What should come through in your overall artistic statement is what you care about. Maybe you care about the technology of cameras and getting the perfect image from the kit that you use. Or maybe you’re interested in the issues surrounding immigration around the world. Whatever it is – say it!

Never write your website bio in the third person. It seems like you’re trying to sound professional makes but actually it looks weird, unless it’s in a quote from someone else talking about you – in which case, make that clear. 

Don’t use quotes from theorists such as Susan Sontag on your website – it’s so art school. And avoid the word “between”, which is currently very over-used in project titles. Why call your project Between Night and Day when you could just call it Nightime? Be straightforward. Be articulate.

Be honest in your project statement. Don’t try to explain your photography – all the statement needs to do is tell you what you’re looking at. Take Mishka Henner’s statement for No Man’s Land: he has never written more than a short paragraph about his work and it’s been reviewed everywhere. Your job is to set out what the work is and then it’s up to the reviewers to write about it. 

Photographers I work with often ask about getting a critic to write an essay to include alongside their work when it’s published as a book. I never do that. I’m much more interested in getting someone to write about the issue. For Ben Roberts’ book Occupied Spaces, for which he photographed the interiors of tents at the Occupy camp by St Paul’s Cathedral, we got Naomi Colvin of Occupy London to write an essay. Most photography magazines these days are about photography rather than what is happening in the pictures. But photography – especially documentary photography – shows you what’s going on elsewhere.

When writing captions for your work, ask yourself: “Do I need to contextualise this?” Sometimes photographers need to write long captions, as Taryn Simon did for A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters, while others keep them short. Always think about what, if anything, is being added. 

Blogging regularly can give a real insight into your character, what you like and how you work. But a blog that isn’t updated for three weeks is not a good look. Most people only put up a new body of work on their website every six months to a year but a blog makes you appear busy when picture editors, publishers and gallerists check out your website. Every week, Laura Pannack uploads a behind-the-scenes shot to her blog. Alternatively, revisit an old image from your archive and write about the story behind it. 

Believe in what you do. As a photographer, you talk a visual language and any words you write should support that.

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