THE PHOTOGRAPHS I WOULD MISS
I spent years trying to make photographs people would remember.
Now I find myself drawn to the photographs I would miss if I never made
Some images arrive before the words do.
I thought that sentence would be the ending.
Instead, it became the beginning.
Since writing it, a strange question has followed me around.
Not while I was working.
Not while I was editing.
Not while talking about photography.
But in the quiet moments in between.
The moments when there is nobody to impress and nothing to prove.
What photographs would I actually miss if I never made them?
The question sounds simple.
Yet the longer I sit with it, the more difficult it becomes.
Because it asks me to remove almost everything that usually surrounds creative work.
No audience.
No algorithm.
No clients.
No expectations.
No strategy.
Just me and the idea.
Would I still make it?
Over the years, photography has given me many things.
Experiences.
Friendships.
Recognition.
A career.
A way of seeing the world.
And I am grateful for all of it.
But lately I've started noticing something.
Not all photographs occupy the same place inside me.
Some are successful.
Some are beautiful.
Some are important.
And then there are the others.
The strange ones.
The unnecessary ones.
The photographs that make very little sense from the outside.
The photographs that exist because a question refused to leave me alone.
A man floating beneath an umbrella.
A balloon drifting into the sky.
A quiet moment on a train.
An image that begins with curiosity rather than purpose.
Those are often the photographs I remember most.
Not because they are better.
But because they taught me something.
About people.
About life.
About myself.
For a long time, I described myself as a photographer.
Lately, I've started wondering if that was ever the full story.
Perhaps the camera was never the point.
Perhaps it was simply the tool I happened to choose.
Writers think in words.
Musicians think in sound.
Painters think in color.
I think in images.
The older I get, the more I realize that I don't use photography to make photographs.
I use photography to make thoughts visible.
That realization changed something.
Because the moment photography becomes a way of thinking, categories start to matter less.
Portrait.
Street.
Fashion.
Nude.
Fine Art.
Commercial.
They all have their place.
But none of them explain why an image exists.
What interests me now is something deeper.
The thought behind the photograph.
The curiosity behind the photograph.
The question behind the photograph.
Maybe that is what I have been searching for all along.
Not subjects.
Not genres.
Not categories.
Ideas.
Lately I've been wondering if that is what I have been missing.
Not better photographs.
Not bigger projects.
Not more visibility.
Just more room for curiosity.
More room for ideas that don't need permission.
More room for images that exist simply because they want to exist.
The kind of photographs that make no sense on a marketing plan.
The kind of photographs that don't ask whether they belong somewhere.
The kind of photographs that remind me why I picked up a camera in the first place.
Perhaps that is what this next chapter is really about.
Not abandoning anything.
Not reinventing myself.
Not becoming someone new.
Just allowing a different part of myself to step forward.
The part that is philosophical.
Playful.
Curious.
Poetic.
The part that still believes a photograph can be a question rather than an answer.
A thought rather than a statement.
A door rather than a destination.
I spent years trying to make photographs people would remember.
Now I find myself drawn to the photographs I would miss if I never made them.
If photography is a way of thinking, what thoughts have I not allowed myself to think yet?
Images and Text © Sascha van der Werf
