thoughts about mentors

heapsa people have them. some have multiple. some look to no-one. some are bound to find them.

i have a lot of mentors in my life, for lots of different things. my parents act as mentors. my physical trainer is another, my ballet instructors and a select few tutors at my university. but i haven’t seem to have been able to find a mentor within the artistic space. i have made lots of contacts and have even reached out to a few. i asked one fairly well-known phot in australia if they’d consider offering a mentorship but i think they are tending to more private projects these days & pretty happy doing just that.

i put a question out to my network on insta*(redacted)* and I was intrigued by the answers. i asked: do you have a mentor, how did you come to find them and how beneficial have they been to your practice?

not that these answers would guide my decision at all, i was genuinely curious.

again, it’s about fostering a community for me. i, like many others, thrive in them.

i love my insta network but i’m getting very restless on that platform, for some obvious reasons. a lot of my work doesn’t even get shown to my closest friends (personal cheerleaders) with the way the algorithms n the ways that stories are sorted. i can’t fathom it, but i also don’t base my photographic process around what works well on social media, nor do i have kpi’s i need to reach.

i only received a couple of replies, one said they’d rather gain opinions from their friends. (love). one artist had two for very different reasons. another said they had only had a professional do a portfolio review on their work.

from the prompt, i was kinda hoping to dig a bit deeper as to how the respondent’s mentorship came about, any advice/tips/tricks. i was only able to scratch the surface with the replies. i was also hoping to hear from more photographers.

i’ll keep going on my journey to find a mentor — do i take the risk and reach out to more photographers who i’m inspired by, or will it come organically?…