“My grandfather was a preacher and my family wanted to have another preacher, so I was trained to be a preacher, but I was gay, so that really wouldn’t work. So I chose to be an artist instead”, Adrain Chesser, Fine Arts Photographer, describes his background. The limitation? “It’s being self-motivated. Keeping yourself moving is the biggest challenge.”
Transcript
Drei Ratschläge an Dein 14jähriges Ich!
You know at 14 what do you tell somebody? It’s going to be okay, it is going to be okay really like it’s going to be amazing, life is amazing and also here is the thing, it is short, it is very short and so love it now, love it now.
Was steht auf Deiner Visitenkarte?
My name is Adrian Chesser a photographer, artist.
Was ist das coolste an Deinem Job?
Any given day I wake up and I’m deciding what aspect of this thing that I intimately, passionately love more than anything else. What aspect of that am I going to engage with? Initially I fell in love with light, light is this amazing thing. When you fall in love with something that is unexplainable and that’s, holds a mystery by its very nature it sort of everything flows up from that. It’s sort of falling in love with a mystery is the key to being an artist actually.
Welche Einschränkungen bringt Dein Job mit sich?
It is the actual setting the intention of doing the work and then doing the work. It is not like setting the intention and not doing it. It is just like; you just aren’t going to get anywhere. You know what I mean? So it is being self motivated, I think more directly is being motivated would be the big challenge, it is like keeping yourself moving.
Worum geht es in Deinem Job?
I formed a company, Adrain Chesser LLC to deal with the business that is, you know the business part of making art, which is selling art and photography. You know this involves making photographs so it’s shooting photographs and then there is a process of taking, if I shot it in negatives making it into prints to the actual object. And so once you have a photograph this actual object then you can, you know market it, sell it through a gallery or sell it online or sell it. And then there is the everything else involved which is the more challenging part which is how do you get people to know you made this piece of art. How do you build the relationships with galleries and with museums and collectors and you know, how do you build the presence in the world so that you are, what you have created, can it have a value. Or then the other people understand the value of what you created and stand behind you and say this is the value. Well actually my like expertise in photography is portraiture, I certainly do everything. I do still arts and I do landscapes and I do, it just all depends on what serves the purpose for what I am trying to say but in the end I always approach it as a portrait if by doing a landscape I am making a portrait if by doing a landscape I am making a portrait of a landscape I am making a portrait of whatever it is that I am doing. And then the thing that I live for is to make portraits of people of course, that’s my strength, that’s what I love doing and that’s what I have at this point very lucky to have got a career doing.
Wie sieht Dein Werdegang aus?
I grew up in a small town in the south in the US and I was trained to be a Pentecostal preacher because my grandfather was a preacher and my family wanted to have another preacher. So I was trained to be a preacher but I was gay and so that really didn’t work. So I chose to be an artist instead. I taught myself photography, someone, a friend gave me a camera and another friend gave me a dark room equipment and I fell in love with light and I taught myself how to make a picture, taught myself how to make a print and then after teaching myself for years I had two significant relationships with mentors. One was David Fleming who is a well known photographer and the other is Roselyn Suleman who is another well known photographer and they really helped form me as an artist and specifically as a photographer. One taught me how to be very brave in what I do and sort of follow my gut and then the other taught me how to love what it is that I am photographing and how that I should be in love with it. I feel very lucky and very blessed now with what I do and that I can live on what I have produced now but it took years and years and years of working any job I could get. Waiting tables, was a Santa for charity, I wrestled alligators, I did whatever it took to buy film and to make prints and I just wanted to support what I was doing by whatever job came along.
Ginge es auch ohne Deinem Werdegang?
A photographer, I mean that’s a very specific technical skills and when I taught myself, you know, I was using negatives and you know how to expose a negative, how to develop negatives, how to make prints. You know and still to this day even if you are shooting digitally you have got to know how to make prints or you have to hire somebody who knows how to make prints. So there is a certain technical expertise that you need to acquire. And actually that’s key to any artistry, whatever medium you are using you have to develop an expertise in the craft of the medium of what you are using to express the art.