If there was a simple and obvious way to credit the ephemeral wisdom of random video clips that pass through ones feed in the middle of an evening doom-scroll session I might write the exact coordinates when and where this particular term crossed my screen.
The notion of a “banger trap” pinned down something that I had been thinking about a lot lately as I scrolled through the endless posts by countless technically excellent photographers posting their best works.
All of those pictures of perfectly lit sunsets and amazingly hued mountain scapes and perfectly focussed wildlife glamour shots were technically awesome. Amazing. Aspirational and skilled.
And yet they made me feel almost nothing.
I scrolled and scrolled and scrolled and my mind was on repeat saying: yup, yup, seen it, yup, lovely, yup, yup…
They are all very skilled photographers and will likely have successful careers selling their talent and their banger content. But after seeing the same perfect photos more times than I can count and the abundance of kudos and praise? Well, it strikes me that it starts to seem like little more than a factory product, mass produced and polished.
Instead?
Show me something real. Show me life. Show me imperfection. Show me something I see everyday in a different way that gives me a new perspective on the mundane. Show me more than perfect.
I get it. Showcasing our technical best work is a calling card of skill and experience, but it’s also a trap: a snare line upon which it is easy to trip and snag, that the banger is the ultimate and final stage of making great art.
Because I don’t think it is.
Terms FROm this POSt
- banger
- I think we all know a banger when we see it. A hit song that sticks in our brains, a brilliant image that drops the jaw, a sketch that is indistinguishable from a photograph. Bangers are aspirational, and any of us would hang a flag to tell the world we were behind one.
- career
- I willingly stepped away from a comfortable job in 2023 to pursue something with more meaning and purpose. We live in a society that values productivity above many other things, so questioning career (that pursuit of productivity perfection and identity) is a challenging thing. I write a lot about careers and career change because it is a defining part of what I am.
