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Cartagena
„And what about the camera?“ the officer asked, looking at it with glassy and hungry eyes that glowed like honey-colored phosphor in the dimly lit garage.
“I’m not giving you my camera,” I answered, my voice turning into verbal exclamation marks.
10 min read
Kibuye
Somebody had said something about deadly explosions or eruptions, and I wasn’t looking for any of that per se. Least of all in a lake. I just wanted to get out of Kigali for a while. Not because I didn’t like it, but because I did. A little too much for my liking. Its comforts and niceties had lulled me.
4 min read
hot summer, cool tees
We're not even halfway through another record summer, but it seems like we've stopped counting—records, summers, days till doomsday. The climate catastrophe keeps knocking, but we're busy procrastinating while people are dying so-called "excess deaths" in extraordinary heatwaves that are becoming ever more extra and ever more ordinary. Find out more about my take on the real reasons and real solutions below, and maybe pick up a FLAMINGONE tee along the way!
2 min read
can't trust AI
"You are a true writer," my friend and fellow artist Boris Eldagsen told me the other day, after he'd read my essay Lost in Latent Space. Meaningful flattery—thank you very much—because those who know me through my viral photographic work, might not always know me as a writer.
3 min read
Paris
They all said it's different when you live there. Paris. Worse they meant, but when I lived there it was better. The best. The Paris you live in is the best Paris. Those who were born into it don't understand the Paris that is Paris by choice.
13 min read
14 years, 14 photos
This month—14 years ago—I left home in search of...something. I didn't quite know what it was back then, and maybe I still don't. So, I keep going, not so much to find answers but to keep asking questions. And now I'm 14. Fourteen years a nomad. To celebrate the occasion, I'm sharing 14 of my favorite pictures, and the latest news.
3 min read
Lost in Latent Space
After Boris Eldagsen and I replied to Joan Fontcuberta’s musings on “algorithmic photography” with an article published by PetaPixel, Gregory Chatonsky replied to us with a theory that expands on latent space. Now it’s our turn again. Gloves are off, but it’s all in good fun.
15 min read
a theory of lemons that is bananas
PetaPixel just published an essay co-authored by Boris Eldagsen and me, which should be an interesting read beyond the photographic community, with implications for anybody who consumes images. The article is a critique of Joan Fontcuberta’s “algorithmic photography,” presented in his latest book. Since we are mentioned in it, Boris and I saw it necessary to respond to an artist and intellectual who theorizes that we're past the distinction between photography and AI imagery.
9 min read
Photography Is an Honest Lie
In the public arena, photography is a long-standing winner of truth-telling contests, beating older forms of visual representation that aim to approximate reality with brushstrokes, chisel-chipping or textile-loops. The camera as a tool establishes a more direct relationship with the subject, at least from an optical point of view. That much is obvious.
10 min read
Nuance or Nothing
At the rate polarization is driving us apart these days, unity’s embrace might end up out of reach sometime soon. As the planet is heating—a divisive issue really putting the “polar” in polarizing—it feels like we’re all heating with it: families redraw the Thanksgiving table’s seating chart according to vaccine schedules while politicians on TV oscillate between shouting and screaming as the aisle widens into an chasm.
4 min read
Reality Check for AI Prophecies
A technology with civilizational, planetary consequences, AI is a gravitational heavyweight that moves all of us, one way or another, some day or some other, whether we want it or not, know it or not.
With our stakes at an all-time high, it's important to understand what AI is and isn't, what it does or doesn't do, who it benefits and how, what it destroys and why.
2 min read
saving the planet a little for Earth Day
Today is Earth Day—a little calendrical reminder that every day is Earth Day, whether we honor it or not. The climate movement has lost its momentum, spinning out of the news cycle somewhere between pandemic and war, but its urgency didn't diminish alongside our attention. With political and corporate agendas diverting awareness and investments from sustainable climate solutions, individual civic action becomes the key lever.
3 min read
Climate Climax
Today is Earth Day. Doesn’t really matter when you're reading this because every day is Earth Day, whether we honor it or not. And we could certainly honor it more these days. The climate movement has lost its momentum, spinning out of the news cycle somewhere between pandemic and war, but its urgency didn't diminish alongside our attention. The planet is still burning, and if you sweep a fire under the rug, you’re only feeding the fire a rug.
6 min read
Athens
A faint air of grandeur streamed through the colossal pillars of the Parthenon as the ruin lay bare before us like a whale skeleton’s rib cage. Stranded atop an outcrop in the middle of Athens, the cluster of marble bones was surrounded by others—devastated remains of the Acropolis, the once pulsating citadel in the heart of Ancient Greece.
5 min read
back road academic
A PhD was never for me. I didn’t thirst for a higher higher education after graduation. Unintentional rhymes, but they speak to a poetic inclination in me that academia couldn’t satisfy. It just didn’t rhyme.
2 min read
Jakarta
Well, Jakarta, there is no easy way to say this, but you didn’t make my Top 10. Or the Top 50, or the top, or even just the list. But then again, you know that I disdain these lists and that I made this one up just to tease you. You’re alright Jakarta. Sure, you are no Paris, but why would you be, or want to be? I'm sorry if I'm getting under your skin here, but see, that's exactly where I want to be. For yours isn’t a superficial Paris-beauty; yours is an underneath-beauty.
3 min read
it's me, but it's not
„Looks strangely familiar, but more strange than familiar,” I said to my friend Boris Eldagsen when he shared this post with me. This is me, but it’s not my face. My facial features have been “AId.”
3 min read
Venice
When is Venice? Because it doesn’t look like it is now. It is a replica of a fairy tale and at least one hundred million stories old.
3 min read
D I G I T A L E Y E Z E D
One of Paris’ most darling angles, Trocadéro plaza is popular with tourists who want a piece of the Eiffel tower to take home. And while there is no shortage of kitschy replicas being hawked all over the square at all but odd hours—and with little interruptions caused by police—today’s favorite souvenirs are photos.
3 min read
Another Tragedy MADE IN USA
While the public discourse around the ICE killing of Minnesota woman Renee Good has all the right ingredients for a hot stew of opinions—spicy camera angles, juicy legislation, and a good pinch of political finger-pointing—it is lacking a solid portion of clear-cut common sense. Something that isn’t mush. Something we can all agree on.
4 min read
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