Was Ansel Adams a Landscape or Travel Photographer?

Did Picasso paint "Portraits" or "Nudes"?

Don't you feel these questions are ridiculous?
Don#t you agree they miss the point, they prove the asking person should take a far closer look to the body of work of the artist in question?

Yet we professional photographers are confronted with it every time we dare to add a whatever "off-topic photo" to an otherwise pure corporate portrait portfolio. ADs or editors don't fail to prompt that picture with

THE MOST EVIL QUESTION OF ALL TIMES:

Back in the early 90s (my experience is about Germany so maybe in the US it happened at a different time) I had the chance to get a look at a lot of photographers portfolios. Usually they where full of pictures from what today we call "people", "portrait", "nude", "nature", "tarvel", "architecture" and "wildlife". You could not only see the personal style of a photographer, the broad band of subjects photographed (or not!) showed an almost intimate portrait of the photographer itself. Clients liked (or didn't) you, your "eye", your style and gave you the assignment relying on your craftsmanship and artistry. Then the whole system changed when people that had never had a look at a photo (from a professional point of view) came to be editors. They couldn't "read" the pictures anymore (I'm not blaming THEM - it would be the same for me having to chose from modern art - I just cant relate to it's theoretical approach) and they got confused with all the pictures so they nonchalantly asked: "What is it that you really do?"

While I was so bewildered with the question that I almost choked on the billions of words that question whirled up in a blink of a shutter, at the same time I still had to face the fact that THEY WERE LOST and that I needed to be clear about what service I provided when I wanted them to trust me.

So we "cleared the mess", narrowed the portfolios to the one thing we beleived was the most promissing (not the most interesting or artistic - it often was the LEAST artistic). But your existence shapes your conscience: Since there was no more reason for taking pictures that your commercial mind (that you were forcing on your artistry) labelled as useless, you stopped shooting in the first place what couldn't make it into your portfolio anyway.

It took me almost 20 years to get aware of this and to allow myself to photograph as I did when I started out, enthusiastic and with an open mind and not categorizing what I had in front of my eyes as sellable or not.

The truth is, I am a photographer not because I didn't know what else to do with my time, BUT because I perceive the world through pictures, I relate to it in my personal way through my viewfinder, I strive to learn from it when I look at its every detail, I celebrate it when showing my work to others.

What is it that you REALLY do?
I am a photographer!