For a long time, I've been talking about connecting to another genre and rebooting my consciousness, and I forget to clarify that if I've switched to the creative wave of nightscapes with cellars, it doesn't mean that I'm just going to shoot only them.
I've never had such extremes before that I've only ever seen and wanted to photograph one thing.
Even if you take me twenty years ago, when I was photographing on film, then there was already a variety of genres, where there were landscapes, close-ups, and even portraits.
There's nothing to discuss right now: a photojournalist should be able to shoot everything!
I may be on a wave of dugouts, but I still shoot street scenes during the day.
Therefore, if I say that I've connected somewhere, it's just a change in priority.
Yes, there may be a strong connection to the genre of night photography or postcard photography, which other genres do not steal attention at all.
But if there is a need or a desire, then I can easily make a lot of beautiful pictures.
The most extreme was at the end of 2023, where I didn't go outside at all during the day for street scenes.
Now I'm on a global reporting frequency where such extremes can't happen.
There are many smaller worlds in this world, where there are also graphics, landscape, night cellars, spotted street and reportage.
And if I say that I am on the wave of dugouts, then I am still on the reportage wave, which is not a creative wave, but the main principle of seeing the world.
It's just that this principle of seeing the world is decomposed into components, into several different angles.
I see it all as a big polyhedron. Right now I'm in one corner, where I can see other faces and angles.
But when I move to another corner, there is a different picture of the world, which also decomposes into many small worlds.
It seems to me that this is the matrix of life. And I only touched on photography. What about other areas of life?
This is such a multifaceted world, where many of the worlds do not intersect at all...That's why they're called parallel.
But I can give examples in photography.
Film photographers alone have many worlds: 35mm amateur color film, slide, medium format, black and white, pinhole, large format...
Why are these worlds parallel? There are professional photographers who shoot only on 35mm black and white film and do not recognize other films. And they don't overlap with the world where people shoot on a medium-format slide.
The worlds don't have clear boundaries and there are some intersections. I've been to some of them.
But the trick is that you can get into any world!
I've checked it out from my own experience. I once experienced such genre-worlds as minimalism, dead-pan, full frontal flash, long exposure.
Try to get Bruce Gilden to shoot without a flash – he won't do it, because the frontal flash is his world, a genre with its own rules.
And now from photography to life. It doesn't matter who you are by profession, you are definitely in one of the worlds with its own rules and its own destiny. But both in the small world of photography and in the big world of life, you can get into any other world and there are already different rules and a different fate...