If you browse the portfolios of many photographers, you’ll see much of their work seems timeless. Because of that, it has an emotional pull that sometimes ages like a fine wine. At other times, it doesn’t age at all. Much of the work of Diane Arbus doesn’t age. Because of how surreal his work is, one can say that the work of photographer Rodney Smith also doesn’t age — we could argue that we’re in a parallel universe. The work of Jamel Shabazz, on the other hand, ages like a fine wine. And specifically, the latter is what we’re going to talk about. If you’re a photographer that calls yourself a photography content creator and only gets acclaim from social media, you’re going to want to pay attention to this.
If you’re a photographer who calls yourself a content creator, know that I’m not calling you out for a fight. Instead, I’m acting as a mirror of yourself that you try to silence. Are you ready?
Jamel’s most famous work ages like a fine wine because it’s a time capsule of an era in the light of positivity, love, and community. The work wasn’t made to please an algorithm, it was made to document people as they are and present humans to other humans.
There will be a time where your work looks dated. In a few years, no one will care about the TikTok trend that you’re trying to make photos or videos for. Not many people care about the #FromwhereIstand Instagram hashtag anymore. All of that will not age well. Instead, you need to start making work that ages slowly and that doesn’t look like all the other trends that are copying one another. This means that you need to stop imbibing and drawing inspiration from visual media.
The inspiration from this comes from my diving back into a book of questions posed to photographer Zack Arias. On page 71, he discusses substance over style and content over technique. But the term content, as he’s using it, pertains instead to the subject matter of the photograph. “…you’ll be hopping on one popular bandwagon after another,” he states. “Also note that if you are a trend whore, and you begin shooting what is ‘hot’ right now, you’re already a year behind the trend.” To that end, trends only feed into an attention economy that doesn’t really benefit you as much as it does whatever social media platform you’re on.
So why not try to be original? Lots of folks say these days that nothing is original. And in photography, that could be because so much lens-based artwork is drawing inspiration from some other form of lens-based creation. When, in fact, we need to surround ourselves with books, museums, and galleries.
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Here’s a challenge to you: for three months, take social media off of your phone. Buy an album, an Instax printer, and some Instax film. Then, print your absolute best images on Instax that are totally timeless. Yes, print them. Put the images in the album, put the album in front of people, and see how they react to it. They’ll look through the photos with far more interest and intrigue than they will when they look at images on a screen. Show one person a day this album and see how your growth with that person progresses. Make friends. Talk to people about your work.
And most importantly, don’t even bother with trying to have your photography take off on social media. You’ll see how much better and more fulfilling your work becomes.