We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Donna Garcia a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Donna , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you happier as a creative? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job? Can you talk to us about how you think through these emotions?

I am, technically, an artists and a creative, because the reality is that most artists need to have more than one job. I was a Creative / Marketing Director for Ogilvy, NYC for many years and now I work for an arts non-profit in Atlanta. Art, for me, is not really about a job, it is about connecting to self.

As an artist who does a great deal of self-portraiture, photography is a conduit between self and the world outside. The lens focuses inward and helps me to balance my soul, if you will. Through art I find my balance and process my “role” during a particular time. We all have three “roles” in time; the person we are in the present, the past and the future, so what happens when we only have the present? During the pandemic, for example, time became elongated, stretched out, hence those “roles” stopped being linear and for me, the challenge became about dealing with a distancing or alienation of self just as much as being isolated from others.

I worked through these issues by creating work, my series The Two Moons, is very much about searching for self during a time where the potential for “becoming” has stopped. The process of creating these images helped me to understand that everything that we fear will come and will go and we will be ok. Also, that renewal is everywhere and ongoing.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

I found photography when I was twelve years old. I studied under photographer Walter Scott while in high school, but by the time I got to college I knew that I needed a consistent income after graduation, so I changed paths and became a Creative Director before coming back to photography seven years ago. I really could not suppress my artistic nature any longer. I was at a place in my career where I was successful, but not very happy. Photography is how I see and without it I am blind – it’s more about interiority for me. It is a way that I navigate life and understand my place in the world.

I remember at a very early age loving to photograph animals, which I continue to do today. I love to play with ideas of animals as symbols, and what they have come to mean in various cultures, like the purity of the white horse, the courage of the lion, the trickster crow or butterflies as reincarnated spirits. Semiotics or visual language has always organically flowed through my work to convey meaning, through signs, symbols, metaphors, and unconventional codes. This semiotic transference that speaks to the viewer happened almost from the beginning. My visuals suppress my role as creator and I assumed more of the role of narrator (and sometimes subject), in the interest of allowing the viewer to be free in their interpretation.

The first photographs that I would consider in the realm of Fine Art for me were black and white, medium format photos. I loved creating double exposures, and images that played with motion and liminal space. The world has always felt fragile, uncertain and unstable to me, elements that my work reflected very early on in my image making.

I think what has changed the most is that I really transitioned from finding images to creating images. The lens became less of a judge in the work; the idea of reproduction and reportage became ambiguous. There is a gap in what is expected and what you аre presented with now, making my images feel like something is not quite right. This level of uncertainty is unexpected in photographs and reveals tranitional moments that аre indeterminate vs. the straight reportage nature of photography to replicate what it sees. The evolution of my work verifies that the photographic image is not determinate, despite its origins.

Today, my images loosely belong to a category of optical illusion called metamorphic figure. The visual contents of these types of images аre usually unstable and shifting as a result of low-level inconsistencies in the imagery itself that creates entirely new pictorial contents without necessarily changing the observable details of the impressions. These “illusions” exploit the interpretative processes of how we see the world. Their forms are ambiguous, and this uncanny nature is what makes these shifts possible. This has really defined my “style” and clients hire me to create work in my style, the genre is irrelevant. I work in Fine Art, Editorial, Lyrical Documentary, and even Wildlife/Nature. When people see my work, they know it is mine.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

No one just makes it big and artists are not detached from reality, living in their own worlds. I have never worked so hard as I have as an artist. I am an artist, a portfolio reviewer, a curator, an educator, a contributing editor, an editorial photographer, and I help lead an arts non-profit that supports lens-based artists to grow and be seen.

Being an artist is being an entrepreneur at the highest level possible. Not only do you have to run a business, but you also have to be innovative, creative and vulnerable in every way. You have to put your most authentic self out there to be successful.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

If you are an artist, be yourself. To really engage with people on SM you need to actually and literally connect. These are the people who buy my work, the galleries who want my work, etc. I am my brand and I keep it very organic.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://donnagarcia.com/
• Instagram: @donnagarcia23
• Facebook: Donna Garcia 23
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/donna-garcia-03941ba/
• Other: Vimeo – Donna Garca

Image Credits
©Donna Garcia