It’s been a long tough road since I got retrenched from a senior architectural position in the Middle East almost three years ago, an endless rollercoaster of financial and emotional challenges. But what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and sometimes recessions are good in that they force you down a path in life that you might not otherwise have had the courage to walk.
Despite the hardships I think I’m a better person now than I was three years ago; I’m stronger, I’m wiser and I’m more in tune with myself and it’s interesting how that also seems to positively affect the style and impactfulness (is that even a real word?) of the photographs I’m now taking. It is said that a photograph often reveals as much about the photographer as the subject being photographed and when I look at my own images I see that they are mostly quite dark but also very soulful, powerful and deeply introspective? I quite like where my photography is at the moment but it’s still growing and evolving and hasn’t yet got anywhere near to the place I’m still hoping to take it; it’s a voyage, a Peter Pan like adventure with no end where you keep growing, learning, exploring and getting better at doing the thing you love.
I must also this week have sent off what seems like about my 5,000th CV hoping perhaps quite desperately to just get a real job back in corporate architecture to bring some sense of stability and security to my rollercoaster life but perhaps I wonder whether the universe just doesn’t want that for me and it’s determined with some sense of dry humour to keep me on my current path through life?
As I started the week feeling a little bit desperate for myself the universe turned it all around with a call out of the blue from a prominent Milan-based magazine wanting to run a feature on me and my photography (to be published across 35 European countries and the USA at the beginning of September 2012) and I also received news that two of the projects I have photographed this year are going to be featured in the Digest of South African Architecture (the official publication of the Institute of South African Architecture) due out in the New Year – the Unilever Distribution Factory for Elphick Proome Architects and the COP17 Exhibition Stand I photographed in Durban for the City of Cape Town Climate Change Coalition.
Just another crazy and honest rollercoaster week in the life of Dennis Guichard Photography…
dennis guichard photography 