That a photograph must tell a story is commonplace. “Storytelling” has conquered every form of photography, from landscape to street photography to elaborately staged scenes. I prefer to see photographs as fragments, extraits from a now lost present. John Berger remarked on the gap between the moment photographed and the present, saying All photographs are […]
— make something every day, something for an audience of one;— give away the things I make, leave them behind, stash them on shelves in stores, send them to strangers, and otherwise cast them into the universe for others to find;— look around with the eyes and curiosity of a child;— talk to strangers to […]
Slunk Emo ceremoniously attached the lens. The live stream on Stumbler broadcast through the universe video of what he was doing. He straightened and nodded to Slunk Ome, then moved to a position beside the switch that would complete the circuit when he threw it. The switch that would link, all at once, all the […]
I had an appointment in the city the other day. Given the train schedule, I would either arrive about 45 minutes early or 5 minutes late. I opted to arrive early so that I could spend half an hour or so taking pictures in the beautiful train station. The station was bustling with people — […]
In A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time John Brinckerhoff Jackson reflects on the meaning of our increasingly urbanized and industrialized landscapes and how we interact with and live in those spaces. He is neither the first nor the most recent to draw attention to various aspects of the built environment, with a particular […]
I went to see a show last night, an album celebration show. The music was great, but what really impressed me was the musicians. Sure, there were a number of people there to see the show, but our presence was irrelevant. Watching the band play and especially E.J., the front man, I saw a person […]
The vagueness of a daily photography project or the magnitude of a “365 project” has always put me off. A more finite, one still life each day for a month, worked better. Even that project, however, lost some of its appeal by the end: However, I have largely disliked this project. I find it dull. […]
Are we more or less alone now that we hold “the world” in our hands? Do we seek out empty places so that the real world doesn’t interfere with our experiencing the virtual world? Maybe in the 1980s Aztec Camera could remark, “They call us lonely when we’re really just alone,” but today I worry […]
Diptychs (and triptychs). Thinking about photos in groups: twos, threes, and fours, maybe more (the grids of photos by the Bernd & Hilla Becher, e.g.). How does pairing photos change them? How does looking for pairs alter the process of photographing? I don’t know, but I like to think about it.
Keith Smith noted: By saying he was going to make a picture of some thing, he ended up making second-hand, non-visual pictures (see “Not vivid, Not exciting.”). I wonder how often I take pictures of something I have imagined (whether or not I’ve said it aloud to others or silently to myself) rather than take […]