A revisit of audience, meaning and communication in your work

What do you want me to look at and notice? It is amazing how much this concept of audience, meaning and what an audience has to know about your work comes up. This podcast is a revisit of an oft-discussed topic in our episodes, but nonetheless, the conversation about what we should tell an audience about our work and what we shouldn’t keeps coming up for me again and again. So in this episode of the podcast, we return to look at what we should share and why we should share information about our work with our audience. I mean, I do get the point that some artist make that they don’t want to “taint” the audience into not having their own experience of the work. That idea comes with some big assumptions, like your audience has enough language to experience the work. So many times I hear photographers say that they like a photograph and can say no more than /i like it. It’s good. The reason for that feedback is that it is all they have in their language set to speak about an image. I feel that the more we can understand how to help the viewer see the work, the better. This can lead to a different set of questions and considerations that we should make as the photographer to help the viewer. Questions like: What is this? can offer a simple entry point to an image, but by asking more complex questions when we make the work, we might open the door to more meaning. Questions like: What do you want me to feel? What do you want me to consider? What are you asking me to do? These types of more open-ended questions that go beyond what is just in the frame open up a deeper conversation between the viewer and the image. As I said, this isn’t a new topic on the podcast, but one that is always worth revisiting if you are interested in deeper connections with your work behind the camera, processing, printing and sharing the work. Also, don’t forget: if you are in Seattle, save the date for my lecture at the Photographic Center Northwest on November 5th—more details to come.