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Why We Do It: Photographers and Photo Editors on the Passion That Drives Their Work
JUNE 30, 2017 The people who make up today’s thriving photographic community are our eyes to the world. Whether established artists and journalists or passionate emerging voices, they inform us, they inspire us, they amaze us, they put our world in the broader context of history.
But that community also faces great challenges — dwindling sales, increased competition and a fragile trust in photographers’ mission to inform. Too often, those factors can make those of us in that community, photographers and photo editors alike, lose sight of what drive us
For this post, my last as editor of TIME LightBox, I asked 13 of my colleagues – some of the many photographers and photo editors who have influenced and inspired me over my last ten years in this industry – to answer these essential questions: Why do they do it? Why do they wake up every morning ready to take photographs, to edit them, to publish them? Why is photography important to them and, by extension, to all of us
Here are their answers. Kathy Ryan, Director of Photography, the New York Times Magazine Photographs are the universal language of our era. Everyone has hundreds, maybe thousands in their pocket. Weightless, they turn the scale when the argument is: What happened here? Images don’t age or warp. A great photographer’s strings never go out of tune. It is for this reason that we need photographers. They are the ones who sort all the chaos of the world into images that bring clarity to the free-for-all of life. They are the witnesses and artists who can distill the mayhem and beauty that surrounds us. They call our attention to the things we miss in our everyday lives and they call our attention to events and people at a great distance from our own patch of the universe. When they direct our eyes and hearts with precision and honesty, we know what we know differently and better. Photographers teach us to look again, look harder. Look through their eyes. Ruddy Roye, Photographer I shoot because I see. I shoot because if I don’t, I don’t know who will. Activism is seen as a dirty word. I shoot because I find peace in being especially active, and being a vigorous advocate for a cause. How does one define what a “cause” is? According to Webster, it is “a person or thing that acts, happens, or exists in such a way that some specific thing happens as a result; the producer of an effect.”
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