The Etymology and Relationship Between Credit and Believe.

I do what I love, and I love what I do. This is utterly true to me, and I share this with you, from the most genuine of places in my soul. 

Art is not to be taken for granted in any way. Not yours, not mine, not his and not hers. Art is sacred to the artist. It is sacred to me, because I do not do it for money, or fame, or ego, or appreciation. I do it because I inherently love it. It is intrinsic to me, in the deepest of manners. It really is. 

I shoot from my heart, from my soul. And I know that, because the eye is the channel to the soul; the only black hole that really reveals everything about us, about the nature of our stature. 

I don't take pictures. I captures moments that in no possible world will ever seem the way they seem - right here, right now. And the power of the image, its force to resonate in our hearts sometimes years after it was taken - is divine to me. Much greater than just the 'us', and the 'life'. It is deep, it is healthy. 

But please don't get me wrong -- this is not just about art. It's about ethics, and morality, and respect, and a conduct based on goodness. 

We need to innocently believe in what we do, with an attempt to most sufficiently minimize background noises of others who presumptuously invest their energy in telling us otherwise; or rather, take the credit of our work, and shamelessly make it their own. 

The reason why I use the words 'believe' and 'credit' in this context results from an inner debate, or might I say stormy discussion I had with myself earlier this morning. 

Look how beautiful this is:

According to the online etymology dictionary, 'believe' literally means 'to hold dear, to love.' Nice so far. Now, as we type in 'credit' in the same search bar we discover that it can mean 'to trust, to entrust, TO BELIEVE.' So if the above are true, or at least emotionally logical, then I safely infer that to CREDIT is TO LOVE, to hold dear. 

When a person fails to credit your work, not because he forgot.. not because he wasn't aware.. but because he was soaked in his reeking juices of egocentricity and infringement - that is when you learn that that person has a foundational malfunction in what we call, loving. 

I do not just hold dear my art to myself. I consciously exercise, really to my best ability - the art of relating to people's emotions and art, credit [i.e. believe, that] what they have worked so rigorously and tenaciously hard to arrive at. With that belief, I learn to deepen my love and to really hold dear one's creative originality, original creativity. 

I learned an important lesson last night. And I intend on growing stronger from it, better from it.

I do what I love, and I love what I do. 

Matan Tzinamon | XiMT Photography