I have not, nor will I ever take a photo that changes the world. My photos don’t affect public sentiment. My photos don’t encourage public discourse. My photos don’t sell anything — much less themselves. They simply exist. Which makes me believe I exist. Which is better than believing I’m just an algorithm running inside an aging carbon-based computer.
Quite simply, I take photos of things that interest me, using whatever techniques yield an image that appeals to me on both a visual and emotional level. If other people happen to find enjoyment in my photos, all the better — after all, existence loves company. But finding acceptance beyond my own self has never motivated my photography. I shoot for me.
But every few years, I start to lose interest in what I’m photographing. Mind you, I never lose interest in photography — just in my previous subject matter, or my approach to those subjects. These periods, in which I struggle to take photos, used to fill me with a cataclysmic existential dread — as if not taking as many photos meant I didn’t exist. But with age comes insight, and I’ve learned this isn’t a sign that I’ve ceased to be, but a sign that we are always evolving and always changing, and that the photos I once took were literal snapshots of a previous me. I used to fear these periods of uncertainty. But now I accept them for what they are — a time to experiment, and fail, and fail some more, and learn about myself all over again.
I’m smack in the middle of one such spell right now — the first in nearly five years. My muscle memory takes photos of an echo of me, but I know there’s something more — some extra dimension I’m missing. Some other journey I’m meant to embrace. Sometimes it’s taken me months to find my way. Sometimes it’s taken years.
In the meantime, while I wrestle with evolution, I’ll continue to take photos. And I’ll occasionally take a few good ones. And I’ll definitely take a boatload — if not a flotilla — of truly bad ones. Fortunately, struggling to photograph also makes me believe I exist. It’s just a crappier version of it.
© 2026 grEGORy simpson
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