dear aspiring artist: this is for you
Recently I had the opportunity to share some of my artist journey with CanvasRebel magazine. I hope these thought starters will inspire you.
Hey guys, I ended my last entry here on a pretty somber note. I am grateful for all the support it received. I think grief, no matter how old, can take its toll. There is no timeline for it.
This week’s Substack is on an entirely different yet personal topic. The aforementioned interview has been edited for brevity.
1. Imposter syndrome isn’t something we should seek to overcome but rather embrace as a figment of our imagination.
I wish I had started my fine art photography journey a lot sooner. It took me nearly a decade to start sharing my photography and identifying myself as a fine artist. Even though my former professional life has always been in the creative realm, I am still weathering through moments of doubt and imposter syndrome. Any artist, whether emerging or established, still combats those insecurities daily.
Imposter syndrome is a very real thing. It stems from anxiety and the fear of the unknown. Our inner critic will do everything it can to hold us back. That is the final boss of procrastination and precisely what hindered me from pursuing this path earlier on in my fine art photography career.
My advice to anyone who is at the crossroads right now is to let their intention be the guiding light. There’s never a right or wrong time to start embarking on the path you’re meant to be on; when the time is right, everything will align.
2. All the time preceding your artist journey is an integral part of the process. Use them to your advantage.
Before becoming a fine art photographer, I authored an avante-garde menswear meets design and lifestyle blog, from 2013-2023, called MYBELONGING. The blog transformed my life forever and led me to where I am now in the fine art photography space. I am so grateful for the trailblazing opportunities that came from my blog, but I am most proud of the fact that I was able to build a community around it. It led to many accolades and features, from Architectural Digest to Domino Magazine.
That same community has followed my foray into fine art photography. My debut coincided with a cover feature in the Pasadena Weekly magazine. I spoke directly on historical preservation and how it relates to the power of photography and design. I am particularly drawn to photographic compositions with a certain narrative and energy; I am what you would call an intuitive photographer – similar to other master photographers like Viviane Maier, Bruce Gilden, and Fan Ho. Most of my recent work focuses on isolation and vulnerability against an underlying current of hope and rebirth. Metaphorically, it mirrors my journey back to photography to its rawest and most elevated form. These themes continue to dominate the work seen in my recent exhibitions and are showcased tangibly on fine art papers by Canson Infinity, which I am a current ambassadorship of.
3. You will fail, over and over again until you succeed = as in finding community, supporters, collectors, and essentially advocates who are in your corner.
When I first embarked on my journey into the world of fine art photography, I took a leap of faith without really knowing what to expect. I had a vague sense of how and where to promote myself and my work, but the reality was quite a mystery. Looking back, I’ve realized that the key to this artistic path lies in the art of curation. It’s all about refining and meticulously shaping your body of work.
Creating a collection of fine art photographs felt somewhat like curating a social media feed. It involved a lot of introspection, a fair share of trials and errors, and a healthy dose of experimentation. Throughout this process, I discovered that I needed to shed some old habits to transition from a more commercially oriented approach to the realm of fine art photography, which thrives on narrative and personal depth. This transformation, though, was far more challenging than I initially imagined. Our minds tend to resist change, at least at first.
That’s when I stumbled upon exposure therapy as a coping strategy to help my mind adapt and embrace these changes. It’s an ongoing learning process in my journey as a fine art photographer. I realized that my past professional experiences continued to influence my work, which, in some ways, haunted me. What had been crucial and even vital in my commercial work no longer fit within the fine art sphere? Letting go of these burdens has truly made all the difference.
In the next installment of “dear aspiring artist,” I will go in depth about how to source call for entries and submissions for your work. More to come soon.