why we make photographs

A still moment after the rain on Lake Sidney Lanier, Winter 2020. Taken early in the pandemic on a cold, rainy day, it reflected my mood at the time.

Why do we make photographs? While the reasons vary from one person to another and change throughout our lives, I believe there are some common reasons shared by many.

We make photographs to remember—a moment, a person, a place, a feeling. And we make photographs to share with those who were not there, who might be interested, or who might come along in the future and wonder about the past. A photograph can imprint a memory. (Just think about how many of your memories are actually from a photograph rather than the experience itself.)

We make photographs to communicate—to teach and inform, to intrigue and entertain, announce and denounce, call attention to and persuade. We make photographs to express ourselves—our joy, our sorrow, our anger, our amusement. And we may make photographs as a way to examine our dreams, to mine our memories, or to explore our imagination.

Some of our reasons are more straight forward, but no less important—to document, to record, to illustrate a point.

Some of my favorite reasons to make photographs actually have little to do with the end product and everything to do with the process. For instance, we make photographs so that we might see more and see more deeply, with greater clarity and insight. We want to see things we might otherwise miss. And we are often drawn to make photographs because we love getting lost in the process, wrapped up in the present, engaged in an experience that allows us to forget all else, if only briefly.

From time to time, it is good to pause and contemplate our reasons for making photographs. Doing so can give our image-making greater focus. It can inform the way we work, the types of images we create and what we do with them. It can help define our audience—those all-important individuals who connect in some way, their own unique way, to what we are doing.