Landscape and Nature photography
About Me.
Why.
Hello! My name is Seth Kissling. I grew up in mid-Michigan with eight siblings and my parents. As I write this I am twenty-one years old and have been taking photos since I was about eleven.
I have been struggling to write this for a while. Everything I write seems ok in the moment, but when I come back later, there is always something... I can't quite place what it is; it feels inadequate.
You see, so many things have gone into the making of my Life. My friends and family, my Home, my Dreams. There is so much that could be said, so many things I wouldn't trade for all the world. But in the end, who I am will always be better told by what I do.
Someday, maybe, I will put into words the hardships and struggles that have shaped, and are still, shaping me. But for now, if you wish to know more about who I am, you will have to find it in my work.
I started one of my trips knowing there was a question I needed to answer; Why? I knew I was supposed to do this, and I think deep down I knew why, but I couldn't put it into words. I wrote and thought, wrote and erased, and wrote some more, but by the last day of the trip, I had nothing. For my last shoot, I hiked about a mile to the edge of a cliff and experienced a moment that, had never before been experienced and, will never be experienced again. As I stood there in awe, my mind started to fill with thoughts and memories, and words. I wrote this in about fifteen minutes.
So many of us artists have forgotten the purpose of art. We use our art as a means to an end, a way to make money, to become famous, to advertise religion. In doing so, we fail. Fail as artists, as men. We use our art to our own vain ends instead of being driven by our art to tell the truths that we know instinctively must be told.
I do not want to be one of those. I hope with my art, whatever it may be, to tell the truths that I know deep within me. Beyond fact, beyond reason.
I do not always wish to be doing this... Often, I wish I could be home, with my family. I love my family. I could have chosen a different profession, one that might be less lonely... But I could see the moments, the Truths are there, and I couldn't just leave them. So here I am. Hoping that maybe someone, anyone, will see the work of my hands and remember... Remember that there is good in this world, that the battle is not lost. If someone could find my art and see, if only for a moment, that all this darkness is but a small and passing thing. I think then... Then it would all be worth it.