Branding

So I was reading through some Magnum blog recent archives and found Alec Soth's post here about branding yourself as a photographer. "One wonders how the collapsing markets might affect the larger universe (or is it a ghetto?) of the photography world. Will gimmickry and branding become less prominent? Will documentation take precedence over decoration? Will people start caring less about the bag than the stuff it's carrying?"

Combine that with APE's recent interview with Matt Moneypenny, talking about building and managing a photographer's brand and its got me thinking.

I'm a student still trying to figure out my voice-what I want to say, and how I want to say it. Every where I look, there are people telling me to find my thing and stick with it.

First, I haven't seen nearly enough of the world to know quite how I want to fit in it yet. On the other hand, every photog I look at and love, from Martin Parr to Richard Avedon to Andreas Gursky to W. Eugene Smith, has a very distinct style. For the most part, I could look any of their photos and say, "thats a Parr/Gursky/Avedon/Smith".

^thats a Gursky^

Where is the line drawn between developing a voice, and just shooting and doing the same thing over and over again? I'm working on a project about chairs right now (couple of images below) and I've gotten into a sort of rut as far as imagemaking goes. I take the pictures, edit them and viola, but they're starting to feel stale. Where to go from here?

Copyright © Jake Naughton

Copyright © Jake Naughton