The Card I Didn’t Know I Needed

I went to the Bloomington Public Library for a library card.

At 59 years old.

I remember thinking, What in the hell do I need a library card for? I don’t have a paper due. 😂

Turns out, that was probably the wrong question.

I’m no stranger to libraries. One of my first meaningful jobs was working at the Queens Public Library in New York while I was still in high school. I knew the stacks. I knew what libraries represented then.

Books. Information. Research. A place to learn.

What I hadn’t considered was what a library might mean to me now.

Walking through the Bloomington Public Library, I started noticing things I wasn’t expecting. Creative spaces. Meeting rooms. Podcast resources. Technology. Places where people can gather, make things, learn something new, and share what they already know.

The building had changed from the version of a library I had carried around in my head.

Maybe I had changed too.

These days I walk into places differently.

I’m an artist and photographer. I notice light. I notice people. I notice spaces and possibilities. I’m usually wondering what could happen there, what could be photographed there, or what story might be hiding somewhere that everybody else just walked past.

That curiosity is part of why my camera is rarely very far away.

The funny thing is, I went into the library looking for access and walked out thinking about contribution.

I learned about Bloomington Public Library’s Innovator-in-Residence program, where artists and other creatives can spend time sharing their craft with members of the community.

Photography is included.

Now, before anybody gets ahead of me, I haven’t signed myself up for another career. 😂

I’m considering applying.

And part of the reason has very little to do with whether I’m eventually selected.

I want the exercise.

Can I take decades of experience making photographs and explain what I actually know?

Can I talk about why I make certain decisions?

Can I explain light, composition, printing, storytelling and all the little choices that happen before somebody ever sees the finished photograph?

Can I take something that has become almost instinctive through years of repetition and turn it back into understandable language for somebody who is just beginning?

That interests me.

Because knowing how to do something and knowing how to explain it are two different skills.

Putting together an application also requires another kind of discipline. You have to gather your experience, decide what matters, explain your ideas clearly and make a case for why somebody should consider you.

I need practice doing that too.

Maybe I apply and get selected.

Maybe I apply and don’t.

Maybe I work through the process and decide the timing isn’t right.

All three outcomes can still teach me something.

There was a time when I probably would have seen an opportunity I liked and immediately started figuring out how to do everything associated with it.

I’m learning to approach things differently now.

Clarity.

Responsibility.

Self-awareness.

Those things are required to make photographs well, run a business well, build relationships well and, apparently, decide whether you should volunteer to teach four photography classes at the public library.

Who knew?

There’s another part of this story that I like.

I started working in a library when I was a teenager in Queens.

Decades later, I walked into another library in Bloomington, Illinois, thinking I was simply getting a card.

Instead, I found myself thinking again about learning, art, photography, community and what I might have to contribute.

Turns out I wasn’t a stranger to the stacks.

I just didn’t know what they might hold for me this time around.

And that little plastic card?

I think I needed it after all.

Fit 2 Capture. Fit 2 Curate. Fit 2 Print.