6880,"date":"2026-09-11T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/?p=6880"},"modified":"2026-08-02T09:38:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T07:38:10","slug":"self-image-is-noise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/2026\/09\/11\/self-image-is-noise\/","title":{"rendered":"Self-image is noise"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Photographers often pride themselves on knowing who they are and what they do. In fact, a lot of us believe that it is a requirement to do good stuff. But this leads to a kind of self-deception that is hard to catch because it doesn\u2019t feel like lying: we all have a story about the story we carry around, what attracts us, and what our work is about. That story is misleading us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Abandoned shoes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Most photographers mistake it for self-awareness. In reality, it is a filter that stands between them and reality. That reality of what we\u2019re making coming through the filter is distorted in both directions: images that don\u2019t really work are inflated and praised, and others that do work, sometimes on an unconscious level, are dismissed<\/p>\n\n\n\n

for example, a photographer that decided he was a poet of everyday life will find poetry in images that a stranger would dismiss as pointless. The formalist would discover pleasant formality in images that are nothing more than competent snapshots. The self-described street photographer will find meaning and intent in photographs that aren\u2019t anything more than pure luck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

None of these photographers is really lying. They didn\u2019t set to create a bubble around them to isolate themselves from the reality of what they do. If anything, they would hate living within that bubble. Their belief in what they do is real. But they simply read their work through the filter of their prejudice and the preconception of who they are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The solution, in principle, is simple: stop asking yourself about your work and ask the world. What you felt at the instant when you pressed the shutter needs to be decoupled from what the resulting photographs actually are. Your intent was tainted by your understanding of yourself. Patterns in the photos don\u2019t lie the way intentions do. By letting the photographs talk for themselves, you\u2019ll discover things that consciously or unconsciously were included in them. And you can only notice them after the fact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The best way to do this is what I think of as the stranger test: show your photos to someone who doesn\u2019t know you, without explanation or context, without any indication of what you\u2019re aiming for. Let them look at them and tell you what they think. Their responses will be clean and free of your self-filter because they have no investment in who your ego thinks it is, what you\u2019re trying to show the world, and what you hope to have done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most photographers never run that test in those conditions. And admittedly, it\u2019s hard. It\u2019s not something you can just do on social media because your viewers won\u2019t spend enough time looking at your photos to try to understand them. If they don\u2019t create an instant dopamine hit, they\u2019ll move on. If you show them to your friends or family, they\u2019ll want to spare your feelings and encourage you, rather than be completely honest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be honest, I\u2019m totally guilty of that. I show very few of my photographs because I feel like I\u2019m taking them for myself. Even my projects aren\u2019t really for public consumption. And as I grew up in the pre-internet world, I don\u2019t feel I need strangers\u2019 validation. So, nothing pushes me to show what I do to strangers. The closer I\u2019ve been to doing it consistently was when I was a member of camera clubs: members of the clubs would be supportive and therefore not entirely honest, but judges during competitions who don\u2019t know you, won\u2019t ever talk to you, and often you\u2019ve never heard of, will be that 100% honest soundboard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a result, I certainly don\u2019t feel what I do is strong yet. I know it has lots of bias, I know it\u2019s in part what I want reflected back to me. My thinking has evolved considerably over the last couple of years, in part because of my Substack newsletters that force a minimum of honesty. But the photography hasn\u2019t kept up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-image doesn\u2019t just limit your ability to evaluate your photos honestly, it actively controls what you make. When you photograph to confirm who you think you are as a photographer, you stop noticing things that don\u2019t fit the narrative. As a result, you miss opportunities, you stop noticing certain things, the images that would challenge your self-image don\u2019t get made at all. The work calcifies around a version of you that may have nothing to do with who you actually are behind the camera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dropping the self-image doesn\u2019t mean having no direction. It means letting direction come from the work<\/a> rather than from the story you\u2019ve been telling about the work. Those two things can look identical from the outside for a long time. Eventually, they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

#Photography #Opinion #IMatBeWrong #theory<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photographers often pride themselves on knowing who they are and what they do. In fact, a lot of us believe that it is a requirement to do good stuff. But this leads to a kind of self-deception that is hard to catch because it doesn\u2019t feel like lying: we all have a story about the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,9,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","category-personal","category-theory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6880"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7969,"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6880\/revisions\/7969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}