The artist may not necessarily understand his own art
The other day, I remembered that I had started Luis Camnitzer's One Number Is Worth One Word a while ago. It's a very good book, especially if you're...
The Power of a Documentary
Various streaming services have been churning out documentaries about all kinds of things. For personal reasons, I don't watch much TV. I never got into the...
Yasumasete agetai
Early last month, I mentioned my idea to create something visual from the Japanese green tea I drink. In part, my motivation was conceptual (of sorts)....
Where Photography Ends
The other day, I started work on what I'm hoping to become my next book. I've had the idea in my head for a while, and I'm excited about getting started. In...
Twenty Years
I'm not particularly interested in anniversaries. I'm happy to celebrate other people's; but in my own life, I prefer to look forward -- rather than back....
Photo 101, MFA-student paralysis, and more
A few years ago, when I was still posting my own photographs on Instagram, I posted a series of pictures where I had placed the same object somewhere in my...
When your own trash is your treasure
I might be one of the few people who's genuinely not interested in the planet Mars. I get it, it's a large planet. But realistically speaking, there's not...
Odds and Ends and the Past
The other day, I realized that I needed to advertise the fact again that I'm mentoring photographers. I'm basically doing what I used to be doing when I...
Creativity And Its Unnecessary Discontent
Creativity is such a strange beast. For the most part, it appears to remain elusive, with what writers call "writer's block" being a lot more common than one...
Books, Books, Books
I'm happy to report that the ten sets of Risograph prints are sold out. I'm deeply thankful for all those people who decided to get a set (some even asked...
Prints for Ukraine
I’m selling 10 sets of high-quality Risograph prints from my book Vaterland to raise money for Ukraine. All proceeds will go to CARE’s Ukraine Crisis Fund....
We Are The Frog
It has been a while. I had promised myself that I would send out an email when I was ready to do so, regardless of how much (or little) time had passed since...
Against Didactic Fiction
This picture has nothing to do with what I wanted to talk about. But I thought that if I started with text, then maybe I'd already lose a bunch of readers?...
Sounds and Smells and More
You might have seen Sochi Singers by Rob Hornstra and Arnold van den Bruggen when it first came out. It's portraits of these Russian restaurant singers....
The Power of Words (and Art)
My last email generated a flurry of responses, and it was shared widely. As a consequence, this Mailing List's audience has grown quite a bit. If you've...
What It Takes
This is the time when photographers are getting their materials ready to apply for a spot in an MFA program. Having spoken with a large number of...
This Is The End (Of 2021)
It's the end of another year. Looking back, 2021 appears to have been mostly filled with disappointments for me: another year of the pandemic, no traveling...
Everything, All the Time, Everywhere (incl. Tendonitis)
Stuart Jeffries is the author of Grand Hotel Abyss, a book about the Frankfurt School that I started reading, yet never finished, in part because I had...
Eros + Massacre + Composition In Photography
A while ago, I signed up with a free streaming service. Free means: you don't have to pay money, but your programming is going to be interrupted by a period...
Kylo Ren Is The Vampire
Trying to learn Japanese entails watching the occasional movie (with subtitles). My Japanese isn't very good, but I can pick up basic conversations OK....