the vast majority of the photographs on this website were shot on film. i think art is often best when it's communal. i want photography to be a common good. shared embodied experience is how i make myself understood. handing a film camera around a group forces them to engage with me on my terms. the driving force behind this obsession is not nostalgia. i do not wish for a simpler time. film photography is a clean intersection of the relationship between imagery and tactility. our senses are connective tissue between us and the world. they ground us. they keep us from becoming abstractions. often i have felt that i am at risk of abstracting completely.
vapes, notes apps, sexting, the silent surreptitious phone camera cheap, sweaty fabric that discourages dwelling in the body. eros is embodied. wine spilling over the edge of a glass i promise this isn't a 'touch grass' essa the click of a lighter, the flame at the end of a cigarette.
tactility can exist in the digital space. 'files', 'recycling bin', the landline phone 'call' button, the floppy disc 'save' button, all remaining basically universal and immovable symbols of the digital systems which aim to emulate them. testaments to the importance of the physical objects that have and will always lay at the root of the digital. yet the fact that we still use this type of imagery so consistently is more than just rusted-in industry convention. these symbols cannot be displaced because there is nothing to displace them. there is no new signifier of the call function to supplant the landline phone because there is nothing new that exists which is 1) fit to purpose and 2) visually distinct enough to be recognisable. the landline is such an effective signifier because of its sweeping, rounded shape, as iconic as it is wholly unique. the precise reason for this is that the landline takes the shape of the human body: the distance between an ear and a mouth, and between, a curved handle the size of a closed human fist. this cannot be said of the smartphone. i think you can feel this dissonance between the body and the object as you use it. by now we've all developed a complex system of instincts for how to handle this new appendage, but the form factor of the smartphone is kind of awkward in the human hand. smooth, flat, and overly dependent on the thumb. it is, for example, much more difficult to hold a smartphone between the head and shoulder to free up hands, especially if you're trying to do dishes or rifle through a bag (too small and slippery, and risks the touchscreen picking up on skin contact and accidentally hanging up).
i think tech companies hate that they are in this way still dependent on the physicality of that for which they have such distaste, like men who hate women but need sex. the stripping of visual tactility has come to define the visual identity of the past decade or two of tech. my phone app icon is flat microsoft-blue on a white background. user interfaces are sleek and sexless. physical devices are black, rectangular, and deliberately impenetrable (though i do not count myself among them, objectums seem to understand this better than anyone). silicon valley pet projects like voice activated ai pins attempt to cut both imagery and tactility out of the equation almost entirely.