Photographing is caring. You should only photograph and focus all your efforts around photography solely on what you love, what you care for.
You should photograph your life. Because what else is there really to care about? Nothing.
This might sound selfish. Soulless. Stupid. But ask yourself. Truly ask yourself. What else than your everyday life do you really care about? I mean care for with a motivation coming from the inside? Whether it be joy or fear. No external drivers or social norms can and need to pressure you into caring about your life.
You should care for what you photograph. Caring for your life cannot be faked. It is sincere. And sincerity and emotion are the only things that move. In life and in photography. So photography is life. And your photography should be about your life.
In the merely one year that I have been seriously engaged with photography and reflected on its psychology this concept of shikei - a Japanese term used by Araki meaning "personal landscape" - had the biggest impact on me. It just makes so much sense.
Being new to photography people stress about finding their subjects (or concepts) and their visual language. Just by their they do not necessarily mean theirs but just something that works for them.
I wish the meant theirs. As in their life, their emotions, their world. Them.
Your life is a great subject because it only exists once. Why go out of your way to find the most sophisticated and radical concepts in an attempt to be different when you already are? Just by being you. Human life is by far the most enticing notion in this world and each of us has a unique one.
Starting from my seminar at OKS photography school in Berlin and the proposed topic "Abseits" (German for "apart") I wandered off, away from literal interpretations and ended up documenting the daily life of my girlfriend and me as we drift apart irreversibly from our youth.
An endlessly relevant period of my life. Focusing my photography on it makes me open my eyes, embrace the now and capture a looming heavy nostalgia of the future. I love every moment I bring the viewfinder to my eye, every release of the shutter, every frame that is advanced. I love engaging with photography as an additional layer of communication revealing the unspoken and heightening the mundane.
Anything other than capturing this contemporary personal landscape of mine feels just plain wrong. Whether the meaning transcends my reality and reaches others is secondary. It is all about my life and the things I love.
That is all I care about. That is all I photograph.