The References That Raised Me

Photography runs through my family.

Cameras, both video and still-image, were always around. Image-making was normal. Creative.

But somewhere early in my life, pornography entered the frame, and it quickly, yet quietly, became my visual education.

When I later picked up a camera, I didn’t realize I wasn’t just composing an image.

I was repeating a reference system.

For years, my aesthetic instincts were shaped by adult magazines, hip-hop videos, glamour lighting, and the early internet’s hunger for erotic content.

As a visual designer and early-adopter of the internet and websites, I once considered building the kinds of platforms that now dominate the adult web. The ambition was there. The appetite was there.

The wisdom wasn’t.

Over time, the industry scaled without me. And somewhere along the way, my interest in being known for the content I was producing died.

What I’m left with now is a harder, better question: If I remove pornography from my visual vocabulary… what remains? And what do I need to study next?

If pornography becomes your visual education, it does something subtle.

It teaches you what is “interesting.”

It trains your eye toward exposure. Toward exaggeration. Toward performance. Toward immediate impact.

Skin over shadow. Shock over subtlety. Consumption over contemplation.

You don’t notice it at first.

You think you’re developing taste.

But you’re really inheriting a template.

And templates are powerful. They sit behind the lens long before you press the shutter.

For a long time, I thought I was choosing my aesthetic.

In reality, my references were choosing for me.

The lighting I preferred. The poses I gravitated toward. The tension I tried to manufacture in an image.

Even when I attempted to shoot something “artistic,” the undercurrent was the same — attention, charge, heat.

That reference system is efficient. It works. It grabs eyes.

It just doesn’t build depth.

And depth is what I want now.

The images we absorb early in life quietly teach us how to see — what to notice, what to value, what to reproduce. We create what we consume. I spent decades unconsciously repeating a visual education I didn’t choose. Today, I am choosing carefully. Sculpture over spectacle. Study over stimulation. Light over lure.

Shift to Present Tension The problem with removing a dominant reference is that it leaves a vacuum. A huge, freaking gaping hole. No inuendo intended.

When Instagram exploded and everyone became a “content producer” (let’s be honest, the explosion of GWCs was real…), the aesthetic I had studied no longer felt rare. It felt noisy. Cheapened. Industrialized.

The hunger for spectacle became infinite.

And I lost interest.

Not because I stopped caring about photography.

But because I no longer wanted to compete in a race for exposure.

So now I’m left rebuilding.

Not gear. Not a portfolio. An eye.

Introduce the Rebuild If I am honest, I don’t yet know what my new reference system will be.

But I know what it won’t be.

It won’t be built on appetite. It won’t be built on shock. It won’t be built on algorithms.

I am more interested in form than flesh. Structure over spectacle. Light as discipline, not as lure.

The question isn’t “What should I shoot?”

The better question is:

“What kind of visual reference do I want to cultivate?”

Because the influence of that reference precedes the image.

Reframing My Shot This isn’t a dramatic departure.

It’s a quiet recalibration.

Photography is still in my blood. It runs through generations of my family. It’s tattooed on my arm. I still enjoy the idea of photographing cosplay artists, physique models, Victorian gothic, and steampunk themes.

But now I am choosing my teachers more carefully.

Sculpture over spectacle. Architecture over appetite. Study over stimulation.

If I remove pornography from my visual vocabulary, something will remain.

And whatever remains — that’s the foundation.

This is the beginning of rebuilding it.

Originally published on Medium.