I just finished a book by the same title of this blog post, and it’s because of that book that I’m writing this blog post, and why I’ll be posting some of things I post in the future.

In my last post I mentioned some possible reasons why I had gone more than a year without publishing anything. I think a the root of it was knowing where a blog would fit in the world—my world—of social media. Basically, what is the point of me keeping a blog in 2024?

For me, one of the virtues of keeping a blog, is that there’s no algorithm to contend with or to try to understand or manipulate or be manipulated by. Another virtue is that the content is mine. At least I think it is…This website and blog are hosted by Squarespace, so I don’t know if there is anything in the Terms and Conditions that would permit them license to do anything with my content, the way we see Instagram and other social networks try to claim which then sends the internet in an uproar for a few days.

A big drawback for me, is that it isn’t a passively accessed or delivered system. By going on Instagram or Threads or whatever is the new social network du jour, audiences have a one-stop-shopping place. A blog is something to which an audience member has to deliberately navigate.

Despite all that, there are things that I can’t easily do on social media, or at least things I don’t want to do on social media. For example, I feel like adding a lot of text is cumbersome in social media posts. What to do in the main feed vs. stories vs. reels causes more confusion and stress than I want to put up with. Which brings me back to the book Show Your Work. The author, Austin Kleon, urges readers to share everything. And while social media does make it easy to do just that, I still feel like my blog is a better place for that.

Anyway, I’ll stop pontificating and get on with the point of this post, which is to share something I’ve begun working on. I don’t know if I’m quite ready to divulge what this work is about, but I at least want to share the progression of this and other bodies of work that I have in process. Also to share (vaguely) some background as to why this work is being made: I’ve felt a compulsion to make a certain type of work, work that deals with a very large part of my life and who I am. Over the Christmas Holiday, I had the time and mind-set to be open to inspiration. There was one particular image that began to coagulate in my mind, so I decided to set some graphite to paper to help me visualize what I want to make with photo paper and chemicals, and quickly sketched this:

When I say I’ll be using photo paper and chemicals, I’m referrring to chemigrams, a process of brushing, dripping, or spraying developer and fixer and other household chemicals on photo paper which all interact with the light-sensitive emulsion in their own unique ways.

As I haven’t done any wet darkroom output with silver gelatin materials in about a decade and a half, I didn’t have any paper developer to begin working on some images, so I had to order some and wait for it to arrive (it arrived 2 days ago) to finally do so.

Last night, with all the materials I’d need to get started, I made my “first draft:”

At this point, I’m largely just getting to know my materials and tools. I’m not expecting anything amazing yet. What I do expect is to learn and play and experiment. Soon enough, I’ll be making things that I’m truly pleased with.