Transcriber: Florencia Sisi Reviewer: Julieta Baccaro
Hi guys, I’m Olivia Bee.
I’m a photographer and director out of Brooklyn, New York.
Thank you so much for having me in Athens.
This place is totally amazing.
I’m here to talk to you about a lot of things.
I guess I should have divided this into 6 TED talks,
so I apologize in advance.
I’m going to talk to you about art, authenticity, success, feelings,
and living your life and not just talking about it.
But I want to give a little background first.
I’m a photographer and a director but mostly a photographer right now.
I photograph a lot of different things,
for a lot of different brands and publications.
But my favorite thing to photograph is my own life:
the magical and honest moments that make it all worth it,
the moments that help you feel alive and make you thankful to be human.
When I photograph my life and the people, places and events in it,
I try not to interrupt.
Above my photographs, my subjects are more important to me.
And this is because these are the people that I love.
When I capture these feelings,
and I haven’t interrupted my experience or their experience,
I have succeeded.
Part of the importance of this is that I am really about the authentic moment.
And capturing the authentic moment helps me remember how beautiful life is
and how much I love it.
Because I don't want to spend my whole life photographing it,
instead of living it.
Souvenirs don't really mean anything if you didn't actually take the trip.
Photographs don't replace my memories; they represent them.
As for the photographs I make commercially,
I do this to continue to drive my career
and to challenge myself.
For me, it's really important to see beauty in all places
and this includes advertising.
I've been working since I was a pretty little kid
in an industry run by adults.
I still kind of am a little kid.
I hate to talk about it because everyone talks about it for me,
but I know people are really intrigued.
I get asked a lot about how I have changed from kid to adult so fast,
and how it makes me feel, if I am still 19 or if I am 35,
and if working as a little kid in an adult world is a big deal for me.
But I guess what I have to say is that this is just my version of normal
and my age really shouldn't matter as much as it does.
In terms of growing up, let me put it to you this way:
the other day I bought Q-tips for the very first time in my adult life
and this was more transformational for me than a magazine cover.
I never really got the chance to transition into being an adult.
It more just happened to me. It was very gradual.
But I would love to get away from my age as the main topic of conversation
when people exchange words with me.
But I guess it doesn't really help that my face looks like this.
People put a lot of pressure on me because I have young success.
It has the potential to overshadow the rest of my career.
People sometimes look at my age more than my photographs.
People also think I am oblivious to this, which I am not.
I guess when people are talking about success,
they're referring to my client list, which is measurable.
But what I am most proud of is my actual photographs
and how happy it makes me to make them.
Because when you think about why people make things,
or what makes them happy, and why or how people have talent,
I have a lot of trouble regarding the measurement
of happiness and success in quantifiable terms like clients.
I don't think success is measurable,
I don't really think happiness is quantifiable
and talent isn't concrete.
One of my best friends told me something
that was one of the sweetest things I've ever heard anyone say to me.
I kind of feel like an asshole repeating it because it's about myself,
but I think the idea is so much bigger than myself.
And what he said was, "You taught me what talent is,
and that it's not something genetic.
Talent does not actually matter
because it's an illusion.
It's not something you were born with
because talent is actually drive.
It is the need to get better because you love something."
So many people cut themselves off from being creative
because they feel like they don't have talent.
And this is a huge problem because talent isn't that real of a thing.
Talent is drive.
Talent is the need to get better at something
and developing skill along the way.
This brings me to another quote that I love
that's about some of the same stuff, from Ira Glass,
"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners.
I wish someone told me.
All of us who do creative work,
we get into it because we have good taste.
But there's this gap.
For the first couple of years you make stuff.
It's just not that good. It's trying to be good.
It has potential, but it's not.
But your taste, the thing that got you into the game,
is still killer.
And this is why your work disappoints you.
A lot of people never get past this phase; they quit.
Most people I know who do interesting, creative work
went through years of this.
We know our work doesn't have this special thing that we want it to have.
We all go through this, and if you're starting out
or you're still in this phase, you have to know that it's normal
and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work.
Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you'll finish one story.
It will only be by going through a volume of work
that you'll close that gap,
and your work will be as good as your ambitions.
And I took longer to figure out than anyone I've ever met.
It is going to take a while. It is normal to take a while.
You just have to fight your way through.”
I think this is really important stuff to remind people.
Humans, being humans, can be very easily discouraged.
People tend to give up because they disappoint themselves.
But I think this disappointment is essential for growth,
because then you push yourself.
You ask yourself questions. You criticize yourself.
You ask yourself how you can make yourself even better.
Because when you love something
and when you appreciate something so much
and something makes you so happy, you can burst through this wall.
Because this wall is not made out of stone.
After my friend said what he said to me, we came to the conclusion
that our work used to really suck,
especially mine, Circa 2007.
But how we loved it so much
that it was inevitable that we needed to fight.
We also know that every day is still a struggle;
neither of us are ever completely happy with our work.
But this is what drives it.
Sometimes I get my film back and I look at all of the photographs
I made in the last 2 weeks and think,
“Wow, that says almost everything I wanted to say.”
The key word being ''almost".
The power of the mindset of “almost” is just like how disappointment
is essential for growth.
Because wouldn't it be boring to always be happy about where you are at
in terms of success and how far you can push yourself?
To not strive for something?
What is even the point of that?
Isn't that the point of being alive?
And to further ask open ended life questions
that vaguely relate to art and TED talks,
aren't feelings the reasons we keep ourselves alive,
while we strive for things?
Feelings drive everything I do, especially my work.
My photography is never about anything but a feeling.
One of my biggest problems with doing commercial work,
or work where there is a certain shoe, or color,
or person, that I am supposed to show,
is that my photography really isn't about anything like that specifically.
Because my photography really isn't about anything specifically.
It's about the feeling of all of these combined elements.
I guess it is about auras. And it is not even how it looks,
which is a confusing thing to say,
but photography isn't entirely visual for me.
I mean, I care about how things look. Obviously.
I do one of the most visual art forms there is,
where you literally take reality, and interpret, distort,
or simply show it, and make it into something two-dimensional.
I use the shapes of my objects in my photographs to make a mood
or I combine that with the colors, or I make it so that you can feel
people's personalities dripping off of each other,
or I show that you can feel warmth even when it's black and white.
The creation of auras and the capturing of a feeling
is the reason I photograph.
Speaking of feelings, I don't understand this thing
we have in our society that tells us that feelings equal weakness.
Maybe it has to do with sexism,
maybe it hits close to home because I am a girl,
maybe because I am a younger girl – stop talking about my age, guys.
Or maybe it has to do with how disconnect is linked with power.
When you look at many of the people who have high positions in power,
or in society, like rulers, and maybe even police officers,
a lot of them crave power.
And there's a disconnect there.
People who are power seekers for one’s own benefit
are not the best at creating trust or being on the same level with people.
Luckily not all people who are in positions of power are like this.
There are also a lot of people in positions of power
who want to help develop human relationships
and embrace human connection.
But I think it is all about your intentions.
I guess what it all really boils down to is that emotion is power.
And when emotions are 100% true and real, this power is amazing,
because feelings are so powerful. Especially in art.
This is how you see eye to eye with people and this is how you develop trust.
Feelings are why we have love ballads, and the Taj Mahal, and the Mona Lisa,
and every important and touching piece of art
and every beautiful song ever written.
Feelings drive everything.
You have to pour your soul into what you do.
People have to be honest.
And people have to be in love with something,
whether that is the girl next door
and you show her through your songs,
or if you love America and you show people through your paintings,
or if you are in love with life and you show people through your camera.
This combination of love and honesty, I tend to call it authenticity.
And authenticity is the thing that resonates with people.
Humans know when other humans are authentic.
It's the same muscle that tells us when somebody is lying.
You can feel soul. You can taste it.
And this pertains to everything.
What you do and how you do it. It literally applies to every action.
It applies to how you make your art,
the people you surround yourselves with,
the way you talk to people.
It even applies to what you post on Facebook and what you post on Twitter.
You have to be authentic.
You have to put love into what you do because it all trickles down to love.
Love is the reason. Period.
I love this quote from Keaton Henson which is,
"I think a lot of art is trying to make somebody love you."
And maybe that someone that Keaton is talking about
is the girl next door.
Or the boy who sits next to you in History.
But maybe that someone that Keaton is talking about is your camera,
or your paint brush, or your guitar.
Or maybe that someone is you.
Maybe you're trying to fall in love with yourself
by showing yourself that you can feel things
and you can channel your feelings into something that feels beautiful.
But you have to be in love with something because it will drive your world.
I always fall in like or fall in love with boys and they kind of become my world
for like a hot second and I want to show them that I see pretty things
and then maybe they will think I am pretty.
But even when I am in this cloud, I am still really married to my work.
And this is because I make my work for me
and I make it to show myself
and other people who I care about that life is beautiful.
But this marriage also helps me show these people
that I like them or that I love them
and it helps us exchange a level of trust that you cannot quantify.
Photography is a very heavy art form.
Like I said earlier it is literally the interpretation, or distortion,
or simply the display of the things we see in front of us,
what we see as reality.
It has the potential to be brutally honest or terribly misleading.
I try to keep a balance in all of this.
I photograph when feelings are intense and alive,
whether they are positive or negative.
I guess, in a nutshell, you could say that
I photograph magic moments, honestly.
Or, I photograph honest moments, magically.
This is the reality I show. But it's a very, very specific reality.
My version of reality is just very full of warmth and of film grain
and light leaks and trust and optimism, even when shit hits the wall.
But I'm not the only one who has a very specific version of reality
because everyone does.
This can change a lot more even
when you're looking into a lens most of the time,
which we all have really started to do, because of this thing.
I'm going to sound like a hypocrite,
but I'm going to talk to you about how this device has been a game changer
and how it makes everyone document everything
and how this has the potential to be a bad thing.
The iPhone, or its godfather, the internet,
has changed everyone into a journalist of their own lives.
Through social media, we have become obsessed with documenting everything.
We are all about pictures, pictures, pictures
and recording things and reporting back and curating a certain online persona.
And yes, I am totally a hypocrite here because I document my own life,
and I also have an Instagram, a Twitter, and a Facebook.
I do not have a Google+ though and I do not have a Pinterest
because I don't know if people actually use that stuff. No offense, if you do.
I know we can all solve this as a community, but I am not sure how.
But I feel like we're over connecting and we're oversharing.
With the ability to connect all people, all the time, in all ways,
this sort of leads to replacing real connection with virtual connection.
And this put in context can mean when you go to “hang out” with people,
sometimes you're not even really "hanging out".
But you bet you will be tweeting and instagramming
and facebooking and tumblring about you hanging out.
When all you do is talk about your life, are you actually living your life?
So, where do you stop and make sure you're interacting
with the people in front of your face and not just the people in your pocket?
With this much technology being so integrated into our lives,
I think comes really big responsibilities for everyone
because we can all get better at this.
Which brings us back to authenticity.
One of the problems with overconnecting is that it changes our values.
When you put something on Instagram, most of the times it's to show how cool
that one thing that we did was.
But the problem is that, when everyone is instagramming
the one cool thing that we did,
how many people are actually experiencing the one cool thing that we did?
And how cool does that make the one cool thing that we did?
We have all started this trend "living to document."
In this sense, we're living for other people.
Also, all this technology makes dating so hard.
Because we have the ability to talk to people literally at any time of the day
at the touch of a finger, through 20,000 different platforms,
how do you know if he still likes you when you put your instagram of you
in the bikini with your dog in there and he doesn't like it?
How do you know if he still likes your dog?
How do you know if he still likes you if he doesn't text you every five minutes
or retweets your tweets about him tweeting about you tweeting about?
Can you even imagine being a young bachelorette in this world?
How do I know if he likes me if he doesn't take
a drunk Snapchat of me and send it to all his friends?
There are just so many possibilities for communication that it's so confusing
about why and when people choose to communicate.
There's also this thing that everyone can be a photographer
because of the iPhone.
Everyone can be a musician because of garage band.
Everyone can be a curator because of Tumblr.
Everything has become extremely accessible,
which has the potential to be amazing
because everyone should be able to access all of these things.
It's so amazing because of the general globalization of ideas.
It can make for some really weird and amazing art.
This also means that people are just making so much content.
But, how much of that content is actually good
and who's making it for the right reasons?
Basically, the right reason is authenticity.
Like I said before, everything trickles down to authenticity and love.
But I think this a very loaded idea because it's kind of complicated
and, again, hypocritical,
because nobody should ever need a reason to make anything.
This idea that art needs to mean something
and that there always has to be drive behind something, that's not true.
Because sometimes it just feels good to draw a stick figure,
or instagram your cat,
or write a dumb tweet about Miley Cyrus, like I do everyday.
Sometimes it just feels good to create content and that is OK.
But all this content and people's reasons behind all this content can get confusing
because it is harder to recognize talent and skill in this age
because so much can be autotuned,
or you can put the "rise" filter on the photo of your cat,
or there's grammar check on every program.
But I do not think it's ever hard to recognize soul.
Because whether it is autotuned or not,
it doesn't really matter if you believe in the song you're singing.
The same goes for photos.
A beautiful photo of the Empire State Building
with the "hudson" filter on it doesn't really stand a chance
against the photo you took of your friend laughing at something you said,
or the photo of your mom you took on her 50th birthday. Hi, mom.
Because authenticity, the combination of love and honesty, is key.
And humans sense it.
And the great thing is we can all be authentic
because we're all real humans with real emotions.
We just have to appreciate what's going on around us
and what's going on in our hearts.
We have to put ourselves into what we do
so that people will be able to taste our souls
and we don't have to be afraid of that.
Authenticity never goes out of style,
and real life that's comprised of love and honesty is timeless.
Thank you.
(Applause)