What Are You In Conversation With?
Every piece of work speaks—
not just to the viewer, but to what came before it.
To the artists who shaped us.
To the sounds, textures, and questions we’ve absorbed over time.
Even when we don’t name them, the threads are there.
Influence isn’t always loud.
Sometimes it shows up in a shadow, a color, a kind of pacing.
The work remembers—even when we forget.
Art is a Dialogue, Not a Statement
You’re not making in isolation.
Even when you work alone, your choices carry echoes:
of the photographers you’ve studied,
the books you’ve read,
the music that held you together during a difficult season.
And just like in a real conversation,
you’re not expected to invent every word.
You’re responding. Reframing.
Adding your part to something ongoing.
Lineage is Not Limitation
Sometimes we resist influence.
We want to be original, untouched, unshaped.
But the point of lineage isn’t imitation.
It’s awareness.
To know the artists, thinkers, and communities your work is in dialogue with
is to create with intention—
to place your offering gently into the long river of what’s come before and what’s still arriving.
That river is wide. There’s space for you in it.
Let It Be a Quiet Conversation
Not every influence is direct.
You might not work in the same medium.
You might not agree with everything they made or believed.
But something about their presence stays with you—
their pace, their questions, their quiet refusal to follow.
These are the conversations that shape you.
Sometimes you only hear them when you’re still enough to listen.
To Carry With You
Make a list of the artists, thinkers, or works your art is in quiet dialogue with.
They might not even know you exist.
But the work knows them.
Then ask:
What part of your work carries their voice?
Where have they shaped your decisions—without you realizing it?
How can your work continue the conversation—on your own terms?
You’re not copying.
You’re continuing something.
And that, too, is original.
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— Endeoh
Collaborate. Elevate. Inspire.