Summary of WIP
These December days before the advent of the Christmas holidays were useful for consolidating the audio and visual material derived from the second external project.
I titled the project "A day with MDT" using Marc DeTollenaere's initials.
I was very lucky to interview Marc and photograph with him in the city that gave him fame. I also realized that my past, complicated and often problematic interactions with photography professionals were essentiallly because these people, who, as Marc says, "....photograph for a living...", looked at me more as a competitor than as a student or, eventually, an artist in the making.
When you open up to the outside, with a personal project dictated by your passion for photography and the desire to make it your means of artistic expression, you immediately and inexorably come into contact with two worlds: that of amateurs and photographic gadget fans, and that of professionals in wedding photography, portrait photography and commercial still life.
To this second world, you sound like an intruder and a potential competitor.
When the kind owner of a photography shop realizes that you are not commissioning prints for your personal use but for something more, the smile disappears from his face. He begins to ask you what you do for a living and, therefore, why you dedicate yourself to photography so seriously.
When I talk to artists like Marc, the feeling is completely different, and seeing that the relationship develops on affinities and not on interest gives me serenity.
I'm not so naive as not to think that artists must also make their commitment bear fruit. Still, the availability that I have experienced encourages me not to close myself in on my personal experience but rather to share it, a bit like we do in this academic phase among fellow students.
Point 6 develops on the interview and the creative result of this external project: I believe I have achieved the specific objective I had set for myself and the effective openness towards the outside world required of us.
