I am thinking about applying to grants in photography but I don't know much about English or how to tell a "personal story". What is my biography? That I have shitposted on 4chan for 10 years after dropping out of university while doing photography on the side? The artist statements and biographies that I read are filled with buzzwords like communities, diversity, capitalism, indigenous, climate change, neo-liberalism and other virtue signalling bullshite. It really disgusts me. Nowhere they mention the fucking form or aesthetics. It's all just globohomo buzzwords and terms. Those statements read like a protest slogans rather than something an artist would say. They are plagued with utility. They don't think of art as end-in-itself. But as means to an end and most of the time it's just some political bullshit that they're seething about. Most of them sound like activists turned "photographers". How can I write a short biography and statements which are actually human and convey artistic perspective? How do you write your biographies and artist statements?
There's a grand committee that awards the grants. Write what they want to read, and change your name to Laqueefa.
>>4393971By the time you’re able to judge a photo show, and then a thousand photo shows, and then approve grants for other photogs to do work, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what is interesting to audience's at the time. If you think what makes your work interesting is form and “aesthetics” (whatever the absolute FUCK you think your gen z ass means by that) then you should write your grant proposal, but your mad composition skillz had better be something so fucking amazing that no one’s ever seen before bc otherwise thinking you’re going to vibe invited to show or given a grant on the most basic elementary photo skills without any higher conceptual thought about WHAT you’re shooting and WHY, is some first year student/engineering student who bought a camera/friendless loser tier jackassery.
>>4393977Let them know your photos will benefit marginalized at-risk BIPOC youth from areas historically impacted by redlining.
>>4394251>If you think what makes your work interesting is form and “aesthetics”Yes, I know. But people who think that only "narrative" can carry photos disgust me. Photojournalists with their minimally processed sterile jpegs make me want to puke. There must be a balance between content and form. >any higher conceptual thought about WHAT you’re shooting and WHY,Thing is all of those people act that taking snapshits is going to "save" whatever the fuck they're seething about. I don't have this much lack of world understanding and ego to believe in such horrible nonsense. Art is a leisure activity and fiction. It reference nothing but itself. My main reasons for doing something are as simple as conveying a particular emotion that I have felt. I don't care about "social issues". I don't have any moral lessons to teach or activist bullshit to perform. If I am being honest my art can only entertain and that must be first and foremost goal of art. Is this okay? Now the problem is that most grants are for "social issues" so where is the space for artists like me?
>>4394260your formal choices are a given, obvious as the nose on your face. They are not interesting to discuss bc everything is simply a choice, the same choices every fucking photog makes with every shot. You want a judge to be impressed bc you show up with everything along rule of thirds lines? Or you show up with no thirds lines, and a bunch of tangents on edges and trees growing out of heads and shit jammed in the corner of the frame? Nobody needs to talk about it, everyone can see those are the choices you made, whether they comply with photo 101 rules or they spite them, they are what you chose, everyone can see it, there’s no mystery there. It’s all been done & seen 10 million times before to greater & lesser effect, it’s just the form you chose. Not interesting. Even saying “it needs to be balanced” IS that choice. Everyone will see your “balanced” form.>All those people think they’re going to save the worldYou have some massive fucking ego to think you know what everybody is thinking, and that they’re all as delusional, foolish as stupid as you imagine them to be. People do what they do for a million fucking reasons, or bc it just fits the description of the show or client. Not that it’s any of your fucking business to approve of. You shit out your mouth here like a self appointed judge of everyone else, and with no respect for anyone, and in your mind it’s everyone else that’s the problem. Grow up, then try again.
