Can you share a bit about finding your artistic voice, first as a filmmaker and now as you explore photography?
My filmmaking journey has been relatively long and continues to grow. I did not attend film school. I attended a school where you create your own major with a focus on interdisciplinary studies. My primary focus was American Cultural Studies and as a result I found my primary cinematic focus navigating issues of Race, Class and Gender. I taught myself how to shoot and edit which proved to be the best skillset for my eventual career as a director.
Much of my style derives from my skills as an editor. I primarily work in non fiction, which doesn’t always lend itself to having a certain type of aesthetic and narrative control from the outset. It’s very much the art of listening and observation. By embracing that technique I quickly discovered that the control really happens in post production, when you’re molding the clay and writing the narrative. It was in that space that I found my creative voice. I have a background in music and at some point found myself editing music videos. Over time I found myself learning how to incorporate a more rhythmic style of editing without sacrificing the key pillars of filming which is story, character, theme and in my opinion emotion.
My photo journey has been very different. With film, my primary focus has been on how to achieve a desired emotion and translate that to an audience, which often times can be reverse engineered using the tools of cinema (theme exploration, metaphor, music, character development, etc). I have a comfort in using the tools of filmmaking to manipulate audiences. I’m very much still out of my comfort zone when it comes to photography.
Similar to filmmaking, I don’t have a scholastic background in photography. I started focusing on the medium after I was somewhat established as a filmmaker. The same year that I won the academy award was the also the same year that my mother passed away and for some reason I found myself drawn to still photography. Certainly I used the medium to help expand my understanding of how to capture a scene however, what became more notable for me was the types of images that I was drawn towards. I found myself drawn towards mystery and the abstract, which is very different than my work in film. I decided to continue down that path and as a result I still find myself discovering my voice. Similar to my film work, I think emotion and story wins the day, however the tone with which it takes is very different. One day hopefully my sensibilities in film and my sensibilities in photography will collide. We’ll see what that produces.
