| I first picked up a camera at 18. That was seven years ago. I took to it immediately. At that time, I didn’t really stop to think why I liked it so much. Things were fairly simple then: I liked it, so I just kept doing it.
It was only later that I began to discover some of the reasons for my affection for the medium. One is that photography is a medium that forces us to confront our immediate reality. It may sound strange, but at the very least, you have to be absolutely present to photograph whatever it is that you are trying to make an image of. The same cannot be said of painting, which has often been compared at length to photography. It may be perfectly possible to paint a night sky in the daytime, but not photography. You have to be there. Utterly present. This is something that appeals to me.
It is also this capacity for confrontation that brings about some of photography’s most difficult questions. The privilege of being present demands a response and a responsibility. What do we do with what we’ve been given? This is something that I am still trying to find out.
In spite of the difficulty posed by these questions, I still believe that confrontation has the capacity of revealing us to ourselves. On a personal level, one aim of my work in photography is so that, beyond just my making images, I can have my images make me. There’s a wish to be changed by what I do – for the better, I hope. Photography allows me to confront my reality in a manner that, hopefully, allows returns me to life with a little more tenderness, a little more passion.
Yours truly,
Sean Lee |
