Why We Do It: Photographers and Photo Editors on the Passion

[Schewe]

This is worth a look....

Why We Do It: Photographers and Photo Editors on the Passion That Drives Their Work


LIFE photographer Margaret Bourke-White making a precarious photo from the Chrysler Building.  Oscar Graubner—The LIFE Images Collection/Getty

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.

[Rob C]

You know what, I'd be far more interested in reading (and seeing pictures in) a deep report of your own professional career.

I have no idea if you are still making photographs as a living or whether your interest lies wholly in the digital world - the latter both confuses and leaves me less than enthusiastic except for the "tricks" it allows me to play today, my a substitute for playing solitaire - so yeah, I'd rather see and read something about your work than that of people on lists.

Rob C