Oh well, the good old times.
Somehow I had imagined everything a little differently. If it had gone according to one of my countless, constantly rejected 5-year plans, I would probably be the successful, filthy rich, overjoyed photographer now. I would be photographing the most beautiful people in the most beautiful places, happily pulling my photos onto the computer at the end of an intense but great day's work and congratulating myself on my successful career choice. Yes, me, the lucky, happy photographer.
It's just that you can't choose the way life goes. Maybe I should have just pursued the 5-year plan more grimly or just manifested it more, but I realise that's bullshit. The truth is this: Sometimes you take a path and fall flat on your face, face-first into the mud several times in a row. It may sound exaggerated to some, and especially to everyone who knows me, but that's how it feels. It feels like I have failed across the board.
I have not managed to become the successful, filthy rich, overjoyed photographer. Neither am I successful in any sense, relatively broke most of the time and the thing that gets me the most is the fact that I am miles away from overjoyed - a lot closer I guess to medium depressed.
How did this happen, how did I end up here, why didn't it work out!? I could ask myself that and drown myself in my bathtub of self-pity. Too bad there's only a shower in my appartment. The fact is, no matter how much I love photography, I hate it as a profession. Hate is a big word, I know. But after all the trying, falling down, fixing my little crown and getting back up again only to get right back on my face, I eventually realised that I'm not made for the job. I am neither a wedding photographer nor do I feel comfortable in the business world, I constantly have to force myself to get on in any way. After a very long struggle I gave up. I have given up photography.
What did it mean to me? A lot. Maybe not everything, but it was a constant part of my life that held many of my dreams and hopes and was both my escape and my expression. While I think I am quite good with words, able to express myself through writing or painting, the camera always offered me a mirror, a perspective, something I could not express in words or brushstrokes.
It was my dream to achieve something with it, to be able to make a living from it, to fill my own exhibition spaces, to work in my own studio. But these dreams have gradually faded away, as sometimes a photograph does (how poetic).
Yet I miss it. Miss the good old times when the camera was not a reminder of my failure but an invitation to self-expression. I miss my photoblogs and photobooks, staying up nights editing images, uploading, fiddling with the design. Miss looking through the viewfinder and telling stories with the impressions captured. I miss photography.
Maybe on a mood, out of this grey, dull phase I'm going through, the desire to get out and explore again has grown. Around the houses, through the neighbourhood, through my appartment. To photograph again, the beautiful, small, normal, everyday, casual, banal, boring, bad, unattractive, sad moments. To express myself and distract myself in equal measure.
Who knows, maybe one day you will see all these pictures in an exhibition. Or maybe they are just too banal. I don't know if I'm still a good photographer - what is that anyway? All I know is that I want to tell stories about life. About the ordinary, unsuccessful life of a woman in her mid-twenties who is just trying to get through somehow.