Reconnection in the new year.

Stripping back to basics.

Hi there—apologies for the recent absence. It’s been a doozy of a few months, hasn’t it? Starting in November, a number of events in my life coalesced into a veritable shitstorm, and I had to let go of everything that wasn’t absolutely necessary, including this newsletter.

I suppose it all started with the election outcome, followed by some family drama over Thanksgiving that I’m honestly still dealing with. In December, I got the devastating news that one of my dear friends of over thirty years had taken his own life, much to the shock and sadness of our friend group. Then, just a couple of weeks ago, one of my best friends lost her house in the LA fires. Oh—and I fell down a flight of stairs two weeks ago and broke my right elbow! Not great for someone who wields a camera every day. You really can’t make this shit up.

Anyway, despite the last couple of months being a total dumpster fire (with no end in sight, thanks to the orangutan in the White House), I’m still standing and ready to get back to this space.

Long before the arrival of the “broligarchy,” I’d grown frustrated with much of social media. The golden age of Flickr and blogs in the early 2000s was my favorite online era—I miss it so much. This past year, Substack has felt like a return to that blog era, and I’ve so enjoyed starting each morning by logging into my Substack inbox to read all the new posts.

I also joined Bluesky a few weeks ago and have been really liking it so far. It feels like early Twitter when it was more like a chat room among friends. The ability to organize who I follow into lists is amazing—I’ve got lists for photographers, knitters, theater people, writers, real-life friends, etc.—and I can check in with one feed at a time, depending on the content I want to see or who I feel like connecting with. It’s so good! Plus, posting on Bluesky feels way less pressured than Instagram—there’s no grid to curate. You can post photos, text, links, whatever. It feels so much freer. When Instagram morphed into a portfolio site, it stopped being fun. As a business owner, I often feel paralyzed about posting there because of the stakes. There’s no joy in it anymore.

All this to say: Substack and Bluesky. Those are the online spaces making me happy right now, so that’s where you’ll find me. It’s streamlined and calm. And that’s what I need.

I’m currently reading Please Unsubscribe, Thanks!: How to Take Back Our Time, Attention, and Purpose in a World Designed to Bury Us in Bullshit by Julio Vincent Gambuto, and so much of it is resonating with me. I’ve been deleting, unsubscribing, declining, and simplifying.

I chose the word reconnect as my guidepost for 2025. As devastating as it was to lose my friend Steve in December, the silver lining was that it reconnected all of us who loved him in a way we hadn’t been connected in a long time. It was a wake-up call, for sure. It’s so easy to get lost in the slog of daily life and then look up to realize it’s been months—or even years—since you’ve called someone you care about.

In addition to reconnecting with friends, I also want to reconnect with things that make me feel happy, grounded, and like myself: reading books, knitting, photographing for fun, trips to the city, artist dates, listening to music, going to museums, seeing shows, road trips. These things have fallen by the wayside in recent years, and I miss them.

Still, despite it all, 2024 wasn’t all struggle. The best thing that happened was landing my new job in school PR. I’ll write a post soon diving into the nuts and bolts of this work, but it’s been a lifeline. Unlike family photography, which often feels like walking a tightrope to please clients, school photography is different. It’s closer to assignment work—reportage, with quick bursts of documentary-style storytelling. I get to cosplay my photojournalist dreams in a low-stakes environment, moving from school to school throughout the day with a purpose that feels uniquely mine.

Now, six months into the job, I’ve mostly figured out the mechanics—so my focus for 2025 is the art. I’ve been immersing myself in photojournalism and sports photography. David Burnett and Robbie Lawrence are my current photography crushes. Their creative approaches to photographing the Olympics made me realize how much more I can bring to my school photography work. I’ve been playing it safe, afraid to push boundaries because of expectations. But “press-worthy” doesn’t have to mean boring. I study The New York Times daily and see how much room there is for creativity in documentary work. This year, I want to experiment more. Reconnect the work with the art.

(This is a bit of a disjointed post—my kids are watching the Grammys in the other room and screaming their heads off – it’s distracting to say the least!)

My goal for this space is to post twice a month. Instead of a dedicated link round-up every two weeks, I’ll include links at the bottom of each post. As always, the newsletter is free for all. I hope you’ll continue to join me here (and find me over on Bluesky, as well!).

A few links for you:

Santa Fe Workshops has announced their summer in-person workshop line-up. Check it out here.

Manuela Thames is running her class The Art of Multiple Exposure at Maine Media Workshops next month: https://www.mainemedia.edu/workshops/item/exploring-the-art-of-multiple-exposures-online/

View the Critical Mass 2024 Top 50 exhibit online at Photolucinda.

Visit Printed Matter in Chelsea (NY) for an exhibition of shortlisted titles from the 2024 Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Awards, an annual celebration of the photobook’s enduring role within the evolving narrative of photography (through Feb. 25). The list of books is here.

I loved this profile of Adrien Brody, with photos by his mom, photographer Sylvia Plachy.

I just finished reading A Still Life by Josie George and I loved it so much. I didn’t want it to end.