Hone Your Myth

I have a friend who says, "hone your myth" all the time. Waking up to our preconceptions is not practiced nearly enough. My "myths" present themselves when I take pictures. I catch myself framing up stereotypes, perfect examples of romance, family, love, hearth, culture, sex, archetypes of all kinds.

Here, we have "eastern(black leather jacket, shaved head) European, set against aging cobblestoned village". Of course, we have "moment"-- mid-stride sunlit center-of-frameness. Our myths are everything we have come to romanticize or demonize, or have subconsciously decided is a type or truth. We shape ourselves from these "decisions" that started with family observation, storybooks, school, tv, movies, video games, all of the experiences that contribute to our own mythology. Usually they are dead wrong. Then as we learn man's classical mythology we pair up our own with what's "universal" and begin honing that myth. Photographing helps me to wake up to my own and calibrate them.