Well it’s January, and 2025 already feels like a slog. I guess I just thought we were headed in another direction. The hate and the chaos is completely draining and seemingly inescapable. I was in Mexico for a spell last week, having a perfectly civil conversation with a guy from Nebraska, which he abruptly ended when he discovered I was from San Francisco. Who could blame him, apparently “liberals” now cause forest fires. It’s just exhausting.
San Francisco, Dystopian Hell-Scape. Please, stay away…
A prolonged news and media fast has left me thinking about the amount of time I sink into social media and the increasing lack of any sort of return for the effort, let alone benefit to my own work in any way. In the wake of Meta’s refusal to moderate content, even my once benign Instagram feed is becoming pretty disgusting. I think my days of maintaining any sort of presence there are numbered.
Either way, it’s led me to think about why I started chasing pictures to begin with. It’s the permanence of the thing. The object itself, and the story behind it. I’ve grown weary of fleeting images, flickering by in a feed, once scrolled past, gone forever, lost in the ether of the platform, monetized for a moment to benefit those that could change the world for the better with the stroke of a pen, and choose not to. I’ve become exhausted by platforms that deliver nothing. Social media is a disease.
Perhaps I’ll try a little different approach and simply post my work here, write about it, and share it with those who are interested. It feels, oddly enough, much more productive than screaming into the void of the algorithm.
I put together a small exhibition some years ago, “Unwritten Notes” was comprised entirely of work made “elsewhere.” On the road, in transit, away from my home. Disjointed perhaps, but very autobiographical. For years I’ve toyed with the idea of putting a larger body of text to the images, stories behind the pictures, now seems like as good a time as any to get started.
So if you’re getting this, expect more. I never believed art could save the world, but it can’t hurt and it can keep me sane. So in the face of all this manufactured chaos and disinformation and hate and willful ignorance I'm making pictures, experiencing things, sharing with my community, and publishing whatever I can, wherever I can.
Stay tuned…