The Two Objects of Photography
There’s a contradiction that’s been nagging at me for years, and I’ve only recently found a way to articulate why it’s a…
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✦ Category
opinion
How Photography Works In My Head #5: Finding Your People Through Cognitive Style
Your audience self-selects partly based on shared cognitive architecture. This isn’t about intelligence or sophistication. It’s about whether your mode of thinking…
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When You Stop Treating Photography As a Performance, You Can Embrace Your Self Image
My mother sometimes jokes that she raised a ghost, because there are barely any photographs of me as a child or teenager.…
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How Photography Works In My Head #4: Teaching Photography to Brains That Work Differently
Photography instruction assumes cognitive uniformity. Teachers describe their own process and expect students to replicate it. “Learn to see the light.” “Pre-visualise…
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Live Photography is About Life
I can tell you exactly how I felt standing on a sand dune in Morocco many years ago, watching my wife photograph…
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How Photography Works In My Head #3: Why Some Photographers Can’t Write About Their Work
Photography education and criticism privilege verbal articulation. You’re expected to be able to explain your work, discuss your influences, articulate your intentions,…
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I Stole Every Photograph I’ve Ever Taken
Not legally, though we’ll get to the murky ethics of that. I mean conceptually, technically, aesthetically. Every image I’ve made is somewhere…
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How Photography Works In My Head #2: The Visualisers and the Engineers
Ansel Adams talked about pre-visualisation as the foundation of his photographic method. He could see the final print before making the exposure,…
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The Four Kinds of Photography (And Why Their Collapse Is More Dangerous Than AI)
Photography isn’t one thing anymore. It hasn’t been for a while, but we’re still using the same word for fundamentally different activities,…
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How Photography Works In My Head #1: Anendophasia, Aphantasia, and Photography
Most people assume everyone thinks the same way they do. They imagine that when you say “picture this in your mind,” everyone…
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