New logo of Simon Joyce Photo
We live surrounded by images. We create, share and consume billions of them every day. Some remain on a screen for a few seconds, some are meant to be remembered, while others disappear without leaving a trace. In this constant flow, one question becomes increasingly interesting: what makes a photographer's identity recognisable?
I don't believe the answer can simply be having something to say. Every photographic genre has its own language, syntax and purpose. Travel photography, portraiture, advertising and artistic research serve different needs. It makes little sense to judge them all by the same criteria.
What interests me instead is a distinction: the one between thoughtful photography and wow photography.
The latter often seeks an immediate impact. It needs to surprise, attract attention and provoke a reaction. The former can do all of that too, but it emerges from a different process: an intention, a choice, a search that comes before and accompanies the act of taking a photograph. It doesn't necessarily have to be complicated or conceptual. Even an apparently simple image can contain a precise idea.
And there is nothing wrong with spontaneous photography, a travel memory or a picture of Saturday night's pizza. These images serve a different purpose and have every right to exist. The problem begins when we confuse the ability to provoke an immediate reaction with the development of a personal vision.
Social media rewards the second; real life rewards the first.
It is a provocation, of course, not an absolute rule. But it helps distinguish momentary visibility from the possibility of building something that lasts.
Where does a personal visual language begin?
In my own practice, change began when I started developing a thought before making the photograph itself. It was no longer just a matter of observing a scene and deciding whether it was worth capturing. I wanted to understand what I was looking for, which elements I chose to include and what kind of relationship I wanted to create between them.
Over time, this process began to develop into a grammar, a visual syntax. It is a structure that continues to evolve, and one I certainly don't consider complete.
Looking back at my images, I recognise recurring elements: geometry, lines, clean compositions, relationships between shapes and spaces. They return even when the subject and context change. These elements alone are not enough to define a style. They are clues to a direction, starting points for a search that remains open.
Identity, after all, is not the same as repeating a formula. If it became merely a set of characteristics to reproduce, it could easily turn into a cage. A personal visual language must be allowed to change, absorb new influences, contradict itself and discover paths that did not previously exist.
Being recognisable does not mean producing the same photograph over and over again. It means allowing a shared sensibility to emerge through different images.
Building a world, not a definitive photograph
I doubt I have ever taken the Simon Joyce photograph. I don't know whether a single image could contain everything I am trying to express, and I am not even sure that such an image needs to exist.
But I am building a Simon Joyce world.
A world made of photographs, certainly, but also of books, publications, projects and ongoing research. Each element can stand on its own while contributing to a wider whole. The aim is not to make everything look the same, but to allow different experiences to connect through a shared sensibility.
For me, this is the most interesting meaning of artistic identity: not a label to attach to one's work, but a direction that takes shape over time. Something recognisable not only in individual images, but also in the choices, connections and ways in which an author builds a creative universe.
In a world where images continue to multiply, perhaps the point is not to produce ever more of them or to pursue, at all costs, the one destined to stand out from the rest. It is to understand which images genuinely belong to our search, and what kind of relationship they can establish with one another.
I don't know whether a single photograph exists that can define Simon Joyce. I know that I am working to build that world.
And that world is still evolving.