Often, when I think about my following text or my next set of photos (can you imagine, my Dear Friend, that in 2025 I haven’t published a single new set of images? [I wrote the “It’s all already been” text on the 22nd of October, 2025]), I often think that what I’ve come up with has already been said and shown.
Is that bad? Does it mean that I am not creative? I think that the answer to this question is not obvious. It seems to me that the vast majority of works and texts that have been created draw heavily on other works and creations. After all, even Tolkien based his works on, among other things, Celtic and Norse mythology and Icelandic sagas. Salvador Dali also drew inspiration from other painters, such as Jean-François Millet. Walter Scott and George Sand inspired Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Practically, each artist took something from someone else. Even the greatest needed inspiration.
The key is not to copy other people’s ideas, but to draw on them and transform them through your inner world and through the prism of your experiences.
Realizing all this, it suddenly turns out that all my ideas for texts or photo sets (the fact that I didn’t publish anything in 2025 doesn’t mean that I don’t have ideas for more photo sets: I’ll just throw out a few keywords: “Inspired by Google,” “Mazek in Color,” and “Project Selfie.”) turn out to be completely original, even if people find references to works published in the past. Even if you also have the “It’s all already been” thoughts after producing some works of art, my Dear Friend, do not discourage yourself from the broadly defined act of creating something out of nothing. Only cavemen did not have anything to steal from others, except from the broadly defined Mother Nature.
