The Art of the Personal Project, Part V

Try to Surprise and Delight Yourself

The following is a bonus post for Art + Math’s benefactors, the paying subscribers who keep the lights on and the Stumptown brewing. It’s the fifth installment in a series about personal projects and why they matter. If you haven’t already, you can join this exclusive club and become a patron of my arts. But never fear, regular Art + Math posts will be back next week and remain, as ever, dedicated to art and free to all.

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Prolific is Important

The prolific photographer Howard Schatz is an excellent role model when it comes to personal projects. He’s published upwards of 25 books in as many years, and I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing him about the release of several of them.¹ I’ve learned in the process that not only is Schatz’s modus operandi simple — he has often told me he aims to “surprise and delight” himself — he’s always got several long-term personal projects going. He is a master of doing a little bit here, a little bit there, and before you know it, the next project is complete.

He has photographed redheads, bodies as sculpture, actors acting, flowers, athletes, boxers, football players, underwater dancers, expectant mothers and many other projects I’m not thinking of. (Those were just off the top of my head!) Howard doesn’t dedicate himself to a single project at a time. Instead he works on all of them all the time—bit by bit, intermingled, when opportunities arise. A dancer today, a boxer tomorrow, an actor the day after. Periodically, when he feels he’s got enough, or perhaps when he’s simply at an ideal place to pause and reflect, he publishes a book. Just as often, though, he keeps pursuing that project, because it’s personal and he’s genuinely interested in it.

Schatz, like so many photographers who excel at pursuing personal work, is an ideal example of the adage “shoot what you love.” Because he does great work unfettered by client needs, potential customers see that personal work and hire him to make more of the same. He’s in an ideal place with it, really. If nothing else, he’s a role model for photographers who want to be better at personal projects.

“It’s not work,” he said during one of our interviews. “I’m addicted to amazing myself. I am addicted to the high that comes from making images that surprise me. I can’t always do it, it’s sometimes elusive and evanescent and difficult, but I keep yearning and working and striving for that high, for that feeling.”

“I think if you shoot what you think someone else wants,” he told me, “you’re not going to make good images. You’ve got to shoot what’s inside. I will make pictures for others who commission me to make pictures, but I really want to do so many things. I’m lucky. I have a lot of interests, and I’m really blessed that I can explore them. I shoot what I love, I don’t think about shooting to try to sell somebody on my work. And the corollary is, I wouldn’t have any chance at all of making a good picture if I were shooting for any other reason than because I love it.”