Feeling Uninspired

Coming up on a year since my last post on here, I have been making a lot of work, but it doesn’t feel very exciting to me. I started wondering, is this permanent? Am I worse at the thing that I claim to enjoy doing? Maybe I’m just bored of doing the same ‘ol thing. Thinking about the “bad times” makes me reflect on what made the “good times” good? So as I do, I started sifting through my archive looking for periods where I felt really excited about what I was doing, and making a lot of work that felt inspiring to me, which is ultimately who I’m accountable to in this strange thing that is making Art.

In 2016 I went to Moscow, and was fully locked-in. I was shooting from dawn to dawn, it was really exhilarating and freeing photographing there, it all felt so easy. People were available and open to collaborating, I felt I could make the pictures I wanted to make. There was a groove I got into during that time that was intoxicating, I couldn’t get enough. It kept flowing when I got back to my “real life” of having to work, pay rent, etc.

I decided to go back to Moscow to keep making work there. I’m not sure if it was the place, or the fact that it was the first time in my life I could dedicate larger chunks of time to making work, rather than nights and weekends, but at the time it felt like there was more possibility and positive energy swirling around, at least for me.

In some ways this was the start of a trajectory, a lot of the pictures I make now have a style that descends from the experimenting I did in 2016-2018, trying to light things in a new way, being open to experimentation, and really just working really hard.

It brings me comfort to look at older work that I feel proud of, and recognize the pieces that are still present and to remind me that of course there were 100 bad images for every good one, and that persistence is at the base of not only my practice, but any practice.

Enjoy : ) XO RUBY