What in the Hell

Well. Time for a reset again.

I don’t know how to start about the internet right now. The internet used to be this magical place where I spoke with the friends I made at arts camp who lived two towns over. That key part of the internet intensified when I moved to the other side of the country to go to art school in Vancouver. Social media was in its infancy and having a personal blog was still a great way to share things with friends, particularly if you were a photographer. I made a photo post everyday for something like two years and it was fun, exciting. Even friends I saw daily would tell me they read it.

Then, social media took over. Sure, I used Facebook. I feel like we all (we all, people in their 20s in the aughts) did, but it grew old pretty quickly. The new kid in the room Instagram though, that was the ticket. Photography based, hooks like followers, likes, comments, engagement were all really, really addicting and also actually rewarding. I mean that too, rewarding. When instagram first popped up I was a bike messenger who recently starting used Twitter (R.I.P.) to post photos of weird shit I’d carry on a custom made cargo rack a friend had built for me, the same friend suggested Twitter as a fun way to document what I was doing and @shredordead became my handle. Weeks later Instagram happened and I managed the same handle early on into the game.

Weirdly enough my account caught on, or felt like it at least. The important part was that I was hooked on having actual responses to photography. Honestly it was liberating, confidence inducing and made me feel like shooting photos was worthwhile, that I maybe had a chance at achieving the goal of being a photographer (whatever that actually means…) in my lifetime. I slid into some early form of micro-influencer. When I started showing up at bike events or races I’d have people ask me if I was @shredordead, which was genuinely weird and also very exciting.

It was pretty much right here where messenger life and racing crossed over. At one point I even picked up a wheel sponsor of sorts because what I was doing seemed to resonate with people. It felt good. I have a hard time saying that, admitting that I was accidentally successful at something that the modern form of makes me cringe pretty hard. I still like to think that I was being authentic, working hard and being rewarded for it.

Then, then algorithms happened. Overnight the engagement I had been craving (I still crave it, I still want people to see my photography, I still seek affirmation that I’m worthwhile as an artist) disappeared unless I fed the feed what it expected from me. For a while it was okay, bikes still clicked, but the black and white film photos I was making don’t register. Lately birding photographs are completely ignored by the robot overlords. The cruel part is the apps show you that they don’t give a shit. Accounts reached doesn’t equate the people who signed up to follow you. To reach more people you need to commodify more. More things that look like selfies, more things on trend, guess what now you need to make reels, you need to make content, not art. Oh hey, you need to make video content that looks like a trendy dance about your still photography if you care for humans to see it.

Now, it’s AI too. The solution no one asked for. I’m already so sick of people telling me how fun it is, how useful it is. I don’t give two fucks to see the garish cartoon renderings of regurgitated photos of people doing weird caricature cartoonish bullshit. I’m tired of thinking that everything I’ve ever fed the internet with the belief that I had some protection of copyright is a fat lie. On top of the corporations not giving a shit about the rights of artists and creators (makers whatever we get to call ourselves now), the environmental and social implications of AI are absolutely fucked. We still have communities in So-Called-Canada that have boil water advisories. Every time I see some hot garbage AI made it makes me think of communities that can’t drink water without worrying, the huge class of people that have to work multiple jobs to pay rent and eat simultaneously while AI gets as much fresh water as it can consume. It feels like the entire internet only serves to make rich people richer.

Now, I don’t know what my move is. I know what I want my move to be as an artist. I want a darkroom in my basement (sure, I don’t have a basement, but you get the idea) where all I do is make physical, tangible prints on paper. I’d love to just be in there working on my process, making prints for other artists/photographers and watching real magic unfold in front my eyes under the red light. Instead I feel trapped in this system. Want new people to see your photographs, make videos! I just want to make photographs and show them to people.

It’s all to say, I’m back here again. Making lil’ blog posts. Does it feel any more real? I don’t know. Does it feel less like I’m fighting a machine that I can’t win against? Maybe it does, but only just by a little bit. I think I’m going to try for that, just a little bit better.

I’m going to try not to make some vast commitment to posting a photograph everyday, but I’d like to see what I can do towards that goal. I’m going to try and remember a phrase that runs through my head a lot lately: Done is better than Perfect. I might not write anything, I might write a lot. But either way I just need to feel like I’m being productive with something I’ve loved my whole life. I don’t want to feel like the binders and binders of negatives (hard drives too) aren’t going to sit unseen forever. That’s the whole point of photography, making drawings, making visual slices of time, manufacturing fine art, whatever, the point is to share what you think is worthwhile with the world. The other phrase I think about all the time: Art Practice is Practice. Do more, make mistakes but actually practice what you preach.

onward.