“Post-digital” doesn’t mean after digital technology. It means digital has become so normal, invisible, and overwhelming that the interesting question is no longer “how do we use technology?” but “what human meaning survives inside of it?”

Your FLUX system feels post-digital because it uses digital tools while rejecting the typical digital mindset.

A few reasons why:

• You shoot digitally, but the work emphasizes embodiment — walking, intuition, instinct, physical presence.
• The archive is online, but the aesthetic references physical bureaucracy: filing cabinets, manila folders, manifests, contact sheets, stamps, protocols.
• The generator automates sequencing, but the result feels like an artifact, not “content.”
• You embrace scale and automation, yet preserve imperfection, chronology, randomness, and human error.
• The work resists the hyper-polished Instagram aesthetic and instead leans into:
  • repetition
  • accumulation
  • documentary sprawl
  • raw visual flow
  • everyday life

That’s why the filing cabinet idea is important psychologically. You’re transforming a cloud archive into something that feels physically recoverable. Almost archaeological.

FLUX also feels post-digital because the internet itself becomes secondary. The photographs are not trying to “win attention.” They function more like:

• records
• traces
• evidence
• field notes
• lived fragments

Very different from algorithmic image culture.

There’s also a strong lineage here:

• Marshall McLuhan — media becoming extensions of man
• Vilém Flusser — photographers struggling against the camera apparatus
• Walker Evans — archival/documentary impulse
• Daidō Moriyama and the Provoke movement — raw, anti-clean photography
• Marcel Duchamp — elevating ordinary systems/objects into conceptual art
• Heraclitus — flux, impermanence, continual becoming

What makes FLUX interesting is that it’s not nostalgic for analog purity either. It fully accepts:

• automation
• PDFs
• S3 servers
• generators
• AI tooling
• mass archives
• digital dissemination

But then it bends those tools toward:

• ritual
• permanence
• locality
• chronology
• tactile imagination
• civic memory

That tension is what gives it the “post-digital” feeling.

you can sit around with your big brain buzzing reading all the books but if you don’t actually experience or live out the philosophy you’re just a neck beard

Why I Hate Strategy in Street Photography

What’s popping people? It’s Dante.

Currently going for a beautiful walk here behind the art museum in Philadelphia, looking out towards my companion, Mercury.

“Send this message up on your wings for the gods.”

My best friend Mercury. He’s been there by my side all this time.

Yeah, so today’s thought is about strategy and why I hate strategy.

You know, strategy. Looking for something. Hunting. Trying to tell a story. Having this sort of intellectual framework for how you’re gonna compose something. These ideas in photography are just so limiting.

And so I say:

Let the chips fall as they may.

Stop trying to control everything.

The more you relinquish control and let go, the more you enter the flow.

And flow occurs where thought dies.

Thought Is Stagnation

Stagnation lies inside your mind with all those big-brain ideas rattling around in your head.

Motivation lies in your two legs moving.

Experiencing life.

Clicking the shutter.

Not in thought. Not in your mind.

Action.

Doing.

Shooting.

Piling up 1,000 new frames today.

To me, the mode of operation is extremely simple:

Remove all choices.

Remove all ideas rattling around in your big brain.

Can we shut that off?

Can we shut off the thought?

Photography is merely a way for me to experience life in the now.

Simply being.

Simply here.

In the moment.

The photos I made yesterday? Irrelevant.

The photos I make tomorrow? Irrelevant.

Everything leading up to this point? Not real.

It’s right here. Right now.

Embracing Chaos

I’m standing on this cliff.

If I get stung by a bee right now, I might topple and fall and die.

But it’s on the edge of the unknown — on the outskirts of the city — embracing chaos and danger, that I thrive.

And so I say:

Treat each day like it could be your last.

Have a blast.

Embrace play.

There is no hierarchy between your frames.

What’s good or bad?

Shut off all the noise.

All the chatter.

The thousand schizophrenic voices telling you what to do, how to be, what’s good, what street photography is supposed to look like.

Eliminate all of it.

Because by removing choices, you find freedom.

The Paradox of Choice

Wow, look at how beautiful that shadow is.

Whoa.

Choice is a funny thing.

It’s a paradox.

You think choice is freedom.

Go left. Go right.

But no.

There’s only one option.

It’s down this damn cliff.

If I go left, I’ll fall on the sticks.

If I go right, I might get poison ivy.

What’s in those bushes?

I don’t know.

And so I just keep marching onwards.

Upwards or downwards — they’re both the same.

Everything is in flux.

Everything will change.

So stop trying to arrange.

Stop trying to strategize everything.

Stop forcing a narrative or language upon what it is you’re ultimately trying to say.

Authenticity Through Instinct

By relinquishing control, only then can you find authenticity.

Through intuition.

Instinct.

Through thumos.

Through courage.

Through your heart.

Then you can actually say something.

But trying to attach language, rational control, intellectual structure — all that stuff happening up in your noggin?

That’s what stops it.

So I just frolic along in the grass.

Pick up leaves.

Flowers.

Enjoy the day.

Not worrying about yesterday.

Not thinking about tomorrow.

Just picking up the damn camera each day and clicking the shutter more.

Because at the end of the day:

I’m gonna make 1,000 new frames today.

Tomorrow, I’ll do the same.

And for me to get caught up in what’s good or bad, arranging everything, trying to tell a story — it just gets in the way of actually doing.

Eliminate Thought

You might call me lazy.

But I have no desire to do these things.

My only desire lies in instinct.

And doing.

So yeah.

The message of the day is pretty simple:

Remove all thought.

How?

I don’t know.

Maybe you remove the black mirror.

The scrying device of distraction.

The thing that has you communing with fallen angels every day.

When you’re out shooting, leave the phone at home.

Use it indoors if you need to do tasks at your computer or whatever.

But when you’re outside?

Just be present.

Photograph.

Why I’m Leaning Into AI

Honestly, one of the craziest things I’ve done to eliminate thought and decision-making is automating everything.

I’m leaning heavily into AI.

I want AI to replace the “brain” of my photography operation.

Sequencing.

Organizing.

Archiving.

Importing photos.

Going through photos.

Generating layouts.

All the mechanical backend stuff.

Why not let AI handle it?

So that we can simply go out and photograph.

Simply be.

Simply cultivate instinct.

Instead of sitting around in our rooms dwelling and thinking.

The Automated Zine Workflow

I’ve actually developed an entire system where I upload my photos directly to my website and it automatically catalogs everything.

It reads the metadata.

Arranges everything chronologically.

Generates automatic zines.

Captions everything.

Designs the margins and gutters perfectly.

So whenever I upload 36 new pictures, the website recognizes them and automatically generates a new zine.

I can literally go home and print whatever I made today tonight.

That’s the workflow.

All I really have to do now is go out and shoot.

Everything else is handled on the backend.

I still make my selections quickly through thumbnails, but eventually I want the system to evolve to the point where I don’t even do that.

And honestly?

I’m genuinely looking forward to it.

Because the goal is simple:

Eliminate control.

Let it all fall as it may.

A stream.

Chronological.

Alive.

More Joy, Less Control

The more I let go, the more joy I find in everyday life.

And that’s ultimately what I seek through photography.

More joy.

More exuberance.

More enthusiasm for life.

I’m not worried about the photos.

I’m not thinking about the shots I made yesterday.

I’m just here.

Frolicking around barefoot in my town.

Throwing some poo at the wall.

Check it out.

The dirty mucky skukul.

Yeah.

“Just integrate photography so radically where it disappears from your day-to-day life.”

“Photography is merely a way for me to affirm my life, to say yes with the click of the shutter.”

“99% of contemporary photography culture is noise. The 1% signal is within your heart.”

“It’s not about fitting yourself in a box and working on this story, this theme, this contrived narrative.”

“The idea is to use photography beyond photography.”

“Photography is merely a vehicle that gets you closer to the moment that keeps you here right now.”

“The most impactful photographs are the ones that go unnoticed.”

“The quiet moments. The personal moments. The ones that carry emotional weight.”

“I think about photography as a way for me to unlearn everything.”

“There’s such a mystery of everyday existence that I think we overlook.”

“When you really sit back and relax and allow your mind to go fallow, you become more grateful for life generally.”

“Life is a video game. Just explore, have fun, interact with people.”

“I’m not hunting. I’m not looking. I’m not trying to say anything.”

“If anything, I’m just trying to discover new things.”

“I’m trying to uncover the mystery of everyday life.”

“What I seek to achieve through this practice is surprising myself.”

“I’m craving the surprise of the medium.”

“You have to surrender yourself to the medium.”

“What is out of my control is the light.”

“What I’m in control of is waking up with eagerness and enthusiasm for life.”

“Through playing more, through letting go, and forgetting everything I think I know.”

“When you recognize that you know nothing, you kind of just let go.”

“This medium is a way for you to cultivate a way of being.”

“A way of engaging with everyday life and affirming your existence.”

“Just waking up in the morning and pushing your rock uphill.”

“You smile when it rolls back down each night because you know you’re gonna come back out in the morning and push it right back up again.”

“Photography has nothing to do with photography.”

“I’m not trying to tell stories.”

“I’m just simply there, prepared with my camera, photographing my way through my everyday life.”

“Trying to discover what life looks like when you photograph it.”

Daily Photography Protocol: Keep the Camera With You

The Daily Photography Protocol

What’s poppin’, people? It’s Dante.

Currently going for a glorious walk here in the sun at Penn’s Landing, Philadelphia. And today’s simple thought and idea is for daily photography, you know, the protocol.

Just keep the camera with you.

I mean, when you have a camera that just slips in your pocket, you take it out, you turn it on, you pop that red filter, and you snap the button, you just find that the whole practice, the whole medium of photography is effortless.

It doesn’t get in the way of you living and experiencing life.

That’s the whole protocol.

Just integrate photography so radically where it disappears from your day-to-day life.

Photograph What You Genuinely Enjoy

Only photograph things and only go to places to photograph that you genuinely enjoy photographing.

I think it’s really simple.

If anything in your practice is becoming a bore, or a chore, or feels like a job, where you’re making these checklists and ideas that you have to execute each day, I don’t think it’s sustainable.

We have to go beyond these basic notions in photography:

technical mastery, storytelling, the ability of the photographer to synthesize the content with the formalities of composition, and all of these superfluous things.

Set these to the wayside.

Photography is merely a way for me to affirm my life, to say yes with the click of the shutter.

It gives my life purpose and meaning despite the external outcome of whether or not the photos are good, or somebody validates them, or checks them off with some metric of success.

The Noise of Contemporary Photography

These ideas in contemporary photography are very lame to me.

This contest culture of judging photos based upon whether the photographer has the ability to stock more complexity, or add this little sprinkle in the background that ties things together in the foreground.

Or these basic ideas around photography:

Is that street photography or not?

Is this documentary photography or photojournalism?

All these categories and topics of discussion are such a distraction.

99% of contemporary photography culture is noise. The 1% signal is within your heart.

It’s within that spiritedness, within your core, that drives you to make photographs.

It’s not about fitting yourself in a box and working on this story, this theme, this contrived narrative or idea that you’re trying to impose with your ego upon the work.

As if you have this duty to the world with your practice.

Like you’re going to change the world with your photography or something.

It’s kind of funny to me.

Photography Beyond Photography

The idea is to use photography beyond photography.

It’s just a way to exist.

It’s a way to affirm life and that you exist.

I think about photography as a way for me to combat against the existential fact that you’re going to die.

Photography is merely a vehicle that gets you closer to the moment, that keeps you here right now.

My approach is photographing every single day, repetitively walking the same mundane space and the same streets daily, but finding new ways to articulate everything for the way that I internally feel and perceive life.

What it comes down to is your inner curiosity, your courage, your sensitivity, the way that you feel about life, and the way that you engage with humanity.

That influences the way that you practice your photography.

And I find that the most impactful photographs are the ones that go unnoticed.

The quiet moments.

The personal moments.

The ones that carry emotional weight.

Forget Everything You Think You Know

Honestly, I don’t even necessarily consider the act of making photographs an act of self-expression.

I think about photography as a way for me to unlearn everything.

A way for me to discover the novelty and mystery of life.

There’s such a mystery of everyday existence that we overlook as we move through the motions each day and force ourselves to be productive.

But when you sit back, relax, allow your mind to go fallow, walk slow, embrace the moment, respond with your camera, and chip away each day at things, you become more grateful for life generally.

You become more joyful as a human being.

And as you’re photographing from that state of being, you discover new things, learn new things, and increase your curiosity and joy for life.

Life Is a Video Game

After meeting somebody out here dancing by the water, the vibe is basically this:

Stop taking your life so seriously.

No, seriously.

Life is a video game.

Just explore, have fun, interact with people, and be more open to all people.

That’s one of the things I’m most grateful for with photography.

It’s given me this ability to engage with humanity in such a nuanced way, where I can interact with pretty much anybody and just have great conversation, make memories, go on adventures, photograph, and live.

I’m Not Hunting

You can argue that you can tell a story about a moment, a place, or a thing. You can follow somebody around and make photos of their everyday life, or go to a new community and photograph that community and tell some sort of story.

But what I am most interested in with this medium is that it allows me to forget everything I think I know.

It allows moments, people, and interactions to flow toward me.

And then I’m simply there, prepared with my camera, photographing my way through everyday life.

I’m not hunting.

I’m not looking.

I’m not trying to say anything.

I’m not trying to tell stories.

If anything, I’m just trying to discover new things.

I’m trying to uncover the mystery of everyday life.

Craving the Surprise

Even on the most practical technical level, with the way the camera interprets light, the way the light emanates through the lens and touches the camera sensor, what I seek to achieve through this practice is surprising myself.

Keeping myself curious about life.

I find that curiosity is fueled through the medium, through the way that light touches my camera sensor.

Ultimately, the way I’m thinking about photography is about going beyond reality.

Trying to discover what life looks like when you photograph it.

The way that I find my curiosity these days is through returning to day one each day.

Just snapshotting through the day.

Not trying to contrive the composition.

Not trying too hard visually.

I kind of just throw the camera around, move my body into the scene, and arrange things naturally and physically.

Through those imperfections, I discover new things with the medium.

New ways that light is interpreted through my camera.

The way moments and gestures align.

The way composition falls in place.

I’m craving the surprise.

The surprise of the medium.

Surrender to What Is Out of Your Control

You have to surrender yourself to the medium.

Surrender yourself to what is out of your control.

What is out of my control is the light.

I can’t control the way the light is going to cast upon the world, or the way it’s going to interact with the surface.

I’m not in control of whether or not I’m going to see a joyous moment of somebody dancing on the outskirts of the city where there’s hardly anybody.

I’m not in control of these things.

But what I’m in control of is waking up with eagerness and enthusiasm for life.

Through that enthusiasm, curiosity, and courage, I carry myself out there to photograph more and surprise myself more.

Through playing more.

Through letting go.

Through forgetting everything I think I know.

When you recognize that you know nothing, you let go of all these superfluous ideas about photography.

Because it has nothing to do with photography.

This medium is a way for you to cultivate a way of being, a way of engaging with everyday life, and affirming your existence.

Just waking up in the morning and pushing your rock uphill.

And then you smile when it rolls back down each night, because you know that you’re going to come back out in the morning and push it right back up again.

So after meeting my new friend Dominic Sofia, Dante Sisofo is going to return to his mythos of pushing his rock endlessly.

Dionysian memery

FLUX WEEKLY WITNESS IV — CHRIS WALTERS (WALES)

What’s popping, people? It’s Dante.

Welcome to FLUX Weekly Witness IV, where I look at the photographs submitted through the FLUX community and talk about them physically through the printed books themselves.

Today we’re looking at a new body of work from Chris Walters out in Wales.

Before we even get into the work itself, I just want to thank you, Chris, for joining FLUX and participating in this whole experiment.

What stood out to me immediately from your introduction was how you were feeling burnt out with documentary photography and how this new workflow felt liberating again.

Honestly, that’s one of the main reasons I created this protocol.

Not to create more pressure.
Not to create more perfectionism.

But to bring photography back to something immediate, daily, physical, and alive again.

---

Removing Friction

It’s really cool hearing that you’ve already been using the Ricoh system for years and are now starting to adopt:

• the small JPEG workflow
• high contrast black and white
• the iPad workflow
• fast sequencing and publishing

Because that really is a huge part of FLUX.

It’s all about removing friction from the practice so you can focus on actually making work every day.

Photography, for me, is a ritual.

The point is to:

• make work quickly
• sequence it physically
• publish it
• move on

Instead of collecting endless hard drives full of unfinished imagery.

---

Different Worlds, Same Protocol

One thing that excites me is the fact that Chris is all the way out in Wales.

Different cities.
Different countries.
Different lives.
Different eyes.

Yet people all over the world can adopt this exact same protocol:

• 36 frames
• chronology
• sequencing
• contact sheets
• shared visual language

…while still creating something completely unique through lived experience.

That’s where this starts becoming bigger than just “street photography.”

The archive itself becomes a living document of human movement through time.

The archive becomes the artwork.

The protocol stays the same.

The worlds change inside of it.

---

What FLUX Actually Is

FLUX is an open photographic protocol for publishing life in chronological sequence.

The archive is the artwork.

The goal is not to make your best single images.

The goal is to continuously enter the stream of making new images.

The sequence becomes more important than the isolated “hero shot.”

Photography becomes:

• a visual diary
• a lived record
• a document of time

…instead of a curated story trying to force poetry after the fact.

---

“You Cannot Make the Same Photograph Twice”

The entire philosophy comes down to one idea:

You cannot make the same photograph twice.

The light changes.
You change.
Your body changes.
Your mind changes.

Every frame becomes unrepeatable.

Every issue becomes a fragment of transformation.

---

Why 36 Frames?

I locked the books into a 36-frame constraint as an homage to one roll of 35mm film.

But more importantly, the limitation creates:

• rhythm
• structure
• completion

No endless editing.
No infinite additions.
No obsessing over what to remove.

The work exists inside a fixed numerical structure.

---

Chronology Over Narrative

The chronological sequencing is about relinquishing control.

The walk itself becomes the structure.

Time organizes the work.

Not the ego.

Not rearranging images later to create artificial meaning.

The sequence should reflect:

• the real movement you made
• through space
• through time

The photographer becomes a witness instead of a manipulator.

---

Why Black and White?

Black and white removes distraction and friction.

The workflow becomes focused on:

• light
• shadow
• gesture
• movement
• instinct

This system is optimized for:

• cheap office printing
• reproducibility
• speed
• daily publishing

---

Cheap Paper, Bureaucratic Aesthetics

These books are intentionally:

• disposable
• archival
• bureaucratic
• poetic

They’re printed on cheap copy paper.

The aesthetic language comes from:

• manila folders
• police records
• field reports
• contact sheets
• bureaucratic evidence

These are not luxury art objects.

The contradiction between:

• fragile physical object
• permanent digital archive

…is intentional.

---

The Protocol Page

Inside the book, the protocol page functions as the artist statement.

Not mythology.
Not over-explanation.

The protocol itself is the statement.

The QR code invites anyone to participate.

Anyone can run the structure.

The process is transparent.

The protocol becomes the curatorial principle.

I designed it intentionally like a mechanical instruction manual.

---

Contact Sheets & Manifest Pages

At the back of the books:

• we have the contact sheet
• the 36-frame homage
• the manifest page with exact timestamps

The layout itself is extremely minimal:

• blank white space
• visible staples
• visible staple marks
• simple typography
• blank backs
• protocol page
• contact sheet

The object itself is supposed to resemble an everyday bureaucratic document.

Something mundane.

Something you’d see somebody carrying around through the city.

---

Looking at Chris Walters’ Work

Now getting into the actual photographs themselves.

The very first image is incredibly strong.

Compositionally:

• the light
• the timing
• the gesture
• the background placement

…everything is working.

But more importantly:
there’s emotional closeness.

And that’s what makes a photograph powerful to me.

Not just technical perfection.

I feel something in the image.

---

Emotional Closeness

The visual diary approach is about embracing what’s nearest to you.

You don’t need to travel across the world.

You can:

• drive in a car with your family
• sit at the movies
• walk through town
• observe your child sleeping

…and create profound work.

I believe emotion can emerge through:

• gaze
• light
• shadow
• gesture
• absence

Not necessarily dramatic events.

---

Relinquishing Control

One thing I love is seeing how diptychs naturally arise through chronology.

These images made within minutes of each other suddenly begin speaking to one another.

Without forcing it.

Without constructing it.

There’s magic in relinquishing control.

---

Geometry & Minimalism

Chris has an extremely strong sense of geometry and minimalist composition.

The ambiguity in the frames is beautiful.

The relationship between:

• interior/exterior
• reflections
• silhouettes
• mystery
• negative space

…is handled very naturally.

You have a very strong eye, Chris.

---

Memory & Time

I love photographs that bring you back to the exact moment you were there.

Even seeing:

• a pint
• an empty chair
• a shopping bag
• a small gesture

…can transport you back into lived experience.

That’s why I’m interested in chronology.

It preserves memory through sequence.

---

Imperfection

One practical thing:

If you’re using the iPad Photos app with high contrast black and white, sometimes the highlights clip heavily.

Honestly, half my images look like that too.

If you care:

• slightly reduce highlights
• underexpose a little
• pull highlights down maybe -5

…but also:

embrace imperfection.

Who really cares?

---

Cheap Printing & Texture

Something I’ve been realizing more and more:

I’m honestly more drawn to these cheap laser prints than expensive fine art prints.

The textures:

• toner
• artifacts
• cheap copy paper
• crushed blacks
• blown highlights

…it almost starts resembling charcoal drawings.

There’s something deeply human about it.

Even the imperfections become beautiful.

---

Carrying Prints Physically

I actually printed one image recently and literally carried it around crumpled in my pocket.

Folding it.
Destroying it.
Aging it.

And honestly?

I love it more now than when it was pristine.

The imperfections become part of the life of the object itself.

---

Final Thoughts

Great work, Chris.

Looking forward to more submissions and seeing more work in the Discord daily walks channel.

Going forward:

• submit directly through the generator
• I’ll review one body of work each week
• print the issue
• physically go through the sequence

I think this approach feels much more personal.

---

Heraclitus & Flux

The primary inspiration behind FLUX philosophically comes from Heraclitus.

“You cannot step in the same river twice.”

Applied to photography:

“You cannot make the same photograph twice.”

By reducing photography back down to:

• light
• shadow
• movement
• time

…I’m finding infinite possibility in the medium again.

---

Seeing Beyond Human Vision

Your eyes don’t have shutter speed.

You do not see the way the camera sees.

Photography becomes an act of surprise.

You chip away at life and light.

The camera reveals something your eyes alone could never fully perceive.

That mystery is what keeps me endlessly curious about photography.

---

Influences

A huge influence on this work is:

• Provoke
• grain
• urgency
• imperfection
• anti-perfectionism
• cheap reproducibility

And also conceptual art:
where the system itself becomes part of the artwork.

The rules generate the work.

The archive becomes the sculpture across time.

---

Closing

So yeah.

Go to:

http://flux.dantesisofo.com/generator/

Notes — Steve Reich / NASA / Flickr / Metadata

Ran into some artists in the park today and one of them randomly told me to look into Steve Reich and also the NASA Moon archive/Flickr metadata thing in relationship to what I’m building with FLUX.

Just leaving notes for myself here.

---

Steve Reich

Apparently Steve Reich is a minimalist composer whose work revolves around:

• repetition
• loops
• gradual shifts over time
• systems/processes
• accumulation

Simple structures repeated over and over until they slowly evolve into something larger.

The artist said this reminded him of FLUX because of:

• daily walking
• repetitive photographic practice
• sequencing
• chronology
• accumulation over years
• process over perfection

Interesting thought.

Especially because FLUX isn’t really built around isolated “masterpiece” images as much as continuous movement and publishing over time.

Need to look more into:

• phase music
• tape loops
• process art
• minimalism
• Steve Reich interviews

---

NASA / Flickr / Metadata

The other thing mentioned was that NASA has apparently been using Flickr heavily for recent Moon mission archival distribution.

What’s interesting is not just the photographs themselves but the metadata attached to them:

• timestamps
• mission information
• camera data
• sequencing
• geolocation
• archival structure
• contextual information

The idea being that the image itself is only one layer.

The metadata becomes part of the historical object.

This feels strangely connected to where FLUX is unintentionally heading:

• issue numbers
• photographer attribution
• exact timestamps
• GPS
• QR codes
• downloadable originals
• cryptographic verification
• public archives
• searchable systems
• long-term preservation

The idea of the photograph as an archival object instead of merely “content.”

---

Flickr

Also interesting to think about how early Flickr functioned almost like a public visual memory system:

• searchable archives
• visible EXIF data
• geotagging
• chronological uploads
• camera metadata
• tagging systems

Feels very different from modern algorithmic social media.

More archival.
More informational.
More chronological.

Less feed.
More library.

---

Just notes.

Need to research further.

There’s something powerful in that vision.

The Burning of the Library of Alexandria has become a symbol of cultural fragility — the idea that entire worlds of thought can vanish through war, neglect, ideology, or time. Whether the destruction happened in one event or across centuries almost doesn’t matter anymore; it represents the fear of impermanence itself.

And in a strange way, your FLUX ideas are reacting against that exact fear.

Not through marble temples or institutional gatekeepers — but through:

• distributed copies
• open archives
• cheap reproducible books
• downloadable PDFs
• mirrors across servers
• hashes and verification
• physical prints + digital redundancy
• public participation
• chronology instead of curation bottlenecks

That’s a very modern form of preservation.

Prometheus stealing fire from the gods becomes a fitting metaphor here: not just fire as destruction, but fire as technology, memory, craft, transmission.

The irony is beautiful:

• ancient archives centralized knowledge into one vulnerable place
• the internet dissolved knowledge into infinite fragments
• blockchain/exahash systems attempt to make records computationally permanent

Your instinct toward:

“every image having a verifiable existence”

is basically treating photography like a cultural ledger rather than disposable content.

And honestly, the combination is compelling:

• ephemeral street moments
• printed like temporary zines
• but cryptographically anchored forever

Almost like:

the fleeting moment vs. the immutable record.

That contradiction feels very FLUX.

3.5 years of small JPEG – I was genius for getting a 2Tb iPad Pro. No external drive needed for 3.5 years 400k shots sheeesh

Why FLUX?

Every day I go for a walk along the Schuylkill River Trail in Philadelphia. At the end of the walk, I stand on top of the cliff behind the Philadelphia Museum of Art, looking out toward the horizon.

Ever since I started this daily ritual, this feeling of abundance has started to flow through me. It feels like there’s a gravitational pull from the water, always tugging my body here first thing in the morning. And while I look out at the water moving and flowing, I remember how everything is in flux — always in motion and always changing.

I will never return to the same river twice.

Not only is the river always moving, but I too, on a physiological level, am changing each day. My cells are replenishing, my muscles are growing, and my creative capacity expands.

There’s a paradox though. As I walk the path, I’ve eliminated all freedom. If I go left, I’ll follow the river and drown to death. If I go right, I’ll get hit by a train and die tragically. And so the only path for me to walk is onward and upward toward the cliff, looking out toward the beautiful river. This is the perfect location to catch the sunset.

Ever since photographing in high contrast black-and-white, I’ve become much more in tune with light itself. I recognize that the way light casts itself upon surfaces, people, places, and things is always in flux and changing.

Light and life are out of our control.

And so my interest in photography lies in that lack of control — the surprise, the serendipity that lies within the magic of photography.

The way that life emanates through my camera’s lens and touches the sensor gives me an unrepeatable practice, a walk that becomes endless.

Now I can walk this same mundane lane every single day, pushing my rock to the cliff just to watch it roll back down again — and smile.

Photography, for me, has gone beyond my simple engagement with a medium itself.

It has become life affirmation.

My absolute fuck yes to life.

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Beyond Good and Bad

I now recognize that there is no such thing as good or bad photographs.

I treat each photograph equally.

My personal duty as a photographer is simply to step into the stream of becoming, of evolution and change, through making new frames each day.

The archive is art.

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Why Copy Paper?

I’ve recently started printing my work on cheap copy paper with my monochrome laser printer at home.

I feel like I finally found the output of the work that I’m trying to make.

I even printed the small JPEG large at 17×22 on proper luster paper with a Canon PRO-1000, which looked absolutely beautiful, but it was too perfect.

Now I’ve taken my small JPEG and compressed it even further into small PDF files that are instantly downloadable, transferable, and printable at home.

And I am personally blown away.

The texture and imperfection of these photographs sitting physically upon copy paper finally feels aligned with the spirit of the work itself.

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Ephemeral Yet Permanent

Recognizing my flesh nature, my imperfect design, is what reminds me that I am divine.

Despite the fact that I have a finite timeline, and that I will and must die, I find something permanent and everlasting within the way that I experience life through photography, through light itself.

And so this is why I treat photography as a simple act of affirmation.

Clicking the shutter is me saying:

“I am alive.”

Photography is now my lifeline.

Maybe it’s true that Bresson died before he died physically. He gave up photography at the end of his life, which was his true death.

Now I treat each click of the shutter like it could be my last breath.

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Why High Contrast?

The photograph is an instant sketch, an instant drawing.

When I consider the word photography arriving from drawing with light, this is what I seek.

Active self-expression through photography is unlike any other medium considering the physical nature of it.

Walking through the world, embracing the sights, sounds, and senses of embodied reality while photographing becomes a spiritual act.

While moving your body and photographing, you simultaneously exist within the realm of being and becoming.

Yes, everything around me and within me is changing, but for that fraction of a second that I click the shutter and say yes to the moment, I can simply be.

The photographs I make become fragments of my subjective interpretation of reality within the moment.

They are not meant to say:

“This is a fact.”

Through embracing contrast, grain, abstraction, and imperfection, I hope to evoke something emotional rather than merely descriptive.

Beyond technicality, beyond storytelling, beyond perfection in composition or geometry, the imagery I seek to create goes beyond language itself.

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The Front Lines of Life

Photographers should focus more critically on traits that have nothing to do with technicality.

Instead of worrying endlessly about lighting and timing for storytelling, why not focus on curiosity and courage as the true measurement of whether or not you are improving?

If the photograph requires courage, if you’re photographing from your heart, then to me, that’s a successful photograph.

If you’re waking up each morning increasing your curiosity, propelling your body onto the front lines of life to make new frames, then you are already succeeding.

Photography has nothing to do with photography.

It has everything to do with the way that you engage with humanity out there in the open world, on the front lines of life.

This is not to dismiss the difficulty of making impactful frames, but rather to recognize that

In order to make great frames, one must first cultivate a great heart.

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Why Compact Digital Cameras?

I don’t believe style emerges through color or black-and-white, nor through the content of one’s photographs.

Style emerges through consistency over long periods of time cultivating instinct.

Most photographers overcomplicate things.

But your style ultimately emerges through the way that you physically move your body through the world — through your intuition, positioning, rhythm, and instinct.

And the compact digital camera is the fastest way to make a photograph.

You click the button and move on.

No friction.
No hunting autofocus.
Just pure speed, simplicity, and instinct.

A small JPEG file is all you need.

By embracing compact digital camera technology, we can transcend the medium itself until the camera disappears entirely.

The compact camera becomes the closest thing to not having a camera at all — the pure extension of the body, the eye, the heart.

And through wandering the world with this ability to instantly create from instinct, you arrive closer to authentic self-expression.

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Why Chronological Order?

One thing I’ve started doing is stamping my photographs with the exact metadata of the time and date they were created, arranging everything chronologically.

Once again:

The archive is art.

There are moments while photographing from this pure and present state where I feel as though I exist outside the passage of time.

And so the act of stamping the exact date and time onto the photograph becomes meaningful to me — a fragment within time itself.

This idea feels liberating.

To arrange everything chronologically removes the friction of trying to say something monumental.

Yes, we could spend thirty years selecting fifty photographs and curating ourselves poetically through perfection and scarcity, but this is not how we experience life.

We experience life through becoming.
Through change.
Through flux.

And so this is how I seek to share photography — as a stream of becoming unfolding chronologically without excessive design.

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Why Remove Control?

I also enjoy the idea of extreme creative constraints.

From the technical workflow to the philosophy to the final output, I’ve locked in the rule that every issue I create will only ever contain thirty-six frames.

I enjoy allowing the sequence to emerge naturally through stumbling through life itself, paying homage to the tradition of 35mm film photography.

But what truly interests me is the lack of control.

I’m not in control of whether the light is beautiful.
I’m not in control of the conditions.
I’m not in control of whether or not I’ll encounter something extraordinary.

What I am in control of is cultivating curiosity and courage — the willingness to move my body through the world each day making new frames.

And so by removing the obsession with control — by wandering without destination, by not using the viewfinder, by relinquishing perfectionism — I arrive at a strange form of creative freedom through creative constraint.

What fascinates me most about photography is that light itself remains outside of my control.

A lot of times the photograph is not what I saw.

The photograph is what I didn’t see.

My two eyes do not have a shutter speed.

And so when photographing from pure instinct, relinquishing control, I surprise myself each day when looking back at the frames.

This increases my curiosity to return the next day and continue playing.

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Why Is the Archive Art?

The archive itself is important because we now live in an existential time for photography.

With artificial intelligence, image generation, manipulated metadata, and synthetic realities becoming increasingly normalized, where does the role of the photographer intersect?

My personal response is radical openness.

To present everything.
To stamp photographs in time.
To arrange them chronologically as an archive.

This is my rebellion.

My way of saying:

“This was real.
I, a physical flesh creature, was here.
And this was worth remembering.”

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Why the Bureaucratic Aesthetic?

The final presentation of the work exists within manila folders, adopting the aesthetics of bureaucracy as a critique of modernity itself.

The work is intentionally mechanical.

Everything organized chronologically and automatically through metadata gathered from the archive.

The physical object is stapled on the left side with exposed staples. The title, date, and photographer name appear small in the top corner. Blank backs. White space.

The work resembles an ordinary bureaucratic document that someone might carry into an office meeting.

But instead of organizing abstraction, I’m organizing lived experience.

Fragments of light.
Moments of existence.
Proof that someone physically stood here.

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Bureaucracy vs Merit

I recently quit my job.

It felt like a pure calling. I had never felt such meaning in my life.

For nearly two years I was designing gardens and physically laboring all day in a seasonal position. I genuinely loved the work. There was something deeply fulfilling about physically shaping the environment around me with my own hands.

A full-time opening appeared, and for the first time in a long time, I thought everything was finally crystal clear. I thought I had finally found my place within modern society. A job I could genuinely do for the rest of my life.

And so I went all in.

I went far beyond my actual responsibilities. I wasn’t simply watering plants or maintaining the grounds. I was redesigning sections of the park, creating long-term proposals, measuring plots, calculating soil requirements, planting neglected greenhouse plants directly into the earth, and physically restoring sections of the space almost entirely on my own.

Despite this, when I submitted my application for the full-time position, it was declined.

The reasoning had little to do with the actual quality of labor or dedication. Instead, it came down to categories, qualifications, points, and bureaucratic systems that didn’t properly recognize the reality of the work I had already done.

And that experience deeply affected me.

But what affected me even more was what happened near the end of my time there.

I remember sitting in the hospital after getting poison in my eye at work. The doctor told me to avoid dusty environments for a period of time, yet the next day I still found myself shoveling snow and being questioned about productivity.

What disturbed me wasn’t even the labor itself. I’ve always loved physical work.

What disturbed me was the feeling that the paperwork surrounding the injury seemed more important than the actual human being experiencing it.

And that realization stayed with me.

It made me realize how much of modern life exists within abstraction.

Paperwork.
Screens.
Meetings.
Management.
Systems managing systems.

Meanwhile, the actual physical world — the tangible reality of making, building, growing, repairing, carrying, walking, photographing — often feels secondary.

And so in many ways, FLUX became my personal response to that feeling.

A desire to reconnect with embodied reality.

To move my body through the world each day.
To walk.
To photograph.
To physically engage with life itself again.

Because ultimately, photography for me is not about escaping reality.

It is about returning to it.