and how should i presume? and how should i begin?

The fact remains, in my mind, that to photograph something is to honor it--- to acknowledge its greatness, even if it is a great evil. But that is it, that is all. It is not a conquest; it is merely an acknowledgment. In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Sabina explains her paintings to Tereza by saying "On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth." That is a photograph to me. That is so succinctly a photograph, or, a good one, at least. I don't know how to do that. I don't even know that if I did, I would recognize it?

I don't quote Prufrock only to have a coy title. I quote it because I feel as though those two lines embody the biggest struggle I have had at ICP this semester, especially the first. And how should I presume? I'm highly aware that often the biggest impediment to my work is myself. I edit before I even dare lift a camera to my eye. I'm constantly wondering what is too harsh, what is too common, and refuse to allow myself to organically make photographs as I once did.

I have this pact with myself that I'm not sure I follow as diligently as I ought to in places where it would be useful, but quite forcefully in instances where it would be self-sabotaging. The pact is that once I've become cognizant of a fault, I must work to rectify it.

This is getting entirely too quaint, formal and longwinded. I guess all I mean to say is that I don't workshop personal work. I don't take certain photographs because of what I perceive have been past perceptions of what certain photographs mean before making them or even going to where I might have made them. In doing so, I favor putting my odd perceptions of opinions of others in my work, over my own ideas and feelings. I guess I've run kicking and screaming from this last sentence for the last ten weeks, but a friend pointed it out to me, and I suppose it's time to own up to it in order to change it.

I don't workshop personal work because it fucking terrifies me. It fucking terrifies me that because you put up something bad or scary and it just so happens to relate to you and you're in the room, everyone will just be nice to you. I never want that to happen. And I never want any one person to really know that much about me. I'm constantly leaking all over the place; whining and wheedling and generally being an annoying mess, but it's come to my attention that part of the reason I do that is so it is more believable for another person to think that that is all there is of me, to me. Additionally, in making personal work, one would have to honor all their idiotic demons. I'm not ready to do that. I'm not ready to consider anything that's happened to me that big, or that scary, or even truly something that happened to me, something I can own.

I've been told by three people who hold so many pieces of myself and my past that it scares me, and changes the way I see them, that they are that big and that scary, and when I don't take that, they say they are that big and scary to me and that that's okay. I feel that most things that have happened to me are my responsibility, that I set them in motion. So many worse things have happened to so many other people, or even the same things in harsher situations, that it's hard to take any of the things that have happened to me seriously and seems ridiculous to "honor" them by photographing them. This is another thing people argue with and I'm aware of their arguments and why they argue them, but it's still how I feel. And I guess all of that was a huge rat tail in order to say, I am aware that I do not put a lot of myself in my work and I do it on purpose and I do it pretty well. Even what you can peg on me from my work, that I'm African-American or that I'm queer, I promise I'm a lot less comfy with those terms, in particular the former, than other people are with ascribing them to me. I also promise I have arguments against assigning those terms as the sole motivators for the work I make. There's a lot of other less fun ones too: guilt, privilege, etc.

Even though one of the first things I learned when I went to college was the enormity of what I didn't know, I strongly resent when someone assumes I don't know something I do know or assumes I don't think about making the work I make, and I think that that's put into place some badly used caution. I know that that's a paradox, but I guess it's the toolset I'm working with right now. I'd like to fix it. Want to help?

p.s. when i get nervous, i write using a really ridiculous volcabulary and for a really long time. i'm sorry.

p.p.s. in looking at other people's entries, i feel like i took the diary entry assignment entirely too seriously. again, i'm sorry.