body of work

<p>Body of work is what survives, what other people determine is worth keeping. We are who we are and the works we leave behind us become their own creatures, have their own friends. In the long run, things survive because people want them to survive. Sometimes, those people are not the original artists (Max Brod made Kafka what he is today).</p>

<p>The body of work has its own lovers who may extend well beyond the timeline or location of the originator of the work.</p>

<p>Which works fit into that composite and abstraction self made of art works are parts of the body of work. Our bodies are not the pared away fingernails of yesterday, not to speak of other things that contributed to us in part but passed through us also. Our bodies of work are the things that provide others with a coherent sense of a personality in the work.</p>

<p>Thanks Rebecca, Steve and Arthur for zeroing-in. I appreciate your efforts to address the question.</p>

<p>I especially enjoy R's "fingernails" metaphor, and the way she might ignore the photographers's intentional choices (the one's I'd make) in favor of the "things that ...passed through us." I'd be embarassed to have the work of, say, Bill Brandt attributed to my own "body of work"...despite the fact that I've mentioned him many times, he's "passed through" me and I have not hesitated to do Brandt-derivative work on a few occasions.</p>

<p><em>I'd also mention that her "other people determine" and "timeline" ideas <strong>may be in conflict</strong> with the "deterministic" ideas Arthur mentioned.</em></p>

<p>Do I understand that correctly as a<em> conflict</em> of ideas?</p>

<p>An unaddressed question is "What survives?" Prominent, painters, and writers have, since forever, destroyed most of their work selectively... vanishing it from their body of work in order to define that body.</p>

<p><strong>These digital posts are immortal: unless we've posted them on line our photographs are only "archival" :-) </strong></p>

<p> </p>

<p><em>"I'd also mention that her "other people determine" and "timeline" ideas <strong>may be in conflict</strong> with the "deterministic" ideas Arthur mentioned.</em><br /> Do I understand that correctly as a<em> conflict</em> of ideas?"</p>

<p>John, perhaps, but it may just be a conflict of, or differentiation of, optional approaches. I think that we gain in being partly deterministic and partly timeline, influencable, accidental, motivated by experience and partly influenced by our particular state of being at the moment of exposure. This mix is our mental palette in creating a photo and different mixtures apply in response to different occasions or different objectives of the photographer. Probably no one single mix leads to the creation of an extensive body of work.</p>