Reminiscing in the time of the pandemic

Screengrab of the Clubhouse group in flickr
Screengrab of the Clubhouse group on flickr 2020-05-21 at 08.55.08

Lately, my social media habits have drifted away from the big platforms. Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. So my news and information sources has returned to pre-social media tools. Things like email, and their associated newsletters, as well as RSS feeds. One constant for me though since 2004 has been Flickr.

I try to upload one picture a week every week. Sometimes I post more frequently. There is a method to my uploading. Flickr once a hive of social activity now is a far quieter place. There are a handful of groups that are vey engaged. Some even stray a long way from photography which is at the core of what drives flickr. I had reason recently to visit an almost dormant group called the clubhouse. Another member had popped in and left a message to see who else was around. There has been 2 response, one from me and one from Chris. I then started poking around the archives of this group and found some thoughts I had shared there in 2006. As the group is ‘private’ all I can do is copy the post itself.

Here it is

Interrelationships are what I’m finding the most intriguing for me at the moment, form and light have always been a driving force behind my work too, as have the “marks of man”.

Frederick Sommer’s quote, “some speak of a return to nature, I wonder where they could have been”, now rings true even more in my mind now as I wander the streets and suburbs of Melbourne, perhaps it’s an age thing?

However a question that may never get answered is what of the photograph as an ‘object’ unto itself, in this day and age of LCD’s CRT”s and bits and bytes, combined with the wonderfully democratic process of digital capture and global encompassing online communities such as this one?

The future is indeed bright.

Well here we are all these years later and I still have no answer for that question. There has however been reams of literature written exploring the idea.

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Author: s2

artist, picture maker, photobook creator

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