I Refuse To Be One-Dimensional

Long before I started writing this blog, and even before becoming a photographer, I lived in a very different reality. It is difficult to remember a time when I didn't work in the Creative Industries, and some days it feels like I have been doing this forever. But, I used to live a very one-dimensional life where my career defined me as a person, and I wasn't involved in much else other than what I did for a living. From 9 to 6, I worked in the office, and after work, I would hang out with my friends and colleagues from the office. I spent almost a decade growing up professionally, but as a person and as a human being, I became stagnant.

These days, I sometimes feel that there are so many dimensions to me that it's hard to keep track. I find it difficult when others want me to define myself in just a few words. I work as a photographer, yes, but I am so much more than my work. And I am involved in so many different things that I have to tailor my introduction depending on the person that I am talking to. For my community projects peers, I am a photographer exploring social issues. When I'm in commercial environments, I work in Fashion. For my poetry club, I'm a writer. When I'm at the Ethical Society, I'm a fellow humanist. And for my mentees, I am sometimes mentor, sometimes project manager. To name a few.

Admittedly, we can't possibly go around introducing ourselves by saying the long list of things that we are involved in. But, sometimes, introductions can feel very limiting. Like when I have to introduce my work to someone who has never seen it before. Having just one online portfolio that shows a range of everything I do can sometimes get confusing. In this industry, you are supposed to be one-dimensional. Unless you are really famous, then you can do whatever you want. Otherwise, your portfolio must reflect the type of photographer that you are trying to sell yourself as.

Some types of photography are complementary. You can be a Food and Travel Photographer, or work at the same time in Fine Arts and Portraiture. But, when I try to explain that I am interested in exploring current social issues but that I also shoot commercially as a fashion and portraits photographer, it sometimes feels like I'm talking about two contradictory things. It might be because you are not seen as ethical when you work inside an industry like Fashion. But, like I always say, change comes from within, and it is us who work inside the industry who have the power to change it for the better.

What all the things that I do have in common is me. I am so much more than one thing or the other. I am the sum of all of them and so many more that I don't have enough space to mention. Like the founder of the fashion brand Sabinna, designer Sabinna Rachimova, said today: I like "taking on too many projects at the same time, forgetting that the day has only 24 hours". But we wouldn't do it any other way because this is who we are, right Sabinna?

Photo credit: behind the scenes taken by Diana Buntajova.

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A World Without Social Media Likes

Picture for a second a world without social media likes and follower counts. Would you still use social media? I think very few people would. What made the social media phenomenon so successful had less to do with the social part of it and more to do with the need that we have to be liked and accepted. Is a utopian world without likes and follower counts on social media possible? Some think it is.

Platforms like Facebook or Instagram play with our self-esteem and hook us by making us think that the more likes or people following us that we have, the better we are. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book, women’s magazines have been doing it for ages making women feel bad about themselves and their bodies to hook them into buying the products from their advertisers.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey recently told an audience that the "follower count" on the social platforms is meaningless and that, back in the day, when they were still developing the tool, they were not really thinking about it as an important feature. Little did they know that it would become the most important feature for users, advertisers and anyone profiting from social media in general. These days, however, Twitter is considering discontinuing the “likes” feature.

How would a post-likes, post-follower-count world look like? Would social media platforms be relevant anymore? Maybe this would be the biggest digital revolution since social media itself. People sharing ideas and having meaningful connections without the popularity contest that these platforms have turned into. A real social platform.

Could this even be possible? How would you feel if you weren’t able to tell if anyone watched or liked your posts or stories? How would the so-called influencers make a living? Maybe it would be a more democratic and less noisy social media environment, where the algorithms of these platforms wouldn’t be able to favour the posts of those users with more likes and followers, or where the motivation to write a post would be to share knowledge rather than to clickbait people for traffic and conversion.

Maybe I’m just being too naive and someone would find a way to keep on profiting from our vanity and egos. Whoever figures it out and finds a way to monetize it will be ahead of the game. Is anyone up for the challenge?

Photo credit: photo by Ruby Rose.

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Napoleon Didn’t Have Internet

Napoléon Bonaparte was a French statesman whose influence over European and global affairs made him one of history’s most notorious and controversial leaders. His political and cultural legacy is still relevant almost 200 years after his death. And he accomplished all this without access to the internet. If he had used social media we would all be speaking French today!

I was born in a time when there weren’t any mobile phones, nor internet, nor personal computers. But, in my early twenties, almost everyone I knew had a mobile phone, and most people had computers at home. The internet revolution was about to start and change our lives forever.

In spite of all these technological advances and the influence that they had on our culture and in our lives, none of them changed the way we see life as social media did. And when mobile phones became smarter, we had in our hands the power to communicate without limits, to learn anything we wanted to and to conquer the world.

Social media brought people together and in today’s society time and distance are no longer barriers. You can connect with anyone, anytime, anywhere, which makes it the perfect tool for bringing the world together. But, somehow, it has also evolved into a parallel universe, some sort of upside-down, where your best friends are people that you have never seen in person and your real-life friends are not relevant if they are not online; a world where brands measure the success of their political statements in sales and not in how they are making this a better world.

Lately, I’m getting a bit overwhelmed by social media. Everyone else seems to be doing better, having more fun or being more successful altogether. Of course, I know that it’s all fake, but it doesn’t help with the self-imposed challenges that sometimes make their way into our minds and numb our efforts to move forward. "My work is not good enough", "What if nobody likes what I do?", "What if they say no?"... all irrational fears but all fed by how perfect everyone else’s lives or careers seem to be.

Social media is anything but ‘social’ these days. It is very alienating and it has taken control of both our personal and work lives to the point where we now do things just because they would look good online. Napoleon would have thrived in this environment. In spite of allegedly having so many complexes and of being looked down on by his peers, he got to be one of the most influential persons in history. Imagine how much more he could have accomplished if only he had had Instagram?

Or, would it have been his doom? Perhaps all his self-doubts would have been magnified by seeing online everything that he was not. We will never know. What I would like to find out is what would happen if we take all the power that we have in our hands these days and use it to do some good instead of just to pretend that we are cool. I bet not even Napoleon would be able to defeat us.

Photo credit: your typical restaurant bathroom selfie.

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