VOICE
by Jefra Starr Linn

What is your voice? Everybody has one. Do you know what yours is?

Your “voice” is how you uniquely express the way you see things. It is uniquely you expressed through your work

It’s what you have to offer the world. It’s how you see the world. It’s something that changes and evolves and intensifies/mellows and matures over time. It’s something you work on and feed. It’s how you serve the world around you.

The writer J L Blackwater says “we all have voices in our head. Artists actually listen to them on a regular basis.”

And as artists it’s easy to feel alone in what we have to say or in what we see. we worry about popularity. We worry about being understood and about being isolated in our uniqueness. But it’s all these things that actually make us the artist that we are and allow us to contribute and speak in our own rare way.

Here’s how I envision it — everything you see, everything you hear and love and everything that attracts you are like little banks and rocks and grasses along a river, they all influence the direction that the river flows in some way or another. The key is to let your influences be just that – influences on YOUR style. If you BECOME your influences, you’re not being true to yourself.

Your voice cannot be borrowed, bought or stolen, When you borrow or steal someone else’s voice you become an impersonator. There’s no shortcut to developing your unique voice – sometimes the road is short but most often it’s a lifelong journey.

Often the hardest part about voice is recognizing that you even have one. It’s the same thing as hearing yourself on a tape recorder – you say to yourself “is that what I sound like??!” It’s something that’s such a part of you, something that you’ve lived with all your life, that you don’t know what it is that makes it unique to you and it’s so comfortable and common to you that you don’t know what it sounds or looks like.

So how do you find your voice? We’ll explore this in a little more detail next Friday, but here are a few ideas for now.

Jim Hart says “an artist’s job is to experience technique as one would a buffet. Try everything. If it tastes good, swallow it. If it is not right for you spit it out. What is ultimately your technique should be what works for you personally. If you are like most artists …this technique will be a patchwork of many influences – not just one approach of one or two institutions.”

In fact, I recommend reading his entire article, “Ten Steps To Finding your Artistic Voice”

So your job is to one of the most critical and difficult aspect of allowing your voice to develop is just that – allowing it to develop and not forcing it to develop – like a flower opening. There’s a certain amount of letting go involved. Some give and take and then above all just allowing it to be and grow.

Avenues by which growth and refinement in your own voice is achieved — Work, work work work. Produce boatloads of work – don’t try to create the One Masterpiece that’s uniquely you, the best method of developing your own voice is to produce tons and tons of work.

“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity “ – Carl Jung

Continuing the analogy above of the river being your voice – a river flows based on all sorts of factors. When you try to impede it’s course it’s called a dam. Rivers find their own way. Trying to artificially manufacture your perspective is possible, but it won’t be the organic, natural course the river takes.

Stephen Covey said, in his book, “The 8th Habit”, “One word expresses the pathway to greatness: voice. Those on this path find their voice and inspire others to find theirs. The rest never do.”

To help you do this – he suggest you ask yourself four questions

1. What are you good at? That’s your MIND
2. What do you love doing? That’s your HEART
3. What need can you serve? That’s the BODY
4. And finally, what is life asking of you? What gives your life meaning and purpose? What do you feel like you should be doing? In short, what is your conscience directing you to do? That is your SPIRIT.

‘Voice’ is a way of approaching problem solving and life in general. It’s how you see and do.

“As far as I’m concerned, taking photographs is a means of understanding which cannot be separated from other means of visual expression. it is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one’s own originality. It is a way of life.” – Henri Cartier-Bresson”

Assignment for this week —

Take at least 75 photos. Maybe more. That’s up to you. But start out without restraints on how many photos you take. And it needs to be of one thing, one subject.

(I feel like with photography, as with any other art form, I need to get warmed up. Usually the first 50 shots are pretty dry and once I get warmed up and the creative juices flowing I start really working with my own muse symbiotically.)

Now after at least 75 photos, find the one photo that you feel, out of all those photos is the closest to how you see and what you see. Post that. Also, to give us a little context, post your top five runners up for your number one choice.

how i did it…

I wanted to shoot some vintage photography books that I have.

This is my final choice for my favorite –

The shoot started out pretty blah (as they all do for me – gotta get warmed up)

like this –

after about 25 shots I got this —

and this…

and this…

and then it started moving towards this…

Now you go give it a try…

……….

Post your assignments where you feel most comfortable – you blog, your favorite photo sharing site or at one of these three virtual spaces that we’ve set up specifically for this group:

develop on fridays forum / message board
This is where the bulk of our group activities will take place. Both Jefra and I will be checking this board to moderate discussions. If you have a question about the assignment, feel free to jump on the message board and ask away! You can also post/share your photo assignments here.

lesson one assignment thread

A note about forum registration – If you’ve registered and haven’t received a confirmation email, please check your spam box.

flickr group
Share your photos here. Make friends. Find each other and lift each other.

facebook group
This group will serve the same function as the flickr group. Share your photos. on facebook (upload your photos and add it to the facebook group photo albums).

Wherever you choose to post, be sure to come back here and link us to where you’ve posted in the comment section below so we can find each other.

– jefra + liz