Annnnd we’re back! Life has been spent mostly offline this spring with positive results. After months spent jumping back and forth between three drafts of some more focused newsletter posts, I decided to keep them on the back burner until they sufficiently simmered into a concentrated reduction of documentarian goodness. I’m very excited to wrap those up, but in the meantime I wanted to share some bits and pieces of the past season in photographs. Between traveling to Washington D.C. for work, co-officiating my sister’s wedding with Emily, and collecting images of literal garbage for a fun upcoming project, the subject matter has varied immensely.
Recently Featured Works & Shameless Plugs:
Living life post-Instagram has been a surprisingly easy shift, but it has left some communication gaps where I would typically share or find out about things, so I’ll be sharing more in this newsletter going forward including personal screeds against commercial bathroom infrastructure, niche anti-corporate ephemera, where I’m playing music, etc. I have found since leaving big tech platforms, I have just been texting people more, so send me your contact info! It goes without saying times are tough and the world is full of terrible oppressive forces, but I hope you’re weathering the storm in any way you can, and you can always reach out.
Here are some other things I have been doing:
PI.FYI Field Recording Project
One of my favorite online places to be lately is PI.FYI, a mostly text-based social platform geared towards sharing and requesting recommendations of anything from places to eat to ways of living. It’s very low-stimulation and pro-sincerity. In the past year, it has grown into a wonderful community of enthusiasts and artists, and I put together a compilation of field recordings sourced from dozens of the site’s users:
This collection of field recordings is a collaborative effort with users of PI.FYI, each of which recorded their own pieces. It features audio from all over the world and exhibits eclectic moments from London Underground commutes to cuckoo bird calls in Dhaka to the sounds of a century-old American diner.
Online communities like PI.FYI often represent a diverse set of people, places, and experiences, but together, the submissions form a living collage that highlights the commonalities of modern life - a unifying message for such a tumultuous time. The first track features all of the sounds played at once in an attempt to create an audio snapshot of an online community but in their offline lives.
BUOY Gallery’s ArtPM
I actually pulled together a piece for this year’s legendary annual ArtPM show at BUOY in Kittery, ME. It’s a retrospective flip book of photographs from February, and it’s now in my studio for you to peruse if you happen to stop by!
Thanks for reading, and please consider becoming a paid subscriber for more stuff!
Sounds From the Studio:
Archive Dive (a random photograph picked via number generator):