What are you making?
On AI, algorithms, and staying creative
How’s everybody doing out there? I’m back in Madison after a relatively restful week away in Texas, hiking in the Hill Country and eating entirely too much barbecue. I spent last weekend at the IMI Festival in Austin and came home supercharged with inspiration from the many creators I met there. Austin is a fun town, and though it’s obviously changing a lot, it still pulses with inspiring energy. We love it.
I came home thinking about how the internet keeps evolving and continues to offer artists opportunities to do what they do. Two things popped up on my radar this morning, and I wanted to share them with you. First, one of my readers shared this New York Times Opinion piece about artists and algorithms. If you’ve been reading me for any amount of time, you know this is a pain point for me.
Jack Conte’s video resonated, even though it feels a bit like a Patreon promotion. Maybe that’s not a bad thing? He’s right, there’s got to be a better way:
Related to this, I stumbled upon another new photography Substack today. felicity zhang makes pictures, and her latest hit home. She writes:
despite the tech industry’s breakneck pace to build data centers, suck up all our freshwater resources and AI-ify our lives, many of us feel like we need less technology, not more.
beneath the dream of robot cleaners and ai utopia lies a far more sinister path; an unyielding drive toward ever more efficient production and knowledge generation at lower costs. the same capitalistic drive that has powered western society for many generations, dictating how we approach this technology.
so how do we reckon with this ballooning ai bubble, especially within the photography community?
The answer, of course, is to make stuff and share it with people in the real world. For those of you who print in the darkroom, Felicity’s post will sound familiar:
All that said, I want to hear about what you’re making. Is it digital or analog?
Please reply to this email or write me with a project update when you have time. Email is still the best way to reach each other, and I love seeing new work. Thanks in advance for sharing your stuff with me. I’m eager to hear from you!
Speaking of creativity, I wanted to make sure you checked out Grace Anne Leadbeater’s work this week. She sent today’s photos in response to my Call for COLOR, and there is much more where that came from. Thanks, Grace!
I decided at the start of this year that I should share more of the pictures I take for me (ie not the pictures I get paid for). And instead of taking ages deliberating and going slow I’ve been making books/zines/printed essays. I don’t spend forever mulling them over and sequence them by intuition. They’re probably not perfect but they feel SO GOOD TO MAKE and share. Hopefully I’ll have the time to make many more next year.
I've been a photographer for a very long time but have also been a historic preservation consultant with a MA in the field, for the last 17 years. I have met many tradespeople in the course of that work and all of them complain that there are very few people who want to pursue a career in the preservation trades. Three years ago, this issue started a friend, Ken Follett (not the author), and I to start a project we call "Skilled" to make these trades more visible and to help recruit new people. It is a work in progress, but I have 54 portraits of people in Connecticut and New York so far. I shoot with digital Nikons and print on 17x22 paper with a Canon Pro 1100. The work has been exhibited in 6 venues. We continue to look for funding to keep shooting and for a publisher for a book. The work so far is at https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjATJvP