From the Notebook

Photography may be an art, but it’s one of the lowest forms.

To me, all art is mental shit anyway, simply the waste of whatever a person’s mind has recently consumed, reeking with the stench of their own odious beliefs and illusions.

Photography, in particular, is such a flimsy, throwaway medium—a single moment in time captured, but like most moments, easily discarded and forgotten.

At a time when humans absorb a steady stream of images in every waking moment, the value of a single photograph is less than nothing.

It’s amusing how pretentious so many photographers are about their so-called craft—the most spectacular image may grab a person’s attention for a second or two, tops, before they scroll past and immediately forget it.

Your pretty picture isn’t important, and no one gives a shit about it but you.

Needless to say, I don’t identify as a photographer, and I’m certainly no artist. I’m not attaching my ego to that kind of nonsense.

I consider architectural photography to be the same as pornography. Just like all dicks and vaginas run together after you’ve seen a thousand of them, one building looks much like another after you’ve photographed your first few hundred.

A structure may look appealing in a certain light or at a particular angle, but few are truly exceptional, and I’m always delighted to find the standouts. Even then, they’re just buildings—decaying monuments to human fragility and arrogance, all shaped in the same basic forms.

To me, photography is all about understanding light and shadow, and in order to be any damn good at capturing the light, you can’t be afraid to confront the shadow. Period.

I don’t have a mind for technicalities, and I don’t give a fuck about shutter speeds, Canon vs. Nikon, or whatever other wankery photographers obsess over to make themselves feel special.

For more than twenty years, I used cheap point-and-shoot cameras because that’s all I could afford. I was only able to buy a DSLR camera a few years ago, and it was one of the least expensive ones I could find.

Many of my pictures have been taken with a phone, especially interior shots, because God knows people freak out if you use a camera inside a building.

Nothing reveals the irrational stupidity of the human mind quite like photography. Snap a bunch of pics with a phone, and no one blinks an eye. Pull out an actual camera, and they suddenly think you’re a terrorist.

Photography long ago tapped into an anti-authoritarian streak that lay dormant in me, and over time, has magnified that rebellion into a defining personality trait.

I’ve been chased down too many times by power-hungry security guards and angry homeowners too dumb to understand that photography in public spaces is still perfectly legal in the United States—one of the few freedoms we have left in this dictatorial shambles we call a free country.

You’re gonna come after me in your car and threaten to call the police for taking pics of your ugly old house from the sidewalk? Like it isn’t all over Google Maps, Zillow, real estate websites, or the local tax assessor’s site, where I can see photos, floor plans, your full name, and how much you overpaid for that pile.

In fact, that’s how I plan my shots in advance—by carefully studying your house online. Trust me, I don’t want to have to fuck around outside your place any longer than necessary.

I’m only observing the facade of your house, which will likely outlast your insignificant carcass. Go console yourself by meditating on your property value, which is probably the only thing you have to show for your pathetic excuse of a life.

And don’t give me shit about how you’re scared because crime’s gotten so bad in your neighborhood—crooks are dumb as hell; they’re not out carefully taking pictures like it’s some insipid espionage film. I don’t indulge my fears, and I’m not entertaining your dark fantasies either.

It was particularly amusing in the years when Atlanta was busy trying to convince the world it was the new Hollywood (it wasn’t, and never will be). People who whored out their homes for some film production didn’t mind if a sex scene was shot in their bedroom, but got mad if a guy out front was taking pics with his little camera. Fuck off with that nonsense.

So far at least, the power-tripping theatrics I’ve encountered in the field have been exclusive to the Southeast, where the reigning mythology hasn’t shifted much from the slavery days—even in Atlanta, which cloaks itself in a progressive veneer but is essentially rooted in the same old top-down system of patriarchal control.

It’s only in the Deep South where I get the distinct feeling that people view public photography as some existential threat to their fragile little social order.

I can’t count how many times I’ve had to soothe some angry Southerner by smiling sweetly, pulling out the old drawl, and saying, “Oh, I’m so sorry,” accompanied by some groveling song-and-dance to sufficiently demonstrate that I know my place.

Then I just go back when they’re gone and finish the job.

On one of my first visits to New York, a cop walked up to me while I was photographing a building. Oh, great, here we go, I thought, and then he whipped out his phone and started showing me his own street photography.

Much of it has to do with the size of a place: in cities of actual consequence, where people’s lives are engaged in meaningful activity, no one even notices a guy with a camera.

It’s the dead podunk towns I dread the most, where people are in thrall to fear and have nothing better to do than to get up in your business—or threaten your life, as happened to me once when I returned to take pictures in the shithole where I grew up.

“I’ve got a gun on me,” big boy growled in that familiar twang I despise. Welcome back to hell, I thought.

Photography is lonely work, mentally demanding, physically exhausting, and I find little glory in it. I have no emotional attachment to it, but over time, the process has become a spiritual discipline for me, essentially a form of meditation.

In the best moments, I feel like I can capture a spark of the divine imagination, especially when the subject is one that my soul connects with—anything by G.L. Norrman, for example.

For better or worse, photography is one of the things I was put on this earth to do, and I’ll keep plugging away at it despite its attendant perils and frustrations.