Dont let Social Media decide what you create
[Music]
i’m a millennial
and a photographer born in 96 i remember
summer vacations for me
meant a chance to be using one of these
yes
that was the modern era of film
photography when you only had 36 shots
per role
and each role would then cost you around
40 to 50 rupees and to develop each role
and to get your pictures printed would
be around
60 to 70. the final destination for
these printed pictures
would then be the preserved albums that
got from cupboards to reminiscence on
occasions with extended family
or at the most at schools for some kind
of competition
cut to today photography and videography
has become
much much more accessible along with
modern production techniques
and equipment being widely available
all of this has given a lot of artists
just like me
the opportunity to explore our
creativity
everything now is automated and happens
at the press of a button
you can see the results of your efforts
immediately and as soon as you see the
end result it is either put up as a
story
a post a video or as a real on one of
the social media platforms
which is then closely followed by the
anxiety or the excitement
inducing anticipation about how many
people on the other side of the screen
liked it
shared it or commented on it i’m sure a
lot of people watching this talk
including me
are guilty of telling our friends when a
photo upload kardi usually comment
and that is exactly why i want to talk
to you all about a very important topic
what really is the true validation of an
artist’s art
before moving ahead let me put all my
cards on table today i do have a good
follower account
a good follower number on instagram and
a good subscriber count
but that is not where i started through
back to the time when i used to visit my
grandfather’s house in cold and rustic
nashik
the first place i would run into would
be his dark room
yes he was a photographer in the times
when to be a photographer you had to be
a master
of chemicals timings and a lot of other
things
just like knowing f-stops and shutter
speeds by heart
you know what there was no auto mode in
the cameras at that time
i always admired the time and effort
that he used to put into making
every single photograph and that is
where my love for photography
actually bloomed i used to shoot with
anything and everything that i found
maybe a friend’s camera or something
else on my mobile phone
i started trying to see things
differently through my lens
i did have an instagram account back
then and i wouldn’t deny
i do feel extremely uh validated i used
to feel extremely violated at that time
looking at the likes or reactions that
the photos would receive
but only when my following substantially
increased i realized something very
unusual
and that is extremely uh contrary to
the general perception that is not it’s
not necessary
for your audience to always love what
you’re doing
the harsh truth is the photos or any art
that an
artist loves creating may not always
be appreciated on the social media
here’s an example
a random photo of me uh just you know
like standing there gets around 40
or 44 000 likes and it actually took
zero effort to make
but a photograph on which i’ve spent a
lot of time i’ve
actually thought a lot about shutter
speeds and apertures and
uh how can i uh edit it really well i’ve
spent a lot of time on it
it just gets around 10 or 11. now i’m
sure you’ll argue that that’s still a
pretty
good number but as a matter of fact it’s
lower than the average amount of
likes that my regular photographs get
and considerably lower than the selfie
so let’s retrospective it should i
as an artist have stopped creating high
effort art and switched
to create the kind of content that got
me more validation of the internet
internet validation can be pretty
misleading and is one of the things that
i’ve learned
throughout my career as an artist let’s
go back a little in time
i’m sure many of you have seen this
painting and many of you must recognize
the artist too
yes vincent van gaal do you know how
much it is
valued currently at one billion dollars
many of his paintings have similarly
high values and one might wonder that a
person who created such exotic
such expensive artworks must have led a
very
luxurious life but that is not true
i would suggest you actually go and read
a little bit about van gogh and
how he spent his life because a lot of
his paintings
became famous right after his death
similarly
this is vivian meyer who is an american
street photographer
and who worked as a nanny for 40 years
and during this time she shot over 150
000 photographs and trust me it is a lot
considering that era of photography her
work was also discovered after her death
and it was exhibited
all around the world okay wait now what
i’m trying to say
is that uh it’s not that you would have
to wait till the end of your life
to have your artworks published it is
not the case but
i just want to tell you that these
people and many others create art
not just to receive recognition
validation or some kind of reward
they did it because they loved it a
selfless
and pure love that you pour your heart
out while making that one photograph
that one painting
or that one video that you are currently
working on and that is the only thing
that matters
and unfortunately so so many artists
fail to realize
that in this modern day era of social
media
okay now many people know that i am also
a vlogger and i create vlogs showing my
life in new york city
which means talking to thousands of
people through my camera
but one thing i’m pretty sure most of
you don’t know
is that i’m a big time introvert yes i
am
and talking to the camera is easy for me
because i’m not actually interacting
with someone but if you ask me to
actually go and talk to someone about
something i would probably be the last
person to do so
but let me tell you a story when i made
the most of what i
am and combined with what i love doing
that is photographing
to create something that made a
difference on march 12th when the
governor of new york
andrew cuomo declared a state of
emergency and schools and offices were
shut down
this matter there was going to be almost
no people on the street
which means zero possibilities of
interaction with anyone
i decided to document this historic
event when one of the world’s
busiest cities was going to be shut down
i went on the streets and shot
as much as i could and came home
i sat down and i was just thinking that
the only shot that i didn’t get
was of time square being completely
empty
now if you think time square is called
the melting pot of the world
wherein thousands and probably hundreds
of thousands of people
visit it on a daily and weekly basis
that time square was going to be empty
and i couldn’t sleep that night because
i didn’t have that one shot
so what i did was i just called the cab
i spent 80 dollars on the cab
uh riding from my apartment in brooklyn
to times square
i went there and i got that one shot i
did not do this because
uh someone asked me to i did not do this
because i was getting paid or
i knew that my followers would like the
shots i did it because i wanted to
i heard that voice from within and in
the end
you know it appeared to be on the cover
page of the story that was published in
national geographic traveler india
magazine
sounds of silence they called it uh and
which it was also number one on the list
of the most rich stories of 2020
but hey it’s not every time that your
work will get appreciated online or even
get published
let me tell you another story in january
2019 i decided to go on an expedition to
ladakh
in the winters with my father i’m sure
you must have seen how
beautiful it looks in the summers but
it’s a completely different wonderland
when you actually see it in winters i
wanted to photograph this for the
love that i had for radak and how much i
enjoyed photography in these extreme
conditions basically challenging myself
i shot a lot over there the temperatures
were as low as minus 33 degree celsius
i stayed all night long taking time
lapses making photographs taking long
exposures
but you know what none of these got
published or
nor did they go even viral on social
media is despite of them having a very
unique factor to it
but that didn’t definitely stop me from
photographing the same is the case with
my vlogs
the reason that i started vlogging and
it is probably one of the first times
i’m actually disclosing it to someone
is because i wanted my mother to see me
when i’m 8
000 miles away from her the subscriber
and view con normally doesn’t matter to
me as much as long as i know
that my two subscribers that is my mom
and my dad are seeing me on their tv at
least two to three times a week
getting updates from me and their love
is what keeps me going
pushing me to make vlogs even after
working almost five days a week
so it is important that we sit down and
we talk to ourselves
what is the purpose of creating art and
every time
the answer should always and always be
your love for that art we are all
amateurs
we all do it for love trust me the
satisfaction that you will get
after creating something that you wanted
something that you created with
all your heart can never be compared
to the satisfaction or even like getting
a million likes
okay so long story short let’s answer
the main question
what is the right validation for your
art as it is something that feels
very important especially when you are
new to this field
and the answer is it is only how you
feel about your art and not about
how a few random people on the internet
feel about it
only you can decide how good your art is
how good your content
is if you go on social media you’re
always going to find someone who’s doing
something amazing something nice
that will make you compare yourself to
that other person
please don’t let that happen as your art
will always be unique to yourself and
can not be compared to anyone else
art in itself is something that is very
pure
and there can be actually no real
competition when it comes to art
so validation of the people on the other
end of the viewer spectrum should not
always be the basis
of word for an artist and only the end
of an
artist is more important because art is
so
pure and subjective