In Search of a New Muse...
Trying to find new subject matter as a family photographer, now that my kids are outgrowing my lens.
When I got my first digital camera it was 2007. I was traveling around the country, working backstage on a national tour of a Broadway musical. I photographed the experience: the travels, the tour bus, life backstage, the hotel life. I documented what life was actually like working in professional theater.
When I returned to New York and became a mom a few years later, I continued photographing my work life, but more and more I began to point my lens towards my kids as subject matter. They became my muses and led me on the path to starting a family photography business.
Now my kids are 12 and 9. They no longer want me taking their picture - this has to do partially with the awkward tween stage (I didn’t want to be photographed at their age either), but also has to do with all the education they get in school now about photography and the internet, etc, etc. They are very gun-shy about photography in general because they’ve had the fear of god instilled in them by various assemblies on cybersecurity at school. It’s a shame, really. I’ve noticed this outside of my kids, too - when I’m out and about with a camera - these days people are generally suspicious of your motives if you are taking pictures with something other than your phone. It didn’t used to be that way.
Regardless, as someone who has used photography as a daily creative outlet for years, I find myself in a frustrating spot at the moment, wondering what my next muse could be.
I don’t work outside the home anymore (aside from photo commissions for families). I don’t do theater anymore. I spend most days at my computer, or walking the same loop with the dog around the neighborhood. I am trying to make it a goal to do one photo walk a week this year (at a location away from my neighborhood), but its not always possible - last week I was shut inside for days with one kid positive for Covid and another with the flu. Such is life as the primary caregiver.
My cameras sit on my desk taunting me. I feel like I’ve taken every picture inside my house that I can possible take.
Are there any other family photographers out there who find themselves in the same sticky spot? What subject matter is calling to you now that your kids are grown?
My excitement and inspiration for photography comes in large part to living a “good story”. When I was doing theater, touring the country, navigating the early days of motherhood, traveling in our RV - those were good stories, and they inspired me to make good pictures. At the moment life feels a bit like an interminable Groundhog Day - get up, make the lunches, drive the kids to school, edit at the computer, pick the kids up from school, make dinner, go to sleep, repeat. Not very exciting. Not much is inspiring me to pick up the camera.
What do you do to find inspiration when life around you is the same everyday? When you feel like you’ve taken all the pictures - and milked all you can out of the everyday mundane?
I don’t have the answers but I hope to explore them here with you, and find my way out of this funk and into the next chapter.
A few ideas that intrigue me:
Place. I’m fascinated with the concept of place attachment and what makes a place feel like a home. How to make peace with living someplace you may not love.
Local history - tied to the fascination with place.
Family history/genealogy - looking into the American side of my family (they were from Virginia).
Still life - but not super styled still life. Real life still life. Raw still life.
Self portraiture. I was prolific in my early thirties, but now at almost fifty, self-portraiture is HARD. Can it be easy again?
Street photography. But in the suburbs.
Long Island. Do I have the balls to photograph it the way Joseph Szabo did. I’d like to try. Channel my inner Vivian Maier (middle-aged caregiver).
I’d love to hear from other mother artists with older kids - what are you photographing now?
