Had an interview today with photographique, think it went really well, but you never know. Yesterday the symposium was so fun and interesting, there was so much more for me to make notes on than I could while I was helping out, but I found John’s way of talking about life and photography very resonant, and I found all of the conversations about writing really interesting, but especially Lydia’s take. That kind of reminder that this is a craft, approach writing as you wold photography: be deliberate, keep it short, be cool about it, know the field, but not too much, don’t be too attached, be able to step into the role of the observer, have a thick skin, have a vision, have a bigger driving aim, larger than the words on the page, that allows you to be less attached to the words on the page, because a lot of them won’t be able to stay. Another thing I took from it: if I don’t look at photographs to develop how I photograph, why look at writing (the crafted storytelling kind) to develop how I write? Instead, I should research in the way I do around photography, trying to understand a more of holistic sense of what art can do, and how artists function and their art functions, and then apply that to my use of either craft, photography or writing.
At the end of the night, after the electrical failure stunt, I went to the pub and had a lovely warm chat with Lydia about highgate and playing football and whether or not supporting arsenal makes you a terrible person. Not sure if that counts as networking, but it definitely brightened my day!