“And if you became a brand, isn’t that the signal of your complete failure as a human being, isn’t that completely contrary to what you or me or any documentary photographer or artist should want to become. Don’t you think that to have that level of consistency, to have that anal obsessiveness to always talk in one particular way - even when you know it’s bullshit - is alien to everything that is true and honest and good.”
—
Colin Pantall’s blog: Random Conversations #4 ; It’s like Being a Brand
I get this impulse, but I think its more of a struggle than that. If we are happy to follow our inclination - our artistic muse - and only seek personal satisfaction from it, then, yes, being a “brand” is useless and counterproductive.
But what if you have a message to get across? What if you want to influence people to action? For that, you need to accommodate the ways people find, accept, learn and process information. You have to gain some consistency and some volume. Maybe a lot of volume.
The danger lies in the point where we confuse the consistency and volume for the message itself.
