Hi fam,
Something I hear from photographers constantly:
“I've been working on this project for three years and I still can't finish it.”
Usually the assumption is that something is wrong. With the project. With their commitment. With their clarity. With them.
But sometimes the project isn't unfinished because it's broken. (Also the project isn’t finished because you or them are either!)
It's unfinished because it doesn't want to resolve.
We've been taught that stories need “endings”. That a body of work should have a clear arc — a beginning, a middle, an end. That “completed” means “arrived somewhere.” “done".
But grief doesn't arrive somewhere. It cycles. It returns to the same places with new understanding each time. Diasporic stories don’t always end with us arriving to a new country.
Trauma doesn't resolve linearly either. It resurfaces —in the body, in the image, in the pull back to the same subject years later, in relationships, in our children, in our children’s children’s.
Inheritance doesn't end. It repeats through generations until someone names it clearly enough that it can shift.
If your project keeps returning to the same place, the same face, the same question — that's not failure. (Also neither are you!)
That might be the structure itself. The way you are pushing a type of narrative that doesn’t serve it.
The circular narrative ends where it begins, but the return reveals what the journey cost. That's not an unfinished project. That's a different kind of completion altogether.
Before you decide your project is broken (or not worth finishing) ask yourself whether you're applying the wrong ending to the right story.
We are looking in depth at narrative, storytelling, photography themes, identity and who you are as a photographer so that you can pitch, sell, get hired and finish that project that is SCREAMING to come out. 12 weeks and you will see clearly, I promise you. From Chaos to Clarity is here.
Enrollment closes March 26. Are you ready to give shape to your work?
❤
Lola