Photoland and Tree Pictures and Instagram and Vaccinations and Monumental Moments
I think that one of photoland’s biggest problems is its self-assigned insularity. More often than not, photographers make photobooks for other photographers, without ever making an attempt to reach a larger audience. Of course, the question is: does that larger audience exist? For a number of reasons, it’s not clear that it does. Even though photography itself has expanded massively, to reach vast swatches of society – as part of their smartphone most people have a camera with them all the time, photoland itself has contracted: many magazines dedicated to photography, especially those aimed at a wider audience, have disappeared; picture magazines don’t exist any longer; newspapers and magazines have been reducing their coverage of culture (even before everything moved online); photography has been accepted into the world of art, but museum programming has changed towards pretty shallow blockbuster-exhibition programming; etc.
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In some ways, this kind of discussion is an egg-and-chicken one, and there are too many economic factors in play for it to ever come to any sort of conclusion. If we step back a little bit, though, there is a more basic question to ask: given that so many people are taking (and sharing) pictures, doesn’t this mean that at least in principle, all those people might have an interest in photoland’s products? This is where the above video comes in. Its premise is very simple: what happens when you hand three well-known photobooks to people in two different reading groups? Obviously, these people aren’t necessarily your average people – how many people read novels? (Also, the groups are not very diverse at all.) Still, this is a big step outside of the narrow confines of photoland.
When I watched the video, I found myself fast-forwarding through the statements by the three curators tasked with introducing the books. What they had to say was good, but I knew all of that anyway. And I didn’t think what the two groups had to say really needed the framing. The reactions had me think that the overall premise is really good: exposing more non-photoland people to photobooks is a great way for photolandians to learn about what their specialist products actually do.
Meanwhile…
A major (or minor - depending how you view these things) kerfuffle on Instagram has resulted in a conversation between Callum Beaney and Andy Pham. It centers on a number of topics, including artistic concepts, representation, and art seen in its larger societal context. Give it a read.
Meanwhile…
When I work on a photo project, as a rule I don’t put any of the pictures on Instagram (IG) while it’s work in progress. Instead, I produce other pictures for the site. There’s just one exception to this rule: I realized after the fact that an IG picture was actually a great addition to Vaterland (it’s the very first picture in the book). The main reason behind my rule is very simple: I don’t want to share preliminary ideas because they might change, and I don’t want to pre-define something that in the end could be very different.
With my “serious” work, it only appears on social media (or my own website) once it’s done. Obviously, what’s serious, and what is not? But you know what I mean. It’s not that I don’t put a lot of effort into my IG pictures. It’s just that mostly, they’re not made with something larger in mind (even though I’m not necessarily opposed to the idea of using them later for something larger, either).
Of course, once you put a picture up on IG, the “likes” will come in – or not. Like everybody else, I don’t look at the number of likes. (cue laugh track from tape) OK, obviously that’s not true. Much like everybody else, I look: what do people like, what do people not like (given it’s all showing up on small screens, scrolling by along with all that other stuff)? Usually, I get it wrong which pictures are the most popular ones. I don’t think this fact says much, if anything about either photography or my pictures itself. I also don’t think it says much about Instagram. I don’t think people scrolling through pictures is leading to a general dumbing down of photography or to people becoming numb to pictures.
Sometimes, I ask myself why specific pictures get more likes than others. I don’t correlate the number of likes with the actual artistic quality of the picture (after all, if as research has shown blue pictures get more likes that cannot mean that blue pictures are always artistically better, right?). Instead, I’m mostly working off my surprise, such as in the case of the tree picture here. I had posted that more as a filler picture – in between some other pictures that I think are a lot better. But here I was, finding people liking this picture more than others. Very curious…
Meanwhile…
My Patreon is slowly, yet steadily taking off. I publish a new article every Friday. Behind the scenes, I’ve been working on a few. My idea was to expand beyond my usual photobook reviews, to include older material and also books that maybe aren’t even photobooks. Is Anne Carson‘s marvelous Nox a photobook? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Who cares? Either way, I wrote a longish article about it. If you’ve never seen the book, you should check it out. It’s really incredible.
Meanwhile…
This past Sunday, I received the first dose of my Covid vaccination. It all happened at a local chain pharmacy. I had thought briefly about whether or not to take one of those selfies many people have done. As you might know, I’m not at all opposed to the selfie. But in this case, it didn’t feel right to me. Even though in many ways this is completely bizarre, the moment felt too private to me, too close to me, and I didn’t want to puncture this with a picture.
It’s interesting how pretty much all important occasions in my life have occurred under the most mundane circumstances, and there are no pictures. Here, there was this one small corner in the somewhat dingy shop, separated by some blue plastic curtain. A youngish store clerk was attaching “sale” labels to each and every item in one of the isles nearby (I always envy people that have completely pointless tasks to do – until I’m in the same position). There were two of those metal folding chairs set up that I always associate with church basements (this would be an interesting article: a history/theory of the white plastic chairs that you see all over the world, plus those metal folding chairs that are so ubiquitous in the US). I sat down, the pharmacist came over, decked out with a face shield and all, there was a little chit chat about the weather, and that was it. US health authorities have everybody wait for fifteen minutes afterwards: yet another metal folding chair, this one not hidden behind a curtain. Fifteen minutes of cramming Japanese vocabulary. And then I was sent off, back into the world that hadn’t changed – other than it having aged roughly 20 minutes, with my own body starting to react to whatever it had just received. I felt a little bit tired that day, and my arm hurt for a few days, but that was it. The banality of the monumental – what a strange feeling.
Anyway, I hope you’re doing well, and I hope wherever you might be reading this you’re either in line for your vaccination, or maybe you’ve received it already. Somehow, I feel that there should be a gigantic reckoning with this long moment we’ve just gone through (well, we’re nearing the end). But I know that reckoning isn’t going to happen. I worry already about a wasted opportunity to learn about ourselves and how we deal with one another.
As always, thank you for reading!
– Jörg