I used to take pride in shooting commercial photography. Now I feel like I'm just creating "beautiful lies" in an authoritarian system. Has anyone else experienced this?
I am a photographer living in authoritarian China.
When I was younger, I took great pride in my ability to make ugly things look beautiful. I loved showing off that skill. I enjoyed making unattractive people look attractive, and making ordinary or even low-quality products look like they belonged in high-end commercial advertisements.
I used to work as a photographer for an e-commerce company. Every day, my job was to photograph cheap, poorly made products. I became obsessed with using lighting, composition, and post-processing to make these low-quality products look like premium commercial products.
As I got older and gained more life experience, my worldview began to change.
I came to realize that, in my opinion, almost everything around me was false. From history to the news, to the propaganda that surrounded me every day, I felt that everything had been deliberately constructed rather than honestly presented. I believe the history I was taught was manipulated and rewritten. I believe the news is propaganda, written selectively and deliberately to shape public perception rather than to report reality.
I've also experienced this deception in everyday life. Many times, I bought products online because the photos made them look well-made and high quality. But when they arrived, they turned out to be cheap, poorly manufactured garbage.
Eventually, I began questioning the work that I had once been so proud of.
Had I spent years doing exactly the same thing?
Was I also creating beautiful lies?
I found myself unable to continue making the kind of commercial photographs that had once excited me. They started to feel fake. Even disgusting.
So I turned toward documentary photography. I began seriously recording the people and places around me with as little editing as possible, hoping to preserve an honest record of the present.
But that created another problem.
I can no longer survive in the photography industry this way. Today, it seems that the only photography that consistently makes money is the kind that turns fake, ugly, or low-quality things into something beautiful and desirable.
At the same time, people often misunderstand my documentary work. Because I avoid heavy editing, many assume that my post-processing skills are poor, or that I'm simply not a very good photographer.
Now I feel trapped.
I don't want to keep creating beautiful illusions, but I also can't seem to make a living by documenting reality.
Has anyone else experienced this conflict?
How do you reconcile artistic skill, commercial work, and personal ethics? If you reached this point, what path did you choose?