If they say a picture is worth a thousand words, every one of the posts on this site is at least one thousand two hundred words long.
You may not have noticed but I attach a unique monochromatic abstract photo (taken by me) to each and every one of my posts. It is not obvious, and chances are you have completely overlooked said pic (unless you are visiting from social media where it tends to get scooped up as the featured image.)
Also. They are unconnected from the subject of each post.
So why do it?
Apart from simply having an excuse to take more photos, my intention with adding a photo to each post is raw abstraction and artistic curiosity.
Too often we find ourselves trapped inside the concept of finding a reason: return on investment, increasing marketability, adding context, or something else linked to clicks and sales and revenue.
But none of that matters in this case. I do it simply because I want to… and to make a point: that value can be measured in things beyond money. Value can be beauty. Value can be joy. Value can be a secret shared between people.
These photos? They take time to take. They eat up server space and internet bandwidth. They are nearly invisible and usually unnoticed. But the sheer art of it means I wouldn’t ever stop.
Terms FROm this POSt
- monochromatic
- I stumbled onto a fascination with black and white photography in my early twenties when I was hanging out with some people from a conference at an art gallery in our capital city. One of the folks in that group must have conveyed the right passions towards the form into my impressionable brain in its formative state and ever since I have been in love with the idea of images that lean into shape and shadow over colour. I use this blog to subtly share that love.
- social media
- You almost certainly found this post because it was posted on someone’s feed. The platforms are terrible, but as it stands they are about the only way to find an audience in this crazy version of the internet. I avoid the socials when I can, but to ignore their existence is to toil forever in obscurity.
- value
- I use this word a lot on this site but I’m not always referring to cash money. There are many ways to find value in something: emotional, nostalgia, spiritual, environmental, social, and countless other personally meaningful ways. I do find the assumption that everything always comes down to coins in the pocket, but that might just be being disappointed with spending fifty years watching the capitalism struggle to deliver on anything meaningfully human.
