We use the word amateur to dismiss people — as if not-yet-knowing is the problem, rather than the starting point.
But amateur comes from the Latin amator: lover. It arrived in English via French, meaning simply someone who does a thing for the love of it. No payment. No audience. No career plan.
Vivian Maier was a nanny who shot over 150,000 photographs and showed almost no one. When she died, her work was found in a storage locker — and the world discovered one of the great street photographers of the twentieth century, working entirely for love, with no expectation anyone would ever see it.
This episode of The Word at Work traces amateur back to its roots, and asks what work might look like if more of us did it the way Vivian Maier did.
Companion short note : https://www.cultivatedmanagement.com/being-an-amateur/
But amateur comes from the Latin amator: lover. It arrived in English via French, meaning simply someone who does a thing for the love of it. No payment. No audience. No career plan.
Vivian Maier was a nanny who shot over 150,000 photographs and showed almost no one. When she died, her work was found in a storage locker — and the world discovered one of the great street photographers of the twentieth century, working entirely for love, with no expectation anyone would ever see it.
This episode of The Word at Work traces amateur back to its roots, and asks what work might look like if more of us did it the way Vivian Maier did.
Companion short note : https://www.cultivatedmanagement.com/being-an-amateur/
