Thinking About Photography

Six years ago, I was wrapping up my day job at Long Beach City College at the end of the Spring 2020 semester. As you can imagine, the world and my options were in a very different place than anything I had ever planned for. Originally, I had multiple exhibitions lined up and figured we'd do a little camping. One of the plans I was most excited about was finding a studio space where, in addition to making my own work, I could use part of it as a gallery — a place to curate work I found interesting. The space could also be used for conversation, workshops, a fun communal environment.

 

Then Covid arrived, and it felt like all those options just flew out the window. But by late fall, we were living online, and I started looking back at those earlier goals and asking myself how I could adapt them. That's when I had the idea about creating an online journal where I could think about photography in ways that would expand how I — and hopefully others — saw the medium.

My original photography training was at Art Center College of Design in the '80s. It was super traditional. Charlie Potts ran the program and in the lab we were kept in line by Mr. Cann,* a bowtie-wearing drill sergeant who had us genuinely believing that taking one second off a 24-second darkroom exposure was worth burning through another sheet of paper in the quest for perfection. I got an amazing education, but it left me with an incomplete picture of what photography was, or could be. I had experimented with curation in grad school, and having been raised by an art historian mom who also curated, the idea felt like a natural possibility. It also spoke to a deep-seated belief that artists should have a say in the dialogue.

So, on Valentine's Day, 2021 I published my first showcase exploring the idea of Photograph as Object — something more than just a print on a wall. I have to hand it to those first five brave people who trusted me with their work when I had no track record whatsoever. It probably helped that we were still knee-deep in Covid and, well — what else did any of us have to do? Initially I was putting out showcases every two months, but I quickly realized there was no way I could keep that pace and still make my own work. Curating and creating, at least for me, draw on very different parts of the brain. Moving to a quarterly schedule has been a much healthier balance. In year two, I started a wonderful collaboration with PhotoBook Journal, which has really added another dimension to each showcase.

Over these five years, I've been fortunate enough to create 22 thematic showcases feature projects from 115 artists, include PhotoBook Journal reviews of 77 books, and — starting last year with Notables — spotlight another 14 artists so far. It has been genuinely wonderful to connect with these artists, to show the work of old friends and make new ones. I hadn't fully appreciated that last part until last year, when I went to the 2025 LA Art Book Fair in Pasadena and had the lovely experience of running into so many publishers and photographers I'd been able to feature over the years.

What made that day a watershed moment for me was realizing how much I'd been living inside the machinery of it all — the web building, the layouts, the proofreading, the endless checking for typos. I'd been so focused on making the thing work that I'd almost lost track of why I was making it. Seeing how much it meant to those artists and publishers to have been featured — they were genuinely thrilled — reminded me that at the center of all of it are real people and real work. That's the part that matters.

If any of this makes you want to try something similar, I promise it's more accessible than you might think. Here's a few items I figured out along the way:

• You can build it yourself without any fancy knowledge - I chose Wix because it was affordable and very easy to customize. 

• Use easily searchable titles - it was only later that I realized my showcase titles (Photography and Text) are basically a keywording dream. 

• Afraid of rejection? No worries - most artists are thrilled when someone loves their work. I keep my queries simple: what I'm doing and why, the showcase theme, what I love about their work and what to send me. 

The point of marking this anniversary isn't just to toot my own horn — it's to encourage you to think about how you might add to the dialogue. I learned years ago that the idea of "authority" is really a fallacy. I'm sure you have interesting, worthwhile ideas about photography, and putting them out there genuinely enriches all of us. And in case you're wondering whether anyone actually shows up — we're currently drawing around 600 visitors a month, from all over the world. I can't wait to see what the next five years bring — and I hope some of you will start your own conversations! 

* I did end up totally adoring Mr Cann - a man with a wicked sense of humor who really elevated my darkroom skills and visual awareness.