A photographer friend recently posed the question to her photographer friends, “Why do you make pictures?” She received a stream of responses – many from mothers – like her and like me – that they make photographs of the seasons in their family’s lives to hold onto them and to help them remember, years from now, all of the people that their children were along the way. Other friends hoped that a few of their photographs would end up connecting the generational branches of their family trees by making past relations real to living ones through stories triggered by time spent over pictures. Some made pictures for gratitude, others as meditation. I agreed with all of these motivations. I make many pictures for myself and for others for these same reasons.

But then there are my other photographs. The ones I make away from home and, often, on my own. These images of suburban and urban topography are wholly mine. Other people might like them, and years from now my children might remember me by my enthusiasm for making them, but that is not at all their point. I make these images because something compels me to document my familiar manmade landscape – the way it interacts with the natural one, the way it evolves, and the way it reflects and effects the people who interact with it. Before I answered my friend’s question, I sat with an awkward feeling about the response I wanted to type for a moment before I let my fingers loose across the keys. Seeing the words appear on my screen only exacerbated the awkwardness. But  I did hit post after typing “those images feel like my calling.”

I’ve been replaying the strangeness of this moment for a few weeks now. Why did that answer feel both so true and yet so uncomfortable all at once? I’ve decided that it’s the self-importance implicit in the words which made me squirm. That inner voice squeaking at me, “who do you think you are, talking about a calling? It’s the same inner voice that causes my verbal stumbles when asked, “Oh, you’re a photographer? What do you do?” I usually mumble something about documentary and fine art, and maybe throw in my interest in the vernacular. In short, I leave people with absolutely no clue as to what kinds of images I make.

How ironic that the single-minded clarity of vision and sense of purpose which I possess while making my pictures of suburban topography completely falls apart when I try to explain them. Yet the confidence that I have today while making those images – and I honestly do feel almost invincible when I wander an unfamiliar neighborhood with a camera and a few rolls of film in my pocket- was hard earned.

When I started making these photographs, I was terribly nervous and hesitant, and as a result I usually let more photos slip away than I took, but my desire to make the images won out in the end. It drove me to get out photographing again and again, each time a little bolder and more purposeful than the time before. A few winning images in my scans was all it took to get me itching to go out again, the next time with even greater resolve. Eventually, what had at first made me uncomfortable, evolved into what now makes me feel most alive and connected with the parts of me that adult responsibilities and motherhood have done their best to quash.

So, I am beginning to realize it may follow, that if I want to share these images on larger platforms and grow as a photographer, I’m going to have to push through my great discomfort at describing them and my work – even though just talking about my photos as “work” feels ridiculously pompous – till I get to the point where I am as confident and comfortable talking about my photos as I have become making them.

After all, if we stay where it’s comfortable, we not only don’t grow, we actually stagnate.

Practice is the only thing for it, and here is where I begin.

Why do you make pictures? We would love to know, even if typing the words makes you squirm a little.

–Debbie