this week on subjectify: our first ever theme week! in which we'll be exploring (portrait) photographers who don't have personal websites.
this theme came out of several thoughts i've been having... first of all, folks who read various photography blogs undoubtedly notice that sometimes it seems like everyone is posting about the same projects at the same time. i've been thinking about this and how there are a lot of folks who have become especially internet-famous, and the ways in which an influential photography blog or a photographer's awesome website or blog can influence this. i also wonder: who's out there that i'm missing, now that i get the majority of my news & info from the web? there's been lots of noodling on some aspects of this already, especially photographers' personal websites and why they "need" them. and of course, a lot of photographers are torn about putting all their work online vs. holding off until a project is finished or has found representation/publication...
on the flip side, there are a lot of photographers who don't have personal websites at all.
in today's information age, who are these crazy people?
of course, there are a lot of reasons why you might not have a website:
from the everyday:
- you're just starting out
- you just haven't gotten around to it
- you're uncomfortable with things that feel like 'self-promotion'
- you don't have they money/time for a nice site, and don't want to put up a crappy one
- your gallery already has a page for you, and that seems like enough
- you're just not that into it
- you are a luddite
to the sublime:
- you are so famous that it would be beneath you to have a personal website
- you think you are so famous that it would be beneath you to have a personal website
- you are foreign
- you are dead
- you are too fucking punk for that shit
- (see also, but not exclusively: you are a drug addict)
in the next week, we will explore photographers who may or may not fit into any of the above categories.
if you have any recommendations of photographers without websites, please email them to me!
cheers,
lexi
p.s. if you want to nominate examples of people for the any of the cheeky categories above, please put your comments below.
3 comments:
Hi Subjectify - great blog and a great post.
Rineke Dijkstra doesn't have one/need one.
I've been told a few times that nobody important looks at websites anyway - which I'm not sure I agree with - and even less people who are important look at blogs. Which raises the question of what important is and also suggests a certain preciousness - which is something Alec Soth suggested when he started his blog.
colin --
thanks so much for your comment. Dijkstra is a great example.
i agree with your take... after all, "important" people certainly don't get "important" by sitting around reading blogs all day. but it is definitely an interesting question of audience.
i do think that the reason *some* photographers who don't 'need' websites have them is because they want to connect with their viewers/audience, which seems to be the case with Soth.
of course, sometimes it's hard to know who the viewer/audience of fine art photography really is.
but here we are, at least.
The audience is photographers, students, teachers, artists, curators, writers, internet drifters, time-wasters,losers, winners, tossers, day-jobbers, freelancers and anyone else who is vaguely interested in photography or has a bit of time to spare.
I think it's amazing what you can find and see on people's webpages and the blogging community serves as a fantastic editing tool for finding great work - internationally.
Alec's blog was delightfully different in as much it was very eclectic and dealt with some really weighty photographic issues - and there was definitely a two way connection there.
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