Your own voice

October 16, 2020 Len Metcalf

They say imitation is suicide. Emerson said it actually.

Yet, we already have spent so many years imitating to learn. If we don’t imitate we don’t grow.

Learning to speak relied on our ability to imitate.

We use imitation when we teach. We, as teachers, break things down, for our students, and show smaller achievable components for our students to imitate as they learn. Once they can imitate them they can then be encouraged to apply their own personal interpretation.

To learn art one has to be rather careful as to who you choose to imitate. You could go straight to the canon of art history. Photography as it’s own canon too. Or you could also bypass that and go straight to that one artist that stimulates you the most. Of course there may be more than one. You could also find a really good teacher.

Listening to Cole Thompson about how he practices photographic celibacy, not only wondering how he does it in our richly stimulating modern visual world, but most importantly that he spent many many years studying and imitating Ansel Adams before he started. Food for thought.

I couldn’t do artistic celibacy. I love art, music, movies, books and photographs way too much. Not to mention my imagination and my love for visual stimulation.

I think the question is really, when do you stop imitating?

Here are some thoughts as to when to stop:

when you understand their work
when you can imitate it easily
when you have learnt how they see
when you know their techniques and their tricks
when your work could be mistaken or compared to theirs
when you start to wonder whats next
when you find your own voice

That’s really the crux isn’t it. When you find your own voice.

Immitation is suicide if you were to try to pass off the imitation as your own.

Once you have learnt, the best advice is to put your head down and figure out what it is you want to express, say, or create.

The imitation bit is easy compared to the harder bit of finding your own voice.