In April 2014, my husband and I visited Cuba. I had a wonderful time documenting my trip - an all encompassing set of travel photographs that I was really pleased with. Cuba is a wonderfully easy place to photograph.
When I came back to Dubai, I resume my struggle of finding "interesting images" to make. For some time now, I was finding myself completely uninterested in really taking images in Dubai. It was either to plastic or banal or mundane. I started to suffer from some form of "photographer's block".
In November 2104, I took an Eric Kim workshop. I went because a photo buddy of mine was going and I thought, "why not?". It's something to do. The first two days I continued in my state of ennui, making uninteresting images that were compositionally correct but really did not say anything. Then I had a one on one with Eric and that's where things changed dramatically. I had a photographic epiphany. What I learnt was that I made "pretty pictures" that albeit compositionally perfect, did not say much besides it being a "pretty picture". In the process of perfecting my technical skills, I had become so fixated and rigid about the technical aspects of the images, became so focused on more focusing on nailing down that perfect shot compositionally that I forgot what I was trying to say. A lot of my work lacked originality because I was so busy trying to imitate the work of other photographers.
The next few months I did a great deal of thinking, soul searching, researching.
I realised that I needed to look for foreign landscapes in familiar surroundings. Instead of bemoaning the lack of interesting subjects, what I needed to do was to confront my immdiate surroundings and use them as a source for my subjects and stories. That I want I really needed to do is work on a personal documentary where I focus on shifting content towards the peripheral, the everyday, banality, plasticity and all.
I was also really taken aback when I came across William Eggleston's work and realised that he also went through a similar process where he actually perfected the art of making Cartier-Bresson like images before moving on to develop his own style.
In fact, the more I read about Eggleston work / life, the more I found myself identifying with it.
And so I started another new journey - That of trying to let go of all the preconceived notions and rigidity that I have adopted in the process of learning photography techniques. I don't think that I am necessarily very creative, I think years of working in very structured environment may have led to a deterioration of any creative thought but something in me is fighting to develop my own style. It's been 5 years since I have started working on learning photography but I think it is only in the last year that I have started being more introspective about my work and what I am producing.
I don't want to bore everyone with a long rant on that introspective process but while the process of self actualisation continues, I was lucky to come across Defence Colony and I began working on a photo essay on that community with my mate Bernard. (You can see the final results on my projects page - the essay is titled “Transformation”).
My ongoing project "Fragments of the Ordinary” a continuation of this thought process. I will be adding and removing images from this project site on an ongoing basis as I further develop and fine tune the story.
Please click the following link "Fragments of the Ordinary" to see all the images currently.