2022: 30 Pinteresting

Friends and followers of this blog probably know that I have mixed feelings (at best) towards Instagram. I’ve been struggling with the vapid nature of the selfie-centric platform ever since I jumped on board, and have had a strong hate / love relationship with it ever since. My disdain grew stronger once I left Facebook late last year. Maybe having one less social media platform made the ‘gram warts show even more obviously to me.

I have yet to depart from Instagram, and try to reconcile the fact that I still use it, mostly to communicate with my circle of creative friends. I also see it as a way to promote my podcast, for better or for worse. But I really wanted an alternative, something like Tumblr, back in the early 20-teens, when it really felt like a creative platform, before the bots took it over. Another aging hipster I know told me he found an alternative, and I decided to give it a try. Lo and behold… Pinterest.

I had originally dismissed Pinterest as a platform for crafty Moms and fashion / interior design wannabe Millennials. I don’t even know how I formed that bias in my mind, but that’s how I perceived the platform. Instead, I have discovered (albeit very late to the party) that Pinterest is a great way to find visual inspiration, and it satisfies my need to scroll through eye candy on my iPhone. What it does not do is fill me with contempt, with envy, and with feelings of insecurity. I have no skin in the Pinterest game. I don’t use it to go fishing for “likes” or instant validation. Instead, I see a parade of imagery, not just from random creators but from great artists I already know and love. Case in point, my feed is currently heavy in Robert Rauschenberg, Sigmar Polke, Robert Frank and Brice Marden. These names alone keep me inspired, and the tangential images that populate my feed feature visually connected content that has pulled my down numerous rabbit holes of discovery.

Might I suggest that you also give it a try? It might make the eventual Instagram plug pulling much less painful and probably more satisfying.

2021: 4 | Instagram (so much to answer for)

For almost as long as I’ve been on social media, I’ve had a love / hate relationship with it. There are many reasons to knock it, obviously. Well documented cases of security breaches, algorithms that favor some “content” over others, political divisiveness, mass marketing, users as the product, etc etc etc. Facebook is insidious, and I’ve always used the excuse that it was the only way I kept up with current photographic events, stayed in touch with friends and strangers, and above all, having used it as a way to promote my creative endeavors. Instagram, on the other hand, has proven a more frustrating experience. I figured I came to the platform after the golden days of it’s early adoption, when it seemed like a great place to build a photo-centric community. This was long before the paid advertising, the stories, the live feeds, the bizarre celebrity video crap that seems to infiltrate my account. I always duped myself into believing Instagram was a visual platform to share my “art.” What it ended up being for me, instead, was an endless stream of mediocrity, sameness, peppered with the occasional strong photograph from someone I admired, but even that got quickly washed away in the deluge. Nothing of any lasting value registered for me there.

Every so often I bore my serious photography friends with an anti-IG rant; its a subject that always boils my blood, I’m embarrassed to admit. I made a fairly steady contribution to my Instagram page over the span of 2020, and I posted the last image on my account on Christmas Day. It’s been almost one month without posting, and it has been nice to be able to continue my personal work without the added pressure of sharing something on a regular basis. I also let my “work in progress” remain just that, since even a simple post on IG ends up bringing to much expectation and early pressure to my experiments. I also realized that the ego boost from a few dozen “likes” is not a drug that I need to be addicted to.

Today I took the next step by deleting the app from my iPhone. Perhaps this is the next step towards deleting my account for good, who knows? I appreciate that I have this website as an outlet for my work, and that my weekly practice of posting on my blog allows me an outlet to share images, and more importantly, thoughts. Quality over quantity. In the meantime, I’m also stepping quietly away from Facebook, more noise I don’t need in my life. If you’ve made it this far into this diatribe, I thank you for your interest. I know my “audience” might be much smaller here, but it oh so much more valuable to me. Quality over quantity, indeed.

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another recent experiment in print manipulation and destruction

“Drink.
Always be drunk. Therein lies everything: it’s all that matters.
So as not to feel the dread burden of Time breaking your shoulders and crushing you to the earth, never stop drinking.
But what? Whether wine, poetry or virtue, the choice is yours. Whatever: get drunk.
And if sometimes, on the palace steps, in the gutter’s green grass, or in the maudlin solitude of your room, you wake up, and the drunken haze has dwindled or gone,
then ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock; ask everything that flees, everything that groans, everything that moves, everything that sings, everything that speaks: ask them what time it is;
and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, and the clock will all reply:
“It is the drinking hour”.
To escape the fate of those tormented slaves of Time, get drunk.
Drink deep, never ceasing.
Whether wine, poetry, or virtue, the choice is yours”

— Charles Baudelaire

My Back Pages

I've been on a creative jag lately. Don't know if it's the warm weather, or the pharmaceuticals, but something has gotten me motivated to express myself. I've also been inspired by Eric Kim and his attitude towards the use of social media, or lack thereof. Anyway, I've been making a concerted effort to utilize my website blog on a more regular basis. I like the control over my imagery and words that it affords, and I must admit, I do enjoy seeing some additional traffic to my website as a result. 

To that end, I've been updating the "back pages" of my website, specifically the ARCHIVE section. Older work that I wanted to share, but also a rolling visual diary, as it were, which harkens back to my earlier days of photoblogging on Tumblr. "The Unguided Tour" section will be a place where I will continue to share images that would most likely have ended up on Instagram, but I really want to ween myself off of that platform as a primary source of image sharing.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the pros and cons of using social media to share your work. Let's talk about it!