Photographic Literacy

This was originally published in my Prime Lenses Newsletter. You can sign-up for a weekly update to your inbox here.

One of the best things about doing this every week is the surprising number of times that the universe provides a spark or topic. Inspiration this week came from Marc Maron’s excellent conversation with James Mangold. It was a really deep conversation covering aspects of the creative process, getting things made, and generally making a life of making things sound like the richest and fullest way to live. It’s well worth a listen. One point they touched on quite early on stopped me in my tracks. I was making pizza dough at the time.

“Mangold: Well, also, there was, what was the streaming network that closed about five years ago, that was, you know, nothing but old films? And now, kind of Criterion has picked up that...

Maron: What do you mean, like Turner or no?

Mangold: It was part of, they were using the Turner Library, and I think what ended up kind of bringing them down was that Warner's pulled their library from this service. I don't remember what it was called, but the... Which only makes me sad in and of itself.

But what I mean by that is that not just independent new voices, but also the kind of entire literature of movies is hard to find.

Maron: You have to look.

Mangold: Given the fact you can watch anything, why is it that you can't? And that the claim is you can kind of see any kind of film at any time. The truth is it's really hard to find old films, particularly Criterion has a thing where they're kind of having a rotating schedule.“

From WTF with Marc Maron Podcast: Episode 1617 - James Mangold, 13 Feb 2025 - Transcript Apple Podcasts

Earlier in the week, I’d seen Zach from the Leica store in Seattle post asking folks what they felt they needed to be a better photographer, and it struck me that as much as this example was cinema, this definitely applies to photography.

My year of podcasting and speaking to photographers has definitely opened my eyes to a wider range of work, but I routinely find that I come across folks I don’t know. As a grown-up with a job, I can go and grab a book and immerse myself in the work, but what if you can’t? What if you can’t just get out to a bookstore or it isn’t in your local library? Photographers are, quite reasonably, protective of their work, so high-quality and extensive archives are hard to come by.

If you want to learn about art and photography and you don’t live in a fairly major city, chances are it’s hard to see good work, spend time with it in a printed form, and really dig in. Like Mangold said, technically we can look at anything. Practically? Well, that’s something different.

It got me thinking, maybe we need some sort of curated online gallery. Something like Masterclass or Skillshare but for great photography. TED-style videos or galleries available for a short time or in perpetuity that folks can access and spend time with. Maybe some of it could even be printed media distributed somehow. That’d sure be something, wouldn’t it? The closest I can think of is something like Jorge and Christelle do with The RAW Society, but there should and could be more. If you don’t know The RAW Society, go and listen to our conversation from last year and check out the group. I am a member but am terrible at checking in and contributing. The resources they provide are wonderful and worth a look. Membership might also make a thoughtful gift for the photographer in your life.

I feel like I’ve set something in motion in my head. A new project, I don’t need one of those, TED for photos.

More notes on notes

Just a quick “note” to share that having noticed my continued indulgence in writing on paper, my boys have decided that they too would like notebooks and have nabbed a couple of books from my collection of fresh ones. This is wonderful to see and fills my heart with pride but is also great news as it means I’ll have the excuse to invest in a new notebook sooner. I’m eyeing these clever notebooks from Tom’s Studiowhich look like they overcome one shortcoming of physical notebooks. When you move from one to another, what if you’re going to need to reference something from the last one? I cut pages out at the moment, but what if I didn’t need to do that? Ingenious swappable pages and now available in a matte black! I love it.

Short days, long shadows, long faces