What do you do? That age old question that creatives hear too often and tend to struggle to answer. Is there really a correct answer? There is the answer that is true; that we are also just as confused. That our entire existence is merely that, existing, and, the never ending pursuit to make sense of it. To make work of it. Then there is the answer which is a fabrication; “I’m a photographer” said with a shaking voice as we hope they don’t press any further. As creatives, we rarely meet the horizon of understanding and there are always more questions, more attempts to put us into a category and to understand us. “Oh right, what kind of pictures do you take?” Ah shucks, that one is even harder to answer… If we say ‘lifestyle’ we know that more questions follow, but if we say ‘portraits’ we know that we then need to clarify the kind, and heck, if we say documentary well then they think we are just trotting about with Louis Theroux on the daily. And so we all gather collectively around this nuanced CV and agree that we do stuff. We offered enough for them to assign some meaning to us and so we all move on with our lives to do other things.
The quest to validate oneself is one that never really ends, perhaps because the validation is often only sought by others and rarely given. And so, I wonder, what if we were to just give it to ourselves? How big and bold and basic is that? Perhaps the answer to What do you do? is just… my best, or… whatever it takes, or… something, anything, everything.
I am aware that this quest for meaning and understanding is not unique to just creatives. We all have at times no doubt had to make attempts to answer that question. Perhaps, then, it is fairer to say that creatives often struggle to answer it and the reason that I think so is largely because the answer is never enough. It is as though our entire meaning and existence is based upon what we do for work, or how hard our job is, how successful we are, and not that we do something but that we do something difficult, all the time, and, do it well. It feels like we have come to a place in society whereby we only value those that do something so long as the something they spend their time doing is: tiring, all encompassing and hard graft. Well, I don’t know about you, but, working as a creative in the creative industry is, by any standard, bloody hard work. So bravo to everyone out there doing the darn thing.
I am just as guilty here, by the way. I only really truly have given myself value through work when that work has been considered as ‘employment’. And so comes the use of language. In creative terms, there’s work and then there’s employment. I have been both. You are a photographer making long form documentary work on ecology and the sense of place? that is work. You are a Development Coordinator for an arts organisation? that is employment. The latter is often where you tend to give yourself true value, because, you are “contributing”. You have shifts, a payslip, a line manager. And, ultimately, you are vulnerable.
Employment ends, work is forever.
A few weeks ago I was sat over a zoom call with my employer, a HR advisor and an uncomfortably dressed atmosphere to discuss my role within the organisation. “Unfortunately we have no other option now but to make you redundant with immediate effect”. And just like that, whoosh, I was gone. The cloud of redundant dust swirled up and before I knew it I was at my desk alone staring at my reflection in the black screen in front of me.
Immediate Effect. Yep, that’s pretty accurate. Sure was immediate. Everything suddenly new and right there in the room with you. What do I do now was my first question.
Next up was anger. You gotta be kidding… me? All the effort and energy I had put in, all those hours and days I gave away just to be lumped out like this? All the commuting when all along I had just been cycling head first towards… this? I won’t go into the particulars of my redundancy because, well, just because. But it wasn’t nice, it hasn’t been nice for a while and, well, it isn’t nice now. I gave so much of myself towards the role and the organisation and now all of that has whizzed up into a twister of regret. But then, why not me?
This has sort of happened before. I’d spent 8 years in a relationship with someone and then one day whoosh; I’m redundant. No longer needed or wanted, no longer giving value, no longer useful. And though this is a new experience, I feel like I’ve been here before. This is a business decision, it is not personal, it is not based on your performance… well, it feels pretty f**king personal to me?
This morning, I spent ten minutes with my head tilted and resting on the back of the sofa with my eyes staring upwards at the crack in the ceiling. I wondered how long it had been there? When did it grow, this void above my head? I had been staring for so long that my eyes began to do that thing where they go out of focus, and in the blurred reality it builds, I found myself drifting towards the crack and wondering if I might be able to slip through it, and where it might take me. Then I blinked and blinked again until eventually I had refocussed and everything was back to normal. Me on the sofa with the dog, this crack in the ceiling, and, the redundancy.
I’ve had a number of ideas about what I might do now/next. Where I might go and what might I spend my time here doing. That’s really all we are here for isn’t it? Our one true universal paycheque: time. We are here to do, even if that is to do nothing. Which, by the way, is on my list of things I want to try and do. It’s been a few weeks now, many coffees, many sleepless nights because of the coffees and many more coffees because of the sleepless nights and somewhere in that spiral and cycle I had a thought; What if I just do them all? What if I just do everything I want? What if I just do everything I can?
Why make work out of decisions? It seems like a bad way to spend unemployment, especially when I am not being paid to make decisions. And so, why not just try them all. Not having to pick or choose means it costs me nothing (mentally). Having responsibilities helps us (me) to feel like an adult.
To start, I wrote a list of things I would like to do. I sat and asked myself not what do you do, but, what do you WANT to do? I’ve already spoken about how hard it is to answer to that first question, what do you do? But have you ever tried to consider what you want to do?… well, here’s how it goes: you will either have a long and immediate list, or, you will have nothing, nada, no idea. Both are fine by the way, and, perhaps are equally as simple and clear. Not knowing is a quest and so is trying to pick one from the long list. Both involve the same thing: trying.
First on the list was to write for a living. Ah yes… that very simple and easy task of writing for a living that is very well known for being so easy to do… Good idea Cameron… Well, here I am, writing, living… that’s a start, right? If my life was a vehicle then it would be a 1995 Renault Espace and for the last two years my Substack took the farthest seat possible, back row, near the window, seatbelt firmly tightened and clipped in, Me? Sat next to it with my head tilted into the window, my skin blushed from the time i’ve spent pressed up against it looking out at everyone and everything whizzing past.
For most of us, work can take up so much of our lives. We tend to give our all to work because we are so acutely aware of its importance not just to ourselves and how we survive but to others and how we are understood. Work has been central to how we navigate our way through life. It puts the food on the table, pays for the house we go to bed in, exhausted, and, it pays for the 95 Espace that we bury our other self inside of and park at the far end of the car park.
We also give a lot to work because we are asked to, be it through contracts that stipulate x, y and z or management that holds magnifiers to the window of our office, watching and assessing how we perform. This is where employment and work collide. Employment is what you are given, work is what you put in. I wish we could be kinder to ourselves as creatives and better understand that the work we put in is enough, or, that there is always room for more, and that both can be true and not distinct to the other. That our value is placed in ourselves and not just the work we make or how hard it was to make it.
Naturally, it feels better for me then not to answer the question, but to address it. I put to you, fine reader, that it is not ‘What do you do?’ but ‘Who are you?’… Okay, so that is rather open ended I know, but perhaps in order to really tell someone what we do, or want to do, we really need to just let them know who we are? I think deep down that is actually the question being asked. And so, in order to try to do that both for myself and for anyone wanting to know - here’s a reintroduction to me.
I am Cameron, I have been making photographs since I was 10 years old and somehow managed to make that my entire personality by the age of 16. I have had a relatively successful time making editorial work in London and beyond, photographing for a range of clients and some really cool things. I have been making long form personal and documentary work for most of that time too. I moved from London to Scotland 7 years ago and now live by the sea. I like to make photographs whilst out walking, mostly with my dog in tow. I enjoy getting to know my surroundings by use of my camera. I have a varied relationship to writing, first started as a columnist for a popular teen magazine way way back (when I myself was just a teenager), to then writing photo essays and some fiction, and, now, here on my Substack, where I aim to write on photography, a creative life and the ways we see. So, there it is, albeit quite brief, but, an attempt to let you know what I do/who I am.
‘Who I am’ seems quite finite, so perhaps it is better to go with ‘who I intend to be’. That has a little bit more wiggle room, no? It changes day to day. Redundancy has made me very alert to that way of being. In the time that I was with my employer, I sort of moulded myself into the title of the role. Whenever anyone asked me what do you do, I had an answer, it was simple; I am a Development Coordinator for a Visual Arts Organisation. I would be that person not just in the office, but on the commute, in the supermarket, and, worst of all, at home in bed at 2 a.m. spiralling thinking about all the work I had to do. The strange truth of all of it is that I was never that person. I was never that thing. I just had to be because I was employed to be.
I don’t much like this binary system for organising ourselves to each other based on work, or effort, or successes. Why can’t we just be or do all of the things? How nice is that? I have long had a copy of The Multi-Hyphen Method from Emma Gannon sitting on my bookshelf, I can’t remember exactly when I bought it or where I was at that time specifically in my life, however, I do know that it was an attempt to better understand the idea that I don’t need to be just one thing, that I can be many things. Or, rather, that I AM just one thing that does many things. Yes, I think that might be it? Anyway, it is down from the shelf and on my desk ready to finally be read and so perhaps i’ll better understand that when I am finished. Also, Emma writes the hugely popular The Hyphen here on Substack, please do check that out too.
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
- Walt Whitman (1819-1892) taken from Song of Myself, 51
When my redundancy hit, so with it came a vast open landscape of questions and opportunities. I was now the one asking the question, though this time it was ‘What do you do NOW?’. So, in attempt to find an answer for myself, I have decided to pick my camera back up and re-enter the orbit of making photographs because I want to, because I can, and, because I am redundant. During my tenure of that role I had no time for my camera, or very little at least. Any time that I did have left outside of that job was spent thinking about the stuff I didn’t get done or the day I needed to return to the office. Having this chance to now reconnect with my camera, officially, is a welcome adjustment.
I have been making pictures for most of my life. Some for work, some for myself, some for something and some for the folders that sit on my desktop waiting patiently to hide them in. Pictures are my way of making sense of my surroundings, or at least try to. I can often feel more connected to the photograph of a place than I would if actually standing there in the middle of it. I don’t know why, it’s just how it is. I often describe my practice or my approach to photography as an investigation of the internal and external landscape (in short: about ‘place’). And so, what is this place I am in now? How do I photograph this? How do I make sense of it in the way I know how to? I think the answer might be simpler than I first expected: to try.
At what point does redundancy end? Is it the moment you are officially made so? Is it the point at which you find another job to occupy this time you have now been given back? Or, is it when you yourself choose the end on a very normal day at a very normal hour in your very normal life? A day where you find yourself doing something, anything, but something.
On Sunday afternoon, whilst out walking my dog down at the estuary, I saw a magpie perched on a branch. One for sorrow I said out loud to myself and anyone willing to listen. I laughed at how accurate it felt, of course it’s just ONE magpie, this sorrow that walks with us beckoned it so. I kicked a few pebbles at my feet and felt sorry for myself and carried on moving through the bramble. Then, as the air thickened and greyed, a second magpie flew right in front of me and perched itself on the branch next to the first. Two for joy, I smirked, and in an instant a crushing storm let itself in to the open air and drenched us with a blizzard of rain. And just like that, joy. The joy of being alive and feeling the storm. I began to laugh as the wind blew us about in the tall grass. The dog threw himself under a gorse bush and I joined him there, hooked my arm over his back and pulled him in close as we waited for the clouds to break. Joy, that’s it, right there under the sweet vanilla scent with my dog and a storm, on a very normal day in my very normal life, unemployed, but doing something.
Ahh Cameron
Once again a beautiful piece of writing
I was beside you every step and will always continue to be x x