Over the years, the concept of personal style in my photography has occupied my thoughts. What is personal style, should I work towards one, how do I know when I have one, and will it change over time? Is having a personal style a good thing, should I analyse the work of photographers I admire, or should I forge my own path? I decided to forge my path and allow my style to emerge rather than make it a means to an end.
A Google search reveals a lot of thinking and writing about personal style. Many consider style and genre synonymous, but a series of articles by Spencer Cox has helped me clarify my thinking. Cox defines personal style as follows:
“Personal style is at its best when it embodies an artist’s unique way of looking at the world.” (Cox 2020).
For me, personal style emerges, is unintentional and changes over time rather than involving an explicit search to find it. It is not an intentional pursuit or a wish to emulate others’ work. As Cox suggests:
“Style, in best cases, is unintentional”. (Cox 2020).
Looking back nearly fifteen years, I can pinpoint a time and place when my style began to emerge. It was in Borneo when I was fortunate enough to spend an hour in the company of an orangutan and her baby. The following vignette is based on contemporaneous notes:
A Mother's Love, Sandakan, Borneo - Alison Price, 2010
“It is a hot and humid late afternoon in Sabah, Northern Borneo. All is still, but suddenly the trees of the rainforest begin to shake. Our guide points – I look and see a flash of dark orange moving high in the canopy overhead. The leaves rustle, and the extent of the disruption hints at the size of the animals coming towards us. There is movement high in the trees, and I catch a glimpse of the creatures responsible, swinging effortlessly from one branch to another. I pick up the action in my camera's viewfinder.
The sun is intense, creating specular highlights through the canopy of leaves. Without thought, I adjust my camera's exposure and swing it on its tripod, following the movement. The complexity of the light is challenging, but I find the best settings for the conditions as a female orangutan and her baby emerge and come to rest on a nearby tree. I know that these beautiful inhabitants of the rainforest rarely stay for long. I focus on the task, drawing on my experience in challenging conditions as a wildlife and police photographer.
As I put the viewfinder to my eye, I find myself drawn into the magical world of these beautiful animals. Our guide whispers that the baby is weak and unlikely to survive. He moves away, and I am alone. I sense the intensity of love of the mother for the baby, and her interactions with her child draw me in. She plays with it, checking its tiny hands and feet and ensuring it is comfortable in her arms. It stares up at her, its bright blue eyes locked onto hers. She draws it to her breast and feeds it, whilst checking out any sound in the surrounding forest. But then, in retrospect, I became aware that she knew something was wrong. The baby was not flourishing; I also understood her sadness and desperation. She kissed it, and I saw – in a sublime moment of awareness and insight – the purity of unconditional and perfect love. Then they are gone. The orangutan swings off into the forest, her baby clutching her coat and hanging on for dear life – in more ways than one.
After an hour spent in the company of these beautiful creatures, I lower the camera. I am conscious that time has passed; the sun is lower in the sky. I sensed I had been in a dreamlike state, and for an anxious moment, I questioned whether I had even pressed the shutter. A quick look reassures me – I had captured dozens of images, but it was as though someone else had been taking them. Other onlookers were drifting away. The moment was gone; I can recollect first putting my eye to the viewfinder. As soon as my eye had settled on the eyepiece, my world had closed in, and my camera ceased to exist. But now, my encounter with the orangutan felt like a dream – a dream fading rapidly beyond recall. As I uncoupled my camera from its mount and placed it in my camera bag, a dull headache began to form over my eyes. I hoped I would not get the pounding headache and nausea, which had often been the price I had paid when engaging in sustained periods of continuous practice.
As I reflect on the afternoon’s events, I realise that I had entered a dwelling place where my art is created; a place where my choices and actions are intuitive and lie beyond conscious intention. I had been absorbed, dwelling in the world of the orangutan and her baby. With them, I had been in a very special place.” (Price 2024).
As the result of my continued practice and the insights gained my time with the orangutans, I have moved towards the view of the Canadian photographer Freeman Patterson (1977) that “the camera looks both ways” (p.11) and that the photographic act not only reflects the images taken by the photographer but also reflects back at her, revealing choices made, reflections had, and glimpses into the Being of the maker. While John Szarkowki’s Exhibition “Mirrors and Windows: American Photography since 1960 at The Museum of Modern Art” (1978) in New York distinguished between those photographers that offered a “window” on the world, and those where a “mirror” reflected their innermost thoughts, I would suggest that both are invariably manifest in the resultant image.
Accepting that the camera looks both ways, visually and ontologically, into the Being of the photographer and the subject, reflects what I refer to as the “Paradox of Being”. Being, as our essential reality, is instantiated within ourselves and all objects of experience. However, it is also shared in that we are entangled with one another – an entanglement that goes beyond correlation and is rooted in reality. We are, I believe, both singular and plural, and it is this paradox that the camera exposes as it looks both ways.
Style reflects you as a person, your life journey, your unique view of the world, and the way you portray that through photography in whatever genre you choose to work. Personal style is informed and determined by my choice of subject, location, lens, where I stand, the camera settings and framing, how I feel on a particular day and the brief I have for a project. And yet, I consider none of the above explicitly nor consciously in the intuitive moment when I press the shutter. That style can be a body of work that bubbles to the surface from which a signature style emerges. My signature is a sense of essence or spirit of a place or an animal, shared by me as the photographer with my audience through a single image or a collection of images – I call it allure. It is about being “in” the world rather than “of” the world (Dalziel and Scullion 2022), letting intentionality slip away and drifting into a non-conscious state of zonal flow. This sense of style is determined by pre-photoshoot decisions, such as where to go and the viewpoint chosen but also includes the photographic moment and the post-processing undertaken after you press the shutter.
References
Cox, S. (2020). How to find your Personal Style in Photography. Retrieved on 8 October 2024 from https://photographylife.com/personal-style-in-photography.
Dalziel, M and Scullion, L. Contemporary Art Practice Lecture, University of Dundee, 23 March 2022
Patterson, F. (1977). Photography for the Joy of It. Toronto, Van Nostrand Reinhold Ltd.
Price, A. (2024). Possibilising the Photographic Moment – Insights of Photographic Practice for Speculative Realism. Duncan of Jordanstone College of Arts & Design, University of Dundee PhD.
Szarkowski, J. (1978). Mirrors and Windows - American Photography since1960. New York, The Museum of Modern Art.
Alison Price
My name is Alison Price and for the past ten years I have travelled the world photographing wildlife, including Alaska, Antarctica, Borneo, Botswana, the Canadian Arctic, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.