As a photographer and especially as a documentary/journalism adjacent photographer I often feel like there are some subjects that are, to put it bluntly, bummers. I often lack the motivation or excitement to even consider projects that I feel are sad, hopeless. There are also many many projects on these types of topics out there, which can make it feel like there is no point in doing another one myself.
The trouble is, these are the defining topics of the current era and likely the defining topics of my lifetime. Poverty, nationalism, the climate crisis, the autocrathic shift in my country and many others and the people not just left behind but actively oppressed by the political and economic system, these are the stories that define our time.
But when I wake up in the morning and consider what I want to spend my day on, my month on, what I want to put my energy towards, it feels sad and disheartening and frankly not much fun to pick one of these topics.
It’s so sad, it’s so tragic, it’s so overdone, why would I want to do it then?
I think if I want to do something that matters, that really matters, then I have no choice but to work on these subjects. Accept the fact, that it won’t bring me fame or success or money, that not many people will get excited when I tell them what I’m working on and that I might live out my life feeling like I’ve tilted at windmills with these projects.
But these are the things that we need to document, that I need to document. Today it might not be popular or interesting to the general public, but some day in the future, when people will want to know what this time was like, these are the projects they’ll need to see. Even if I’m not good enough, even if my work is less good than what other, better photographers do, I can make pictures that 10-20-30 years from now will be valuable as a document of what it was like inn Hungary in 2024.
This is not a fun career, this is a sad, lonely, fruitless mission. The question is, do I care enough about doing something important to accept that I won’t be the fun, interesting guy at parties, that I’ll be the weirdo with the weird obsessions about things we consider to be tragic in a mundane, boring, things-are-as-they-are way.
Being a photographer, having the ability to document, to stand witness is a responsiblity. It’s not fun, I don’t get to wear cool scarves and make popular exhibitions, but it’s the thing that can make what I do more than a self centered hobby.
Well, anyways.
One of my regularly recurring hyperfocus subjects is how to collect digital things from the web. While I don’t do much structured research, I often do unstructured research. I tend to do this in two ways:
- basically surfing the web and collecting bits and ideas
- going down the rabbit hole on a specific topic, trying to find information or details (this often involves comparing things as well)
I have a tendency to want to collect, organize and archive the things I find: interesting websites, personal blogs, articles, notes, ideas, products, tools, ways of making a zine, all sorts of random things, depending on the topic I’m hyperfocused on at the time.
How to do this collecting and organizing and archiving is itself a frequent subject of my hyperfocus.
I tend to want to collect various types of things - articles, guides, scraps of ideas, quotes, images, personal websites of random people, things I see in the real world, my own thoughts and ideas, references, manuals, websites of tools and apps, PDFs, etc. I also want to collect things around a variety of topics - technology, website making, programming, note taking, zine making, photography, writing, ideas for creative projects, lifestyle dreams, methodologies for thinking, philosophies, taxonomies, etc.
These are all digital artifacts, most originating on someone else’s website or as a social media post (these have an URL) and some originating with me (these are image files or text, sometimes even audio recordings).
My problem is twofold: what tool to use to collect these things and how to organize/structure my collection.
Some of my requirements for my ideal collecting/curating/archiving setup:
- cross platform - at minimum available on iPhone, iPad plus a Mac and/or web interface
- quick and easy to add to from any platform
- easy to organize in folders/collections
- good previews - both for links and files/text, so I don’t always have to click through to see the content I’ve saved
- stable sync between platforms
- easy to export in a universal format - something like plain text, webloc, etc. so I can move things out of the system easily. Ideally should already store things in an open format.
- stable, fast apps - modern apps with a UI that is easy to use and fast to load/operate
- longevity - something that I can trust to be around for at minimum 10 years, ideally more. Either open source, based on an open format or a company with a long track record and a stable long term business model. Big tech is not an option.
- very cheap or free - no more than $5/month, ideally less or free
- link archiving - ideally should be able to archive a current snapshot of the links I save and store the files, text I add as well
Things I’ve tried so far and why they aren’t ideal:
- Safari bookmarks - cumbersome to organize, only stores links, no good previews
- Are.na - slow, buggy iOS app and web interface, cumbersome to organize, plus $7/month is a bit over my budget
- Anybox, Raindrop.io, other Apple-based bookmark apps - mainly just links, usually paid, not open format based, doesn’t feel like I can trust them to be around
- self hosted bookmarking (eg. Shaare) - links only, cumbersome interfaces, usually web only
- Pinboard - links only, single person business doesn’t feel safe in terms of bus factor
- Notes apps (eg. Apple Notes, Bear, etc.) - links are not first class citizens
So I keep searching for the perfect tool. I’m afraid, that I’ll need to make a compromise somewhere, but I still hope there is something out there for this that I can confidently use.
Well, anyways.
Saw the most amazing documentary film today. It’s a Hungarian film titled “Kix” and it follows the life of a boy from a poor Budapest family over 12 years! Starting with a random encounter with one of the filmmakers when the boy’s 8, it follows his childhood and adolescence spent mostly on the streets of his neighborhood fooling around, getting into fights, skateboarding and lighting bins on fire. It’s a touching, challenging film about a kid, who isn’t exactly a hero charachter, but certainly has a lot of charisma that he uses to try and make his place in the world despite living in a single room with 5 other family members.
The film is beautiful as a piece of cinema and that’s not something you see every day with a documentary. It also made me realize how different my chosen medium of photography is. I can imagine a long term photography project around a similar main character, but I feel that photography can never do what a film like this can.
Well, anyways.