On my way back from Lyon recently, I experimented with trying to convey meaning over prettiness.
Abandoning Prettiness Example
The Hardening Line Away From Pretty Pictures
Out of cycle post. This is something I’ve been noticing and I’ve been trying to articulate for a while. I’m not sure it’s completely clear in my head yet, but here goes nothing.
When I started writing on Substack, I was already moving away from pretty pictures. I’d been getting interested in people more than landscapes, in human presence more than nice light falling across empty scenery. But I hadn’t yet articulated why that shift was happening or where it might lead.
The problem With Infinite Photography
In today’s near infinite storage space, it’s easy to lose track of the photos you take. You stop seeing any of them because there are so many of them. They become wallpaper, a continuous scroll of undifferentiated moments that mean nothing precisely because they were supposed to mean everything.
Those Cameras on the Shelf
I have cameras I haven’t touched in months. In fact I have cameras I’ve never used. They sit on a shelf, visible every time I walk past. Some moralists would tell me to sell them. To clear the clutter, to free the mind. Be honest about your actual practice. Stop kidding yourself.
They’re plain wrong because they’re looking at it from the wrong angle.
The Power of Nostalgia in Photography
Photography sells itself as preservation. We take pictures to capture moments, to remember what happened, to hold onto people and places before they disappear. The promise is that the image will keep the past accessible, faithful, ready to consult whenever memory fails us.
That’s not what actually occurs. What happens instead is more complicated and more interesting. Photographs don’t preserve experience. They create scaffolding for reconstruction, and nostalgia is the primary material we use to build with.
New Year, New Job The Return (Lyon Tavellog #2)
When I left Lyon, it started to snow. Not completely uncommon here (at home we call it the frozen East), but not common enough to have a negligible effect. The woman ahead of me was telling the little girl not to be worried about the snow, but to be careful walking in the street,
In front of the old station, a teenager was drawing things in the snow. Teenager + snow, 3 guesses what he was making.
One of the things I remember from previous visits to Lyon in the 90s, are those electric buses connected too power lines. I’ve never seen them elsewhere. In theory a great idea to reuse existing infrastructures and without heavy roadworks. In practice, when the country is France, expect people to park in any number of random places and block the buses.
I don’t know what the chimney is. A power station maybe? What I liked was the contrast between the electric bus and the smoking chimney.
Lyon has changed since my last visit, with lots of towers. And they’re continuing to build. I like the verticalities of the tower, the crane, and the sculpture, as well as the contrast of the snow with the granite floor, and the triangles formed by the various features on the pavement..
Nearing the station, some bus stops, lined up, attracted my attention. Strangely, bus stops are made differently in different countries. When I arrived in Scotland, I was surprised to see bus stops back to front, with the glass on the street side. Here the glass is at the back. But it makes more sense to use the glass to protect people waiting from the splashing from the street.
Inside the station it’s still Christmas.
Unfortunately the little snow we had has wrecked havoc on the schedule and my train will be an hour late.
When we finally get on the train, everybody is miserable and complains. They’ve lost the novelty of taking the train. they need to spend time where I live, with no trains, no buses, no trams, and no taxis.
Trains are weird when they’re empty. Normally, people move around, lug suitcases around, make noise. But when you’re the first one on the car, it’s like seeing behind the scenes. It reminds me of the Twilight Zone episode called “A Matter of Minutes” (one of my favourite ones). I shouldn’t be here, I’m seeing something that is not for human consumption.
Me again taking photos in the window. I like the effects of the multiple glazing (5 layers or something like that).
Other people.
When I get to Paris, I discover that it’s been snowing way more than in Lyon.
There is something both poetic and eery in nearly empty giant subway stations. All that space that has been built to accommodate a lot of people, but barely anybody there.
I liked the repetition of the pattern of the chairs, the frame created by the pillars, and the single person on the frame. This station is nearly under my high school, but didn’t exist at the time.
This is my Lartigue moment: the vertical lines are sideways because the train was moving and the capture times means that the bottom part of the picture was captured a fraction of a second after the top (also that the electronic shutter on my phone is somehow top to bottom). The lines on the background wall are vertical because they weren’t moving.
Continuing the empty theme, that train i empty. It’s getting late, people are home,, even in Paris.
Outside, despote no snow for a day or two, it’s still very much white and frozen. It’s currently -4. I haven’t seen this much show since Oslo.
Film noir ambiance to finish.
#Photography #BlackAndWhite #Travel #TravelLog #Lyon #Paris
Camera Fascination
Some of us maintain that gear doesn’t matter. And technically, we’re right: a camera won’t make you a better photographer. But there is another side to the debate.
Recording Time Through Damage
Photography typically tries to stop time. We capture moments, freeze them, extract them from the flow of duration. But there’s another approach that interests me more: using photography to make time visible through its effects. Not the moment itself, but what happens across years of moments. Not the pristine object, but the object after it’s lived.
New Year, New Job (Lyon Tavellog #1)
At the end of 2025, I quit my job of 5 years and looked for a new one. I don’t change job easily. In fact only once in 23 years to start the one I just quit. But I had reached a point of no return and didn’t feel I could stay any more.
Today, I started my new job, which involves some traveling, at least temporarily. So, like a 6 year old starting school, I decided to document it.
Is 2026 the Year of Uniformity?
Is this what New Year on social media looks like? I’ve never spent New Year waching social media before. Substack is new territory for me. But something immediately stands out this new year: the remarkable uniformity in what photographers are declaring they’ll do in 2026.
