Fighting obsolescence
I love documentaries.
Whenever I open Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Max, etc., I check for new ones to watch. Real-life stories are always more interesting to me than fiction.
Recently, I rewatched a favorite, Jasper Mall. A touching look at a dying mall in Jasper, Alabama.
Partly because I didn’t see anything else that caught my eye, partly for nostalgia.
As a Gen-Xer, the local mall was a central fixture in your life growing up. You would go there to shop for presents during Christmastime.
Back-to-school shopping in the fall. Maybe your first job was in one of the stores.
The mall was a place to meet up and hang out with friends—the movie theater, the arcade, the food court. It was that third place that we’re all missing these days.
I took my senior photos at the mall, and rented my tux for prom there.
Took driver’s ed at the Sears at the mall. Worked my first long-term job at another department store there (Mervyn’s).
Here’s a supercut of some of their early 2000’s commercials:
Met my wife at that job.
It's safe to say I have a soft spot in my heart for malls. I have nothing against online shopping, but sometimes, you want to leave the house.
I promise this is about photography!
The enclosed shopping mall is an outdated retail concept. It requires massive amounts of power to keep the lights on, the air cooled in the summer, and the heating on in the winter.
The mall requires a massive amount of land for the building and the parking lots surrounding it.
Many people would have you believe that photography is an outdated concept. AI imagery is all over social media, and platforms are increasingly algorithmically favoring short-form video. It’s hard to stop the scroll. Everyone needs photography, but I've heard that not many want to pay for it.
I don’t call this newsletter Photography Is a Dead Medium for nothing!
Do I believe that photography is dead? Of course not. I wouldn’t want something that’s been a significant part of my life for over thirty-something (man, it’s been that long?) years to end.
I’m not alone either, the past couple of months, I’ve seen a lot of renewed interest in blogging (I wish I had kept up my blog[s]…), newsletters, zines/zine making,
Side note, I personally believe every photographer should make at least one zine, even if you never show it to anyone, it’s such a fulfilling, creative process on its own…
and YouTube channels. Maybe I should start a YouTube channel?
Everyone’s fighting to have their voices heard, and many of us are deciding to host our audiences and followers on our own spaces.
Aside from the miriad of issues with the oncoming AI revolution such as;
Enviromental - the power consumption needed to run the servers to generate content and further train the machines to improve their future output. We’re already seeing changing weather patterns; stronger storms, colder winters, hotter summers, etc. How much more could an increasing AI dependence accelerate that?
Ethical - The speed to which AI is improving is scary along the lines of deepfakes (likenesses of appearances & voices), and what is being done about the potential for bias in applications like employment, lending, or criminal justice. Not to add privacy issues.
Transparency - What data is being collected for AI learning, and what is happening with that data? Who has access to it and what is the potential for misusage?
Aside from all that, and more (and I know that that’s a BIG ask to set those concerns aside). There’s this other reason, this little, tiny reason that’s been burning inside of me. Maybe inside of you too.
That what we create, it matters.
To us yes, but you also hope it matters to others too right? That’s why we share things.
Hey, I wrote this poem, this story, this book.
I made this song, this video.
I drew this, I painted this.
I took this photo.
You spent years of your life learning and practicing how to create that thing you do.
Then to have someone in not so many words tell you, that it doesn’t matter anymore. We have something that does what you do and we want it to do more, and the world no longer needs you.
Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but that’s the feeling I get from looking through all the discourse over AI these days.
Going back to the documentary, sometimes, I feel like Mike McClelland at the Jasper Mall, the superintendent / security / maintenance / custodian, trying everything possible to draw shoppers in, like having a gospel music showcase in the center of the mall, or hosting a carnival in the parking lot.
Sometimes, it’s the owner of Jewelry Doctor, recognizing that maybe you need a change of location to keep things going instead of hanging on to a place where everything is dying out.
Other times, you’re the owner of Robin’s Nest. You just say “It’s time to close up and move on, I had a good run.”
Just some thoughts I had.
I told you I love documentaries.
I owe y’all two book practice projects, don’t I?
First up, a structure that I’ve been obsessed with recently is the accordion or concertina booklet.
These are mostly made from long paper strips or by attaching pages with tape and folding them on top of one another.
Since I’ve done the sequencing for some nights and it’s been printed, I don’t need the 5×7 prints now, so let’s use those!
Final Result:
Next is a small booklet using a 3-hole pamphlet stitch, another binding I’ve always wanted to try.
Using some plain printer paper for the pages, and some super flimsy chipboard (that I originally bought to use for case binding), for the cover:
Now, being my first time, I messed up the stitching. You’re supposed to start from inside the book through the middle station (hole), loop around to the top station, then out through the bottom station, back in through the middle, and then tie a double knot.
I came back out through the middle, down to the bottom, and then back through the middle. So instead of tying a knot in the inside middle, I have two separate knots, one inside and one outside.
This sounds much more complicated than I’m making it out to be! Here’s a screenshot from a PDF from the Library of Congress explaining how to properly pamphlet stitch:
Overall, however, I’m happy with my first attempt:
I need to practice more, but I’m already considering what type of photo project would fit this binding. For some reason, my mind goes to something like Polaroid lifts. Or maybe that’s just an excuse for me to experiment with Polaroid lifts (I’ve never done any before).
I'm unsure what to try next month; maybe a Japanese Stab bind?
We’ll see.
Until next time,
Laidric
Also, you can find me here:
Nice to see.. the bone folder takes me back to my uni days and my first experience of trying to make handmade books. I think I only made two or three at the time and did not pursue it further, something I regret with the benefit of hindsight/old age. I let myself be put off by the difficulty of getting a professional finish when this is something that probably comes with practice. One of my lecturers at the time was a master at it, some nice images and description of one of his bookmaking workshops here: https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2015/04/john-blakemore-book-binding-sequencing/ If nothing else it's a great excuse to print images as opposed to just viewing them on a screen.
That's what I'm trying not to do, I have all this booking-making stuff, Awls, thread, self-healing cutting mat, blades, guillotine paper cutters, book presses, etc. And I've read books and watched so many tutorials, and I'm using this year to get better at all these things. Like you said, it just comes with practice. In my case, it's lots of practice. And everyone gets to see, or that is, everyone who subscribes to this newsletter.