Choosing beats scrolling

I started putting the Darkrooms Magazines together three years ago now. Ten to twelve photographers per issue, with their photo projects in 15 photos and an ~500-word essay. No algorithm deciding who got seen. I was the one who chose, which projects got in.

119 photographers later, I have noticed what that give you. Small, yes. Very small compared to what passes your social media feeds every single day. But ask yourself, which photos did you see on Instagram yesterday. You probably don’t know anymore. Now think of a project you saw months ago, in a magazine or a newsletter. Chances that something stuck are much bigger. However small, remembering intriguing projects wins from fantastic, loose images.

That is exactly the difference between a feed and a portfolio. A feed is built so you scroll endlessly. That photo has to work within a second or it is gone! That mechanism rewards direct readability of a photo, an emotional hook you register right away. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s a genre. Not the whole of photography. Not even mentioning the vast amount of similar photos you get served the moment you give something a “like.”

A portfolio asks something completely different; time. Makes that you’re willing to keep looking, to discover how photo 4 changes how you’ve read photo 1. That doesn’t work within a few seconds. It works over a longer time or even over a next visit. For that specific reason I started posting regularly newsletters with the projects from the magazine.

I think curation gets more important, the more images keep piling up. Algorithms are built to optimise for reactions and engagement. To make sure you stay as long as possible scrolling in that app. But someone who chooses deliberately to look at photowork, who takes the time, is not optimising anything besides spending their time ;-) They ask themselves if the work deserve their attention? A fundamentally different system of distribution, about reputation instead of reaction. And that system doesn’t get worse when volume increases. Unlike a feed, which drowns in the amount of similar images.

So stop overloading your brain with random images. Stop doomscrolling. Deal consciously with what you want to see. There are way too many visuals already you see throughout the day. Grab that photo book from your shelf and page through it. Look at the personal website of that photographer you find interesting, see what other work they made. Support photographers who deliberately build projects and portfolios, instead of flooding you with an endless stream of images. Buy a print or a zine. Ten, fifteen dollars, no more needed. For the maker it’s the small contribution that makes their work possible. For you it’s something tangible on the wall, or on your bookshelf. Something that can’t be regenerated, can’t be adjusted by an algorithm, can’t be endlessly reproduced without anyone noticing. A verifiable object, in a world of endlessly variable images.

I believe that’s the core of it. Curation will become more important. And print, whether it’s a magazine or a book, or a loose print, will come back stronger. Not as nostalgia. For the same reason as vinyl. The bigger and more connected the world gets, the more people go looking for something tangible.

See you next week,

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