Well shit. I had hoped there was still a window of calm to slip in a ruminative New Year post, but a week into 2026 we’re “running” Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro is my new neighbor in Brooklyn and ICE have gone and murdered a mother and poet in broad daylight. I’m in a diner—the same one I sat in after Kamala Harris lost the election—where thanks to RFK’s new inverted food pyramid I’m dutifully having a whale blubber and brie omelette with an Ivermectin beef tallow smoothie on the side (it’s measles season, after all) thinking over this draft again trying to reflect on went well in 2025, what went wrong and what I hope to change in 2026.
In the first full year of this publication, I succeeded in putting myself into situations where my my creative voice progressed, becoming clearer and more confident. I renewed and developed new connections with many astoundingly high-level creative musicians, and I am grateful for the access and trust granted to me that made my work possible.
Thank you to the artists, managers and publicists behind the scenes: Kelly Finnigan, Joan Baez + Joe Henry, Daniel Lanois, Lilly Hiatt, Big Ears and the artists I worked with there—SML, Tortoise, Rich Ruth, Larry & Joe, Tindersticks and Wyatt Ellis (story TK, I promise!), Dawes (story TK), Makaya McCraven and Winter Jazz Fest, Long Play Festival, the whole Antone’s crew, Bonny Light Horseman and Blake Mills + Pino Palladino.
As annual paid memberships start to renew, I’m sincerely touched and motivated by the subscribers who have stuck with me. You are a small contingent but mightily important in nourishing my drive to come here and share very personal images and impressions. (If I owe you a print or any other promised membership perk, please email me and remind me.)
I had a pretty major realization recently that I tend to set up cycles of ambitious enthusiasm that often lead to frustration and disappointment, and in the worst cases, emotionally painful and destructive falling outs. Whenever I describe the ups and downs inherent in the pursuit of a photographic ‘career’ to my Freudian-leaning therapist, she says it’s repetition compulsion; or the unconscious desire to construct and then repeat traumatic situations that originate some root injury buried in my own personal history. It’s pretty rough to hear an assessment that collapses your 25-year career to a cycle of self-injury.
A concurrent realization is that I have a very active, connective, extrapolative thought process that tends to stretch ten steps into the ideal, possible future. In terms of how that works in the world of music photography, there’s always a hope beyond the task at hand (just making the pictures) that a connection with a publicist, manager, label or artist can and should be leveraged into future opportunities, or, lord willing, paid work. I also think forward to how many different ways that they they can and should be shared, implemented and, lord willing, monetized through multiple modes and applications. In the name of hustle and grind, we’re conditioned to think the Creative Entrepreneur should be thinking this way: ‘networking,’ ‘generating leads,’ ‘planting seeds,’ ‘making yourself indispensable,’ etc.
But the problem is that most people aren’t thinking that way, and as the ideas I have bubbling up in my head form a top-heavy blob of expectation that all these thing should bear fruit. As goals go from linear A-to-B, to multi-directional, conditional A to B to C,D & E, you multiply your risk of things not working out, being ignored or misinterpreted, which then leaves you with a negative feeling about the whole enterprise. After the sting of failure dissipates you double-down and ambitiously throw yourself at the next target with heavy hopes. Repetition compulsion.
To allow myself a little grace, I have seen empirically that the music business is approaching zero-level of interest in spending money on photography. I should have learned that lesson when work dried up for three years of the pandemic and its aftermath, but after gaining some momentum and excitement with the work made here, and seeing that it carried with it surprisingly good metrics of impact and reach, I tried again to see if the entities who could benefit the most from the unique impact of good photography.
The work brought me within networking distance of folks who ran some of the most prestigious record labels active today. I wasn’t just imagining things, they had directly engaged with, praised and shared the work, which many times went semi-viral and reached quite a few people, something that marketers and publicists are given significant resources to generate. I had direct dialogue with people at the top of the chain and laid out proposals that were not all that expensive to end up learning that the business was in rougher shape than ever and the budgets and interest were next to nil. One told me encouragingly over coffee, “at least the ones left in the music business are the ones who really want to be here.”
I found myself back in a dark place, unsure of how to continue. The more painful dimension seemed to be that despite hundreds of hours of largely volunteer work—that on a fundamental level was an act of admiration, seeing, loving and sharing—failed to engender a sense of community or acknowledgement that I wanted or needed by the music world.
I do give credit to some in the music who see and support what I’m trying to do. Revealingly, it almost universally those much further down the chain of power and influence, trying to develop a path at the edges of the industry: people in the orbit of the 80 year-old blues musician still pushing for proper recognition, the Venezuelan refugee who rebuilt his life precariously in the States, the publicist championing experimental music, the publicist championing innovative jazz, the mother of a prodigious and precocious young talent developing his career. I won’t forget it.
Ironically, the thing that unlocked my interest in making pictures again post-fallout of the pandemic, was just returning to a place of shooting simply for fun. That Million Dollar Bash would be a basic structure to go out, make pictures and absorb stories, and have a low-stakes, independent place to put them. But Substack gets complicated quickly with membership tiers and perks, selling your personal brand and fretting over paid subscribers.
My realization that I make things too complicated led me to think about some instructions to myself to maintain intensity of purpose while shedding some of the extra weight. But even with the return of the gloomy feeling, I know there is a lot more I want to say and show, and, for now, this is how I think I will do it:
Just make the work. Stop with A to B to C, to leverage that into D, and then hope that E notices, etc. Do what you need to do to create the work, then try your best to create the work: do your research, show up and be fully present.
Operate without the need for praise or recognition. While photography can be an expression of affection, admiration, acknowledgment and appreciation, don’t set yourself up with hopes that your creative work and generosity of spirit will earn you anything. Yet in your work process, remain open, receptive, gentle, curious, adaptive and friendly. Engage with subjects you are genuinely interested in and are curious about in some way.
Follow through for yourself and the integrity of the work. As for steps C,D & E, edit the work truthfully, share it truthfully, publish it and exhibit it for your own reasons and purposes with integrity.
Remain generous in sharing work with those that contribute to what you do in mutually supportive ways, such as credited/co-shared work on social media, favored rates for licenses and use or making a print for a subject or facilitator who went to bat for you. On the contrapositive, don’t give away valuable work without reasonable compensation or consideration.
Maintain your financial health, which for me means separating the creation of income from creation of art. I’ve built a business in the last year, Dunie Brothers, that helps estates, families and individuals with sales of unique possessions and collections. It’s gotten quite busy just through luck and word-of-mouth and I feel relief and empowerment to have self-directed work I like doing that generates income a lot more dependably than photography.
Make time for things that are enjoyable without an attachment to a larger plan or desired outcome. For me that’s playing more music, especially with other people, taking lessons, loving and being loved by my wife, throwing things around at gym, travel, going to museums, movies and new restaurants.
Friday, March 6th, will be the opening of Show of Hands at the Bruno David Gallery in St. Louis with a oblique re-edit of my archive as a meditation of the function and gestures of hands in music. I am also aiming to publish a book of my seven years spent documenting the beloved Sharon Jones within the year of what would be her 70th birthday with special informal events in her hometown of Augusta, GA as well as record and book stores across the country in a DIY book tour.
With the Substack, I know I’ve got a lot more to show and say, and am gravitating towards being more open about the process and thinking/feeling behind the photography. There’s also currently a crossover with Dunie Brothers, where I recently acquired a collection of around 10,000 45rpm 7” records-a large time capsule amassed by a single collector that covers music from the 1950s to the late 1990s when he passed. As much as I know from 30 years of collecting records, I’ve found many odd pockets of music that I didn’t know about that I’d like to explore and share.
So thanks for hanging in there for this wordy dispatch, for everything from the past year, and maybe what’s to come in 2026.
-JB
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