I'm a graduate of an unusual school, The Evergreen State College. It stresses liberal arts in a cross disciplinary learning structure. I studied art and printmaking there, selecting my own course of study, and pursuing at one point an independent study with a Philosophy professor on the nature of landscape imagery, which was my abiding interest at the time.
Every year Bob Haft, the photography professor at Evergreen, brings his class to my office/studio/home, and I get to pontificate on whatever is on my mind at that moment. Apparently, what was on my mind this year, reinvention, made a deep impression. I showed up on nearly a fifth of the student evaluations (Evergreen doesn't issue grades—faculty and students trade written evaluations of each other). They commented about learning that the the life of a photographer is about the embrace of continual reinvention. Even if you've been successful for decades. It never ceases.
I can look at any five year interval of my career, and what I was doing at the beginning and end of any period hardly resembles each other. I started in the early 80s as a wannabe wildlife photographer and an assistant, then did event and PR work, then assignment work for institutions, mostly educational and medical, then stock photography took off, as did editorial work for national publications, then stock cratered, as did assignment and everything else, then digital came along and assignment work came back in a whole other form. Somewhere in there I had New York gallery representation, had my panoramic work widely published and exhibited, and then I didn't. Now I'm adding video to the mix, betting on that to be my next big thing.
Most often though, thinking I know what is going to happen next only guarantees that something unexpected will instead.
Doug, Thanks for sharing your experiences. The notion of career evolution is not generally taught at most universities. This is unfortunate as it applies to almost any career path, not just the arts. If we were taught this is a normal occurrence prior to beginning our careers, it might not be such a shock for many people when they are faced with mid career change as necessitated by technology advances and economic upheavals. The students from your college are very fortunate to have been exposed to this notion, and to hear about it first hand from you. I'm sure the experience will make a lasting impression on many of them. Some may file the experience away now, but will recall it in 20 years when their own careers are evolving.
Posted by: Jeff Henderson | June 25, 2009 at 12:57 PM