Substrate

“The fact that I’m picking up the camera and using it gets me closer to more photos that I’ll take and revisit throughout the years.”

It shifts the time spent going through and evaluating images away from the moments when they are being taken to the next day, which presumably is meant to help preserve the integrity of the experience being documented rather than burdening it with the self-awareness of how well it is coming across on the screen. The photos aren’t made “social” by posting them to a feed or snapping them directly to a person or group; instead their sociality is in how they behave as one part in a larger gallery of themed shots.

Lauren meeting Vice President Joe Biden, 2019. Here’s a little story behind this photograph of my wife and Joe Biden During the Democratic primary season my wife and I attended a number of ev…

Taking at least one photo a day is a common concept among new photographers, but it’s really worthwhile for everyone. There’s an aesthetic component to this: Searching for a good photo in the every-day of life teaches us to notice our surroundings more. ​ “A camera is a device for learning how to see without a camera.” —Dorothea Lange ​ but I think often it’s the opposite. Practicing photography compels you to ponder what is meaningful and beautiful in your surroundings.

Milky Way above trees – Download this photo by Your Friend Andy on Unsplash

Today we’re launching app-wide support for editing videos in Darkroom, available to all our existing and new subscribers. This is one of…

as I’ve been dealing with the situation at hand, I’ve found solace in making things.

— crucial players keeping the engines of the city at a quiet hum.

Wynne said in an email. “Their imagination guides them and they see images first, not words. They see pictures before meaning.”

Explore this photo titled Cloud Painting by Dewang Gupta (@Dewang-Gupta) on 500px

Chrysanthemum – Download this photo by Peter Oswald on Unsplash

Download this photo by Oscar Söderlund on Unsplash

it's just so much easier for us to broadcast our love now. ​ He is ambivalent about the medium of social photography, arguing that the technology is only a tool that exposes existing fractures in the community and the self. ​ As Jean Baudrillard predicted in the middle of the 20th century, the camera went from changing the way we remember to changing the way we see. ​ To my son and daughters, when you read this one day: I see you and I love you with that eye too.

But as a result, I am remembering much of my life through the algorithmic frameworks of these third-party companies. ​ Consequently, we view photographs not merely as relatively rare artifacts capturing particularly significant moments but as prosthetic extensions of ourselves and our interior lives. ​ When algorithms intervene in how and when we interact with our photographs, they secure a deeply emotional inroad to our identity-forming practices. ​ These images and the way they are algorithmically organized don’t merely remind us of the past; they help shape how we think of ourselves in the present and how we might think to document our lives and articulate ourselves in the future. ​ — making us audiences of ourselves as the algorithms piece together our “best” stories for us. ​ But “Memories” features rewire relationships in such a way that makes commercial platforms indispensable mediators. ​ memories become susceptible to being evaluated according to performance metrics. ​ we must ask what memories are left on the outskirts. What experiences are illegible to or unvalued by a commercial system? What does it mean for our subjectivities at large that we are all building our memories around same scaffolding? Over four decades ago, Susan Sontag posited that photography enables “an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted.” As a multiplier of photography’s influence, algorithmically fueled “Memories” features bring us deeper into a supercharged aesthetic consumerism that shapes our personal narratives along the lines of influencer culture.

seems like teenagers are perpetually rediscovering that every identity is "manufactured" and "effortless identity" requires even more effort (and cognitive dissonance) to sustain— Rob Horning (@robhorning) April 24, 2019

details from reality that betray the carefully staged set, and ground the images in the push and pull between performance and authenticity. We see details and habits revealed to us, captured in the fraction of a second the picture was taken in. ​ What makes Lee’s photographs so compelling is that they point to the infinite other moments that aren’t captured by the camera. We see a sliver of who this woman is in a fraction of a second—and behind the photograph hides a vast sea of other moments, unknown and opaque to us.

A blog on the intersections of computer, history, and art. Plus some personal stories.