Nara Makes Games
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My old art photography
🕑 Added 2025-01-02 17:58:23 +0000 UTCI have been updating my personal website (anthonywallace.com), and a large portion of what is contained on that site is my previous art photography collection. From age 16-37ish, I considered myself an art photographer and that was my number one life passion. That all started to change after I became a digital nomad in 2018, as I found myself having some serious inner conflict about the whats and whys behind the art that was so important to me for most of my life. When the pandemic hit in 2020, it really put the final nail in the coffin for me; photography was no longer my life passion. 
My photography was always about pain and isolation and other forms of negative energy. When I decided to focus my life on retro gaming in 2020, I wanted to focus on positive things. And after becoming a nomad, I was actually feeling happy for the first time in my life. So that photography and the feelings that were held in those images felt unrelatable and so far away. Most of the photos I started to take after becoming a nomad felt more "happy" and "normal", and it didn't feel like art to me at all. 
Towards the end of 2020, I just had no energy to even pick up a camera for anything other than pretty deer photos or to photograph my Game Boys. I certainly had zero interest in trying to make "dark" "emotional" art. I have thought about doing photography again a few times, but I just can't see myself going back to that. Definitely not how I was doing it before.
So much has changed since 2018 and I don't think the art I was doing back then would have any value in 2025. Cameras got better, photographers got better, photoshop got better, AI exists, drones became more accessible, etc. It has all made most of my previous work look boring and amateur and stupid and unremarkable. Art itself changed. And most importantly... I changed. ALOT.
While I would say a lot of my darkness and negativity kind of returned since the pandemic for various reasons, and I am not necessarily the happy and positive person I was around that time... I don't think I have that same thing in me that made me want to do art photography. Maybe someday, but it would have to be very very different.
Comments
AllSpark_Retro
Anthony, thank you for this post. I also did photography for many years. I did street photography. I started because I was in a rough spot, no diploma, no job, no idea what to do next and no motivation. The camera gave me motivation and it opened doors without them I wouldn‘t be where I am now. My photography focused on isolation and sadness and it always involved humans. I also lost interest in street photography during the pandemic. I only picked up the camera once again to photograph retro handhelds. My job now has nothing to do with art or photography but photography gave me the motivation and discipline I lacked at the time. I‘m just curious why you think your photography from the past would be irrelevant in 2025? All the photography greats are from the past. Henri Cartier-Bresson, Saul Leiter, Robert Frank. Their work is still relevant today! Viviane Maier took 1000s of photos during her lifetime and she only became famous after her death. Photography always has a value no matter from what time. It‘s a visual memory put on paper. I really enjoyed this post. It made me think about my own relationship with photography and similar experiences to you.
