Hey Photo Forward listeners — It is the winter (slightly post-holiday) season! A time to step back, reflect on the year behind us (what goddamn wild one…) and look forward to the future and how your photographic work can and should evolve. And yeah, there’s that whole giving of gifts thing…
And as my present to you all, the podcast is back delivering weekly episodes on photography, creativity, and making a living as a visual storyteller. Yes, finally at long last after taking a while away from the podcast during 2021 following the unrest in the Twin Cities and examining how to make the show more inclusive, the Photo Forward Podcast is back and will be better than ever. We’ve got some incredible interviews lined up for the coming months and experimenting with new content on the show (Q&A segments/episodes are going to be HUGE), but more on that after the bulk of todays show. Thank you all so much for your patience.
So, without further ado, let’s get into this week’s episode on my curated list of five of the best pieces of reading material for you, the photographer, or the visual storyteller in your life. (With a bonus item on the list that should just flat out be required material for every fucking human that’s sufficiently old enough to read it)
Hello and welcome to the Photo Forward Podcast, the weekly show where we explore the stories behind some of the greatest photographers and visual storytellers the world over. From their photographic origin stories, to finding work-life balance as creative professionals, to how to actually make a living as a photographer, cinematographer, or multimedia creator — we uncover what makes them tick and their shutters click. I’m your host, Ben Brewer.
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So, as you’ll probably figure out as we go through today’s list of books for visual creators there’s going to be three major “themes” if you will in the content – headspace, principles, and history. Personally, as a photographer those are the most critical aspects of personal and professional development that you can *focus* on. Before we can externally create what matters to the world in photos, video, multimedia, etc. you’ve got to start with yourself. Put simply, there are no visual creators that create high quality work over a sustained period of time that haven’t done the work of getting their mind right – tackling limiting beliefs, revealing unconscious assumptions, and breaking probably most insidious of all, valuing your work as your worth.
There’s a lot more to discuss on mindset and worth that I’ll definitely be getting into on future solo episodes of the podcast (and honestly would love to talk on specific Q&As that people have on the topic as well), but we’d be here all damn day. But what we do have time for is going through what I believe to be one of the most important books any creator can read (early and often) – The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield.
From the metaphorical “Resistance” that so perfectly captures the psychological foe of creating work consistently to a few pull-no-punches wake up calls scattered throughout the book, The War of Art is in no uncertain terms a creative kick in the ass. Equal parts artists owner’s manual and meditation, Pressfield’s tough love novel is all about identifying and tackling the internal and external enemies of creative ambition. As Pressfield says, “We can’t control the level of talent we’ve been given. We have no control over the nature of our gift. What we can control is our self-motivation, our self-discipline, our self-validation, and our self-reinforcement. We can control how hard and how smart we work.” While the book might only be a scant 160 pages, every line will hit home like a sack of bricks for any creator (whether or not you’re ready to hear it)
So, after starting with the psychological, we’re going to take a hard left into the entrepreneurial (with a side of life and lifestyle design). This is the newest book on the list, but with ideas and principles that have been time-tested for decades in the world of business. Now stay with me here, because I know you’re all going to collectively bristle at that. No, this isn’t some old hokey Napoleon Hill “Think and Grow Rich” or “The Secret” visualization bullshit. This is real systems and practices to create a work and personal life that hums in number two on today’s list – “The EOS Life” by Gino Wickman.
Now, the author’s name might be familiar to some of ya’ll who have dabbled in business classes in the past 20 years or so for his (honestly pretty unique for its time) business structure handbook “Traction” initially published back in 2007.
Just as an aside, back in the day I worked at a small video production company (recently out of the glow of the plucky startup phase) that was dealing with some structural issues and we eventually implemented The EOS (Entrepreneurs Operating System) process. And pardon my French, but I fucking haaaaated it. From repetitious meeting formats to delegated “rocks” for individual quarterly goals, it all felt so rote and thoroughly depriving us employees of any creative spirit.
Well, much like the angsty teenager grows up and realizes that their parents aren’t completely full of shit and actually had some good ideas… Yeah, re-reading Traction and re-contextualizing the EOS system with another decade of work experience under my belt totally blew my mind. In the same way that “Extreme Ownership” by former Navy Seal Jocko Willink (which could have easily made the list as well) forces the reader to understand that discipline in principles leads to freedom in actions — with a dash of coming to grips that you’re truly the only one responsible for the choices you make and the state of your life). In that same way, implementing a system and a structure to your business, and hell, your life as a whole allows you the artist, you the entrepreneur to be infinitely more creative in the work that you produce – Placing the time and energy on the most important things and not constantly re-inventing the wheel of making work work.
All that is a long-winded way of leading up to the *actual* book that’s being recommended (though reading through Traction for background isn’t an awful idea)... WHEW. Essentially, Wickman’s recent book seeks to take the ideas from the Entrepreneurial Operating System and apply it to your life as a whole (work and all, half of our life is spent at work, so we ought to make damn well sure it fits into our concept of an ideal life.) Put simply, The EOS Life boils it down to this : 1) Doing What You Love , 2) With People You Love, 3) Making a Huge Difference 4) Being Compensated Appropriately , 5) With Time for Other Passions
Now who couldn’t get behind creating a life like that?
#3 “Vivian Maier Developed: The Untold Story of the Photographer Nanny” by Ann Marks
Although as I’m writing this out, it seems borderline trite to say, understanding the history of photography is critical to becoming an educated, effective modern day photographer. I’m a firm believer in the old adage that you can’t truly know where you are going until you know where you’ve been. In a world of technological advancements, cutting-edge cameras, and a barrage of visual information, learning from the masters of our industry has never been more important.
There are few more brilliant visual creators to learn from in the 20th Century than the subject of the 3rd book on today’s list, presented in a brand new definitive biography that unlocks her remarkable story, a nanny who lived a secret life as a world-class photographer, – Vivian Maier: Developed by Ann Marks
While many photographers have heard the name Vivian Maier before, understanding the depths of her life and prolific photographic production is such a perfect example of reading beyond the surface level of Instagram and social media image-making. The 2021 biography shows the reader both her masterful images (with nearly 400 photos placed for the first time in the context of her life) as well as the capacity for photography as therapy – expressing herself through photography, crafting a private portfolio of images full of emotion, authenticity, and humanity.
As Washington Post journalist Marion Winik says in her review of “Vivian Maier, Developed” “Considering that hardly a thing was known about Maier when [Ann] Marks began her project, her achievement in documenting Maier’s peregrinations and troubles with such clarity and feeling is remarkable. Dogged and creative original research enabled her to track down and interview people who knew Maier at every phase of her life. Marks studied archives to identify the buildings where Maier had set her photographs, then used phone books and census records to zero in on the people depicted… Marks believes that although she never sought recognition in her lifetime, Maier would have thoroughly enjoyed the unexpected way her posthumous story has unfolded. “It’s a one-in-a-million ending — another beginning, really — to an already remarkable life,” Marks declares. “If she had read the account in a newspaper, Vivian would have loved the particulars. … She would have absorbed every juicy detail and stood on the sidelines with her camera, intent on capturing it all.”
“Vivian Maier Developed” is a photographic character study worthy of your reading eyes.
As many of you might know by now, despite my entire career being based in photography and visual storytelling, my formal education and college degree are in something far, far, farrrr more granular and (spoiler alert) neuroscientific – Biological Chemistry with a focus in neuroscience to be precise. That all being said, I do recognize that this next book miiiiight not be for everyone as it leans somewhat heavy on scientific research and studies – but I do promise that if you can get through some of the heavier technical explanations, this is a book full of gold in terms of understanding the systems and processes of human thought and action (and how it applies to everyone you engage with as a visual creator – “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Nobel Prize winning economist Daniel Kahneman.
Without spoiling too much of the core argument that Kahneman makes in the book – in impressive detail the neurological, psychological and behavioral systems that underpin the theory – there are essentially two, dichotomous modes of thought that we’re able to engage with as we humans go about our lives: System 1 and System 2. While System 1 is fast, instinctive, and emotional; System 2 is the slow, deliberate, and logical system of thought.
One of the fascinating outcroppings of the 2 Systems of thought that Kahneman dives into is the need to question our (regularly false) intuitions and keep a healthy mindfulness of all of our deep seated biases. While the entire book (all 400 plus pages in all) is full of mental models and analyses of behavior, my personal favorite chapters are towards the end in the sections revolving around the “Two Selves” we all live with – An “experiencing” self and a “remembering” self (and the latter usually wins out over the former). Think about the last time you took a lengthy vacation that went practically perfectly, but if on the last day things went poorly, you’ll tend tend to remember the vacation as negative. Your memory of the event overrides your experience of it. As Kahneman says “Confusing experience with the memory of it is a compelling cognitive illusion—and it is the substitution that makes us believe a past experience can be ruined. The experiencing self does not have a voice.”
Another section of the book that I’m drawn to particularly as a photographer deals with risk and a narrowness of thought surrounding it. For those listeners who are working photographers/cinematographers/etc., think back to a recent assignment of yours, when did you make the most creative, unique, or eye-catching images during the course of the shoot? If you’re like most folks, chances are pretty good those didn’t come until after you’d captured the “safe” shots to CYA and then moved onto taking those creative risks during the course of the assignment to get the creative or special images. Put simply, outsized outcomes in the photographic world only come from taking some necessary creative risk. Naturally as humans, most of us are so averse to risk that we actively work to avoid gambles. Kahneman explains that, since some gambles are clearly on our side (they can’t all be against us) so by avoiding them, we lose money/positive results/etc. One way that we can decrease that natural risk aversion is to think broadly rather than narrowly, looking at our combine set of wins over many small gambles. Thinking narrowly, looking only at short term losses will trap and paralyze us, but thinking broadly one of those System 2 tasks that takes work despite us being wired by the fast System 1 to think irrationally economically and pass by risks in our favor.
A book so deeply encompassing I honestly don’t know how reviewers can even begin to get across the breadth of examples contained inside of it – “Thinking Fast and Slow” for me has always been the Users Manual for choice, decision-making, and everyday judgement to consistently return to when I need a dose of first-principles to fall back on.
Number five on the list of books to inspire and challenge you as a visual creator is one that has had a profound impact on my life and perspective on the world – a book originally intended for children and yet I’ve gone back and re-read it almost every year as an adult. Don’t mistake the playful handmade drawings and watercolors sprinkled throughout – this book deals with some hard grown-up themes and ideas, but with a certain lightness and alacrity that we could all stand to bring into our own daily struggles – The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
Basing its reality in the creativity and imagination of children, The Little Prince is a fantastical story of a pilot (the narrator) who, after crashing in the Sahara desert, meets a young boy and is recounted with his story of the Little Prince’s travels across the stars. Tackling themes of loneliness, love, loss and what it means to grow up, the book in beautiful parable form the struggles of life and human nature.
For those that haven’t read the book yet, I refuse to go on about any more of the detail inside of it because I think it’s honestly that special of a book that I couldn’t dream of spoiling it. But one of the most beautiful lines in the piece that I have tacked up on my wall because it’s a constant reminder as a photographer that not all the beauty we capture is taken in through photos into our cameras – ”And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
Put simply, The Little Prince is hands-down one of the most magical books I’ve ever read and as far as I’m concerned should be required reading for all as we navigate our way into the unfamiliar territory that life presents us with as we enter the real world.
BONUS “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck” by Mark Manson
Okay, I know I said there were only going to be five books on this list, but I’ll leave this one here as a bonus to all of you who made it through this far.
One of the biggest challenges I believe we face as professional (or nearly professional) visual creators is getting in our own way – emotionally, professionally, or relationally. The last book on my curated list for photographers and creators is the stark, no-punches-pulled antidote to our collective self-bullshit – “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck” by Mark Manson.
Especially in a field as tumultuous and challenging as ours as creators, we’ve often been told to keep a perfectly chipper attitude or “fake it until you make it”. In his delightfully subversive and irreverent 2016 book, Manson argues the opposite: "Fuck positivity," he says. "Let's be honest; sometimes things are fucked up and we have to live with it."
Seeing the world and ourselves as we are, not in the delusional rose-colored-glasses of how we’d ideally like it to be, he argues is the way to finding real empowerment in creating your own life. "Not everybody can be extraordinary--there are winners and losers in society, and some of it is not fair or your fault." Once we can embrace our fears, faults, and uncertainties--once we stop running from and avoiding, and start confronting painful truths--we can begin to find the courage and confidence we desperately seek.
Again, another piece of reading material I couldn’t possibly do justice to with a micro-review here on this curated list, but for another kick-in-the-ass, it’s hard to do better than “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck” by Mark Manson.
That is it for today and thanks everyone for listening to this episode on the top books for visual storytellers and creatives of all stripes. As we’ve talked about on a lot of recent episodes, I want to make this year a lot more collaborative on the Photo Forward podcast and incorporate a lot more Q&A or AMA style elements. In so many of my recent Zoom chats and interviews with photographers I’ve been getting some brilliant, spontaneous questions that come up in our conversations and it made me realize just how strong the “curse of knowledge” is in our industry – We get really skilled at certain things and come to assume that “everyone must know that” and then as a consequence, do a really awful (or negligent) job of explaining that elsewhere. So! If you’ve got a question or anything you want to ask on the show that I’ll respond to AMA-style, I’ve set up a page at photoforward.media/connect or send an email or voice message to connect@photoforward.media. I’d LOVE to make this a weekly element in each show after the main interview, so whatever is on your mind creatively, photographically, nagging career questions, etc., send them over at photoforward.media/connect or connect@photoforward.media. Cannot wait to hear what’s on your mind and bring some more value to all of you listening.
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Thanks for listening everyone, and as always, keep seeing, keep thinking, and keep putting your best Photo Forward. Catch you all on the next one.
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