Recently I noticed that a photographer I have admired for a while had some "e-zines" available on their site for a very affordable price. I really do want to help support other photographers and artists in general, plus given the quality of the work that I had seen in the past I figured it would be worth the look. When I first downloaded a few of them, I was excited; hundreds of pictures from all around the world, places that I will likely never see - that's one of the greatest aspects of photography, of course, and street photography holds a special place in my heart because of this.
Now obviously I'm not going to disclose the name here because I'm going to be a bit blunt; I'm really not a name-and-shame type person, and I'm sure that there are others who really value the work in a way that I have not quite been able to appreciate. That's not the point of this post.
But I was a bit let down by the body of work as a whole in a way I had not expected. After going through hundreds of the images, I realized that I would have happily paid the same amount or even more for a better curated set, even if it only included a quarter of what they had provided.
Of course, I can only speculate as to why the artist chose to present their work in this way; from my perspective, creating a zine or broader scope of work such as a photo book should be a thoughtful process. And it's not like there was any pretense in the text that would suggest that this photographer in general believes that all of the work found inside would be worth the consideration.
But it was a strange feeling to realize that the zines felt more like a generalized Instagram feed, full of quick snapshots where there is no clear subject or reason to engage with the photo for more than a few seconds; I found myself literally scrolling through the PDF as I would on an app full of photography that doesn't speak to me in hopes of finding something that caught my eye. There were a lot of "repeat" shots where it was just a slightly different perspective of the same subject, or they had set their camera to burst shots and just shared a stream of them as if there was a significant enough difference between the individual photos. There were quite a few images of buildings that were indistinguishable from one another, and a shocking amount of traffic light photos that I can only assume were rather poor attempts at the "minimalist" aesthetic.
It felt very "tourist on vacation" in a way that I imagine people dreaded slideshow projections of their uncle's visit to Florida instead of a serious body of work that really attempted to engage with the cultures that surrounded them.
Essentially, the zines would have been far stronger had the photographer been more decisive about their own work. It's not like they didn't have some great moments here and there! I don't know if there was a concern of providing a perceived "value" in giving an "experience" with as many photos as possible, if there was some desire to share because they spent time on the edit for each photo or what the reasoning was, but it just drove the point home over and over again that quality over quantity is so important not only for the "consumer" of the work, but also for your own sake - because now it's hard to take this photographer seriously moving forward, and I'm not keen on getting anymore zines from them.
Listen, I'm not naive enough to believe that none of my work falls into this category and that I won't have future work where I slip into this. I know it certainly has in the past, and I know it will likely happen again despite my best efforts to avoid this. It's often easy to possess an outsized attachment to an image that you've stared at for too long, spent too much time editing, whatever it may be and lose any sense of objectivity. There are photos on my site that I'll probably review later and take down, unimpressed by my own choices as I continue to grow as an artist.
And I'm sure that my heroes felt this way from time to time as well. I kind of doubt that they never experienced the "what was I thinking" feeling after publishing some of their images.
But the more I engage with the works of my heroes from previous generations through their photo books while simultaneously separating myself from seeking this sort of social media success, the more I've realized an important truth that I'm trying to hold myself to.
They worked with and learned from others. They sought out mentors. They developed their body of work for years at a time. Some projects would take a decade or more, and what we see is a small fraction of what they and their mentors, peers, and editors decided worked best to convey their perspective of the world.
They sat with their work and were patient. They believed in it, so they didn't need the immediate satisfaction. They knew they were creating something that would connect with people, even if that audience was "small" (I recently found out that many of these old photo books had rather small print runs, even the popular ones).
But god, was it ever worth it.
That's part of why I'm not posting my newer photos for a while; I really want to sit with them and see which ones work, and more importantly, figure out why they work and why I believe in them. There is certainly potential to over-correct in this way; I could easily become overly critical and start to hate everything I create, which I don't think is fair to myself. I could end up falling into the trap of believing that every photo requires some sort of deeper meaning or emotion, which I don't really believe in; I would rather ere on the side of leaning into the joy of creating for the sake of being human (and I don't think much of street photography has "meaning" at all if I'm completely honest). There's no real "metric" or methodology to what I may determine to be a good photo as it will be ever-changing, and there are going to be plenty of photos that I create and enjoy that others just won't; I've genuinely made my peace with that.
But these are my attempts at honest questions on a journey to consistently and genuinely get better; to not just seek the cheap thrills of the dopamine hits but to engage in my own work in a more earnest way. It is a true joy to engage the world through photography that I want to continue throughout my life, but if I don't approach my art with a hard look of honest consideration... why should I expect anyone else to do that work for me?
If you've made it this far; thank you for listening to my ramblings as someone who is still very much in the learning process (and always will be). I'm looking to make this more of a bi-weekly blog, and at the advice of my friend I'm working on some guides of hard lessons I've learned that will be coming out more over time.
If you are interested in getting into photography, wanting to get started but have a strict budget, or if you've been trying for a while but struggling with certain concepts, I'm hopeful that these posts will be helpful!
I'm not pretending to know everything, but I've definitely taken the "school of hard knocks" approach and way, way too many bad photos to not have learned a thing or two by now. I also want to be able to provide these freely as others have done for me, so rest assured this site will continue to be subscription free.
As always; stay curious!