Over boeken, literaire reflecties en het web van literatuur, door Niek de Greef. Werner Herzog, Paul Theroux, V.S. Naipaul en meer. Nederlandse en Engelstalige boeken.

Make Your Art No Matter What (Beth Pickens) – some book notes

Make Your Art No Matter What - Beth Pickens book cover

Quick notes from Beth Pickens’ practical guide for artists struggling to balance creative work with making a living: Make Your Art No Matter What.

What Artists Need

Artists need

  • To make art
  • To have a community of likeminded artists caring for each other
  • To consume art and information in any form

Time Management for Artists

Time is always a scarce resource. This is at least as true for artists who need to manage their time carefully. Tool: keep a time diary.

How to make time for the right things:

  • Have a sabbat: do nothing productive, including not making art, 1 day a week. Slowing down will reorganize your thinking and priorities.
  • Have a personal maintenance day once a month. During this day, create a list of goals for everything: what to try, where to be, with whom, what is important, etc.
  • Warm-up exercises: a ritual start to get your mind into a productive state
  • Ask help. If someone can help free up hours of your day.

Making a Living as an Artist

Making 100% of your income from your art will not make you happier.

Create an inventory of your skills, both technical and general. This will help you understand the jobs you are qualified for.

Do not let your employer dominate your life. Employment is a contract. That is all.

Investigate how your peeroes (peer heroes) are making money.

On Looking

In ‘On Looking’ (‘Met andere ogen’ in het Nederlands) by Alexandra Horowitz, I read, paraphrasing: if you look closely, there is always something interesting to see.

As a photographer, I was already convinced of this. You should be able to stand anywhere and take good pictures. This principle is also one of the starting points of my Noord-Holland grid project: every block can bring interesting pictures.

Some photographers suffer from the opposite: looking for the most amazing image; Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment. BS. Recognizing a good image is then based on the images in your head. And thus, touching on Horowitz, you look over the other interesting things around you.

A third way of photographing is fantasizing about an image and making it. That is more or less how Jeff Wall works. He drives around the city, recognizes an image, remembers it, and later reconstructs it to make a photograph of it. Or Viviane Sassen, Andreas Gursky, Gregory Crewdson. The freedom of the mind is your only limitation.

Jeff Wall The Thinker 1986, staged photography lightbox

More on looking, as a writer.

Today in the mail

An incredible set of presents in the analog mail today.

From left to right:

Punk zines Terror Management and How To Photograph Punk Musicians In 5 Easy STEPS from Terror Management. See also his blog.

The Many Lives of Erik Kessels, by Aperture and see the site of Erik Kessels—super inspiring guy.

Two pictures for the zine MADNES by Bouwe Brouwer in a suspect plastic bag.

The photo book Black Diamonds by Rich-Joseph Facun. Ik did not know him yet, my friend Raymond recommended it to me by my friend. I will report about it later.

Coming and Going by Jim Goldberg, collosal, consume in small bites

page from coming and going photobook jim goldberg

This is so cool. I look at the massive photo book (is it a photo book you may ask; more like a colossal collage book) Coming and Going by Jim Goldberg is so large that it is difficult to handle. The book is heavy, and the pages are enormous. Small photos are blown up over a spread; there are densely packed pages of images and text and blank pages with a small photo in the middle of the page. But it is brilliant. It inspires, saddens, and shocks; it is beautiful, sweet, and heartbreaking and follows each other in rapid succession.

Consume in small bites.

page from coming and going photobook jim goldberg
Coming and Going - Jim Goldberg