On Photography, Relationships and Identity - Joel Meyerowitz (YouTube)

What you put in the frame determines the photograph - Joel Meyerowitz [YouTube (*)]
If you have been taking photographs for a while, this will really make sense and inspire you to think about what you have been doing and how you might want to view the way you take photographs in the future. Here is part of what he had to say:

[..] when I think about my photographs, I understand that my interest all along has not been in identifying a singular thing, but in photographing the relationship between things.

The unspoken relationship, the tacit relationship, the impending relationship.

All of these variables are there if you chose to see in this, in this way.

But if you chose to only make objects out of singular things you wind shooting the arrow into the bullseye all the time and you get copies of objects in space.

I did not want copies of objects.

I wanted the ephemeral connections between unrelated things to vibrate.

And if my pictures work at all, at their best they are suggesting these tenuous relationships.

And that fragility is what so human about them.

And I think it's what's also in the romantic tradition, because it is a form of humanism that says we are all part of this together.

I am not just a selector of objects.

And there's plenty of photographers here who are great photographers but who only work in the object reality frame of reference.

They collect things and I don't think of myself as a collector.

It's my sense of where I am different from other people and that's not a measure or judgement.

It's just a sense of your own identity.

For me the play is always in the potential - it's like magnetism.

Thanks Joel and congratulations on a fantastic career in your chosen profession.