The famous passage is from Politics, Book I, around 1253b–1254a.
A common translation is:
“If every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others… if the shuttle wove and the plectrum touched the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves.”
Another version phrases it:
“If tools could perform their tasks by themselves… there would be no need either of apprentices for the masters or of slaves for the lords.”
It’s remarkable because Aristotle is essentially imagining automation thousands of years before industrial machines or AI existed.
He’s describing:
self-operating tools
autonomous production
labor replaced by technology
—which is why people often reference this passage in discussions about robotics, AI agents, and post-labor civilization.
The original Greek context was unfortunately tied to justifying slavery as economically necessary in his society. But ironically, the quote also contains the seed of a world where slavery becomes unnecessary because tools themselves perform labor.
To detach from the material plane is not necessarily to reject the world, but to stop being enslaved by it.
The phone. The algorithm. Status. Possessions. Praise. Fear of loss. The endless craving for more.
A person can own nothing and still be deeply attached. Another can walk through the modern world untouched inwardly.
The mystics, Cynics, monks, Stoics, and ascetics all pointed toward a similar realization: freedom begins when identity is no longer rooted in external things.
Diogenes lived in a barrel and mocked social status. Heraclitus saw reality as flux — everything passing away. Jesus Christ spoke of storing treasures in heaven rather than on earth.
Detachment is not numbness. It is clarity.
You still love. Still create. Still walk through the city. Still photograph the world. But you stop trying to possess it.
The moment becomes enough.
what happens when you no longer need love and validation from others?
When you no longer need love and validation from the world, a strange kind of freedom appears.
You stop performing. You stop shaping yourself around applause, trends, status, or fear of rejection. Silence becomes less threatening. Solitude becomes fertile instead of empty.
You begin acting from inner necessity rather than social reward.
That can feel peaceful, but also disorienting at first, because much of modern life is built around external reinforcement:
likes
attention
romance
achievement
comparison
reputation
Without dependence on those things, your center of gravity moves inward.
But there is an important distinction:
Healthy detachment is different from emotional deadness.
A person who transcends validation can often love more deeply, because love is no longer a transaction. They are not loving in order to be completed, rescued, admired, or affirmed. They love because love overflows naturally.
Many spiritual traditions point toward this:
Diogenes rejected social approval entirely.
Marcus Aurelius constantly reminded himself how fleeting public opinion was.
Jesus Christ withdrew into solitude repeatedly before returning to people with compassion.
Often, after enough solitude and inward work, a person realizes: “I do not need the world to tell me I exist.”
And paradoxically, that is sometimes when connection becomes more genuine. Because you are finally meeting others without desperation, grasping, or performance.
You will and must die, but you’re also here in this moment, so remind yourself that you’re alive.
And when I contemplate this as a photographer, I think about photography not necessarily in terms of making pictures of something, or photographing something with emotional or visual impact that will leave an impression on a viewer.
I treat photography — and this magical black box in my pocket — as a way for me to remain present, remain grateful for the moment, and to simply say yes to life.
“Use the medium as a way for you to remain open and sensitive to the fleeting nature of life.”
Go beyond pure photography.
Use the camera as a tool for awareness.
A tool for gratitude.
A tool for presence.
Because when you remind yourself each and every morning that life is fleeting, life becomes rich with meaning.
You start noticing more.
The light on the sidewalk.
The silence of early mornings.
The beauty hidden inside mundane moments.
And somehow, through that awareness, you find more joy in ordinary life.
Photography becomes less about producing images and more about participating in existence itself.
This morning I wanted to chat about the mystery of the mundane. And yeah, let’s open up a slideshow. Look at this file on my desktop.
Let’s see what’s inside.
Just some random photos that I’ve been making over the past few weeks.
Today I wanted to discuss mystery and why I’m interested in mystery in photography and life generally, and how this has been influencing the way that I’m practicing. :contentReference[oaicite:0]{index=0}
Photographing From Instinct
Over the years, I’ve traveled the world looking for decisive moments, telling stories, and using language to describe life through the way that I compose things, the way that I arrange a frame, and ultimately engage with the medium.
However, these days when I’m photographing, I’m photographing purely from instinct — where I do not think, but I just shoot.
Here in this moment, when the pigeon flew by, I didn’t necessarily raise the camera to my eye. I simply shifted my body and responded from my gut.
As somebody with a brain connected to eyes that allow me to see everything, I find that by photographing from my heart — from this inner sense of spiritedness, from some sort of childlike curiosity — I can unlock the mystery that lies within the mundane.
And I think that is where we can actually start to say something with photography.
“When I let go of the fact that life isn’t necessarily what it seems, I find myself making much more interesting photographs.”
Forgetting What I Know
We’re bombarded with media, headlines, TV advertisements, posters on walls.
We know a lot about imagery.
We know a lot about photography.
We can go to galleries and study the compositions of the masters. We can look at cathedrals and paintings throughout history and understand how visual language describes life.
But lately, I’ve become more interested in letting the chips fall as they may.
Forgetting everything I think I know about photography, art, composition — and even life generally.
So when I’m photographing, I’m photographing from a heightened state of sensitivity to all of my surroundings.
I can see. Hear. Taste. Touch.
I’m in embodied reality when I’m photographing.
And while I can put four corners around something and describe life factually through decisive moments and understandable imagery… I also recognize that I know nothing about life.
I can explain a rainbow scientifically through refraction and light.
But when I let go of all of that and stumble through life recognizing that I really don’t know anything — I make more interesting photographs.
Relinquishing Control
When I’m making pictures now, I’m no longer trying to impose myself on the world.
I’m allowing life to deliver mysterious, magical moments to me through the way light touches the camera sensor and interprets reality.
Through black and white photography, I’m abstracting the world.
And I’m finding that the imperfections — the mistakes — are actually the moments I chase.
Even here, I was looking at the man waving the flag, but I didn’t notice the lightning bolt shape created by the reflection on the pole until afterward.
And it reminded me:
“What you see at the moment you press the shutter isn’t necessarily what you get back in the photograph.”
Maybe Photography Teaches Us How to See
I’ve been thinking a lot about expressiveness in photography.
People talk about photography as self-expression, and while I understand that, I think authentic expression comes from the subconscious mind.
Not from thinking.
If you’re making pictures from a place of control, I don’t think the photographs become authentic reflections of how you actually perceive life.
But when you let your mind go fallow…
When you photograph from your gut…
When you follow your thumos — your spiritedness and courage —
Something opens up.
You become sensitive to the magic and mystery hidden inside ordinary life.
And maybe that’s where expression actually exists.
Not in trying to tell stories.
Not in trying to describe yourself.
But in making pictures that go beyond language.
The Infinite Wonder of Photography
My goal with photography is really about opening my mind, body, and soul to the infinite wonder and mystery that exists in the world.
I’m not necessarily curious about pictures.
I’m interested in picture-making.
The practice itself.
The hypersensitive state of awareness.
The excuse photography gives me to engage with life.
To engage with humanity.
To forget the past and future and simply become hyper-present while making things.
And through that heightened state, I think you actually become closer to reality.
Ironically, while photography abstracts reality, it has made me feel more connected to the real world than ever before.
The Question Mark
When I look back at a photograph and see the relationship between the light, the sky, the architecture, the people — I’m surprised.
And I’m asking:
Why?
What?
How?
Where?
Those questions are what I’m really chasing while making pictures.
I don’t think we’ve seen it all.
I don’t think we’ve photographed it all.
I believe there are infinite possibilities within photography and within life itself.
Returning to Day One
There’s an unrepeatable nature to life.
And I think the magic comes from returning to day one every single day.
Waking up.
Embracing play.
Turning off your brain.
Opening your mind.
Meeting new people.
Walking somewhere new.
Seeking out a new view.
Photography allows me to cultivate that childlike wonder.
And honestly, I think that’s one of the peak human experiences.
That moment where time disappears and the only thing that exists is now.
Imperfectly Stumbling Through Life
We are imperfect creatures.
Emotional.
Irrational.
Flawed.
And I think reminding myself of that imperfect nature is maybe the purest way to explore photography.
Not through storytelling.
Not through contrivance.
But through imperfectly stumbling through the world and interpreting life and light.
That’s how I think about photography these days.
The mystery within the mundane.
Photographing from the gut.
Not overthinking composition.
Allowing tilted angles, mistakes, candid moments, and imperfections to exist naturally in the frame.
Because those imperfections more authentically reflect the way we actually experience life.
“Maybe through photography I can uncover that mystery.”
Public Note-Taking
These are just thoughts I’ve been exploring lately.
I basically treat video like public note-taking.
None of this is scripted.
I’m literally just thinking out loud.
And if this video resonates with you, I’d encourage you to check out the Flux Generator.
The Flux Generator
If you go to the top link in the description, it’ll take you to the Flux Generator.
You can create your own DIY photo book at home by dragging and dropping 36 frames into the layout. It automatically arranges everything chronologically and exports a printable PDF.
You can also submit your work to me.
I’ll review it, and if I connect with the work, I’ll publish it into the public catalog.
There’s also a Dispatches tab with a mini-zine generator where you can drag and drop 6 frames to create a folded mini-zine.
You can also browse my archive — around 15,000 photographs organized chronologically by year, month, and day.
“Grey-eyed Athena” is one of the most famous epithets in ancient Greek literature, especially in The Odyssey and The Iliad.
In Greek, Homer often calls her glaukōpis Athēnē (γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη). The phrase is usually translated as:
Grey-eyed Athena
Bright-eyed Athena
Gleaming-eyed Athena
The word glaukos is complex — it can mean shimmering grey, blue-grey, silver, or owl-like brightness. It evokes:
intelligence
piercing perception
strategic clarity
divine awareness
Athena herself is the goddess of:
wisdom
strategy
crafts
civilization
just warfare
She contrasts with Ares, who represents chaotic bloodlust. Athena represents disciplined intelligence and tactical vision.
The “grey-eyed” image also connects her symbolically to the owl — especially the little owl associated with Athens — an animal linked to night vision and insight
Welcome to FLUX Weekly Witness number 4, where I look at the photographs submitted inside the FLUX community, talk about updates, projects, ideas, and whatever else has been happening around the system lately.
This week has honestly been packed.
The biggest update is that the FLUX website now has a Dispatches tab, and inside that tab is the brand-new mini-zine generator.
The FLUX Dispatches Mini-Zine Generator
The mini-zine generator lets you create small zines with:
6 photographs
A custom title
A unique URL
A QR code on the back
Exportable PDF layouts
And now it supports both:
US Letter
A4 paper
The idea is simple.
You drag in 6 frames, give the work a title, hit export, print it out, fold it, staple it, and suddenly you’ve got a tiny physical object in your hands.
Not luxury.
Not precious.
Just something real.
“I’m trying to build a world around FLUX.”
That’s really what this all is.
Not just photographs.
A system. A rhythm. A philosophy. A visual archive.
The Aesthetic of Bureaucracy
One thing I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is using the aesthetics of bureaucracy inside these projects.
The final FLUX zines are always presented in manila folders.
Staple marks exposed. Blank documents. Cold administrative aesthetics.
But inside those bureaucratic objects are poetic street photographs.
Human moments. Beauty. Chaos. Emotion.
That contrast matters to me.
There’s tension there.
When you walk around a city, people are constantly carrying these folders into offices and buildings. These systems surround us every day. I think there’s something powerful about taking those visual forms and repurposing them for photography.
Constraints Create Creativity
Every FLUX zine uses 36 frames.
That’s intentional.
It’s an homage to 35mm film, but it’s also a creative limitation.
I believe constraints force creativity.
And lately I’ve been debating whether to add a 24-frame option.
Still not sure.
Part of me likes the rigidity of one standard.
36 feels substantial.
But I also understand it can feel intimidating for people who don’t shoot at a high volume.
The important thing is this:
Don’t rush it.
If your zine takes:
one day
one week
one month
two months
that’s fine.
Follow your own rhythm.
The Reading Terminal Rush Project
READING TERMINAL RUSH 001
2026-05-22 · Philadelphia · Dante Sisofo + Sai Min Htet Oo
A sequence of seven MINI FLUX dispatches produced through continuous movement, repetition, and instinctive response.
Each issue functions as an isolated emotional fragment — compressed field documents generated directly from lived experience without over-analysis or revision.
Six photographs. One folded sheet. One immediate response to the world.
No InDesign. No sequencing software. No waiting for perfection.
The objective is not polish.
The objective is momentum.
Generate the object while the emotional residue of the moment still exists.
Every dispatch becomes a timestamped psychological trace — evidence of movement through space, emotion, labor, memory, isolation, encounter, and human presence.
The archive grows through accumulation.
Issue by issue. Walk by walk. Moment by moment.
MOVE. SEE. RESPOND.
GENERATE. PRINT. FOLD. DONE.
Sai also brought me around seven mini-zines he made using the Dispatch generator.
And honestly?
I think he’s using the system perfectly.
Each zine explored a different emotional or visual theme.
Some were built around:
shadows
gestures
textures
emotional pairings
abstraction
They almost felt like little EPs.
Tiny albums.
The relationships between images were intentional in subtle ways.
One of my favorites was called Smile and Teeth.
The textures. The grit. The emotional intensity.
Really powerful stuff.
Another one used shadow play across two frames in a way that made the images almost merge together psychologically.
Those kinds of visual relationships are exactly what make sequencing exciting.
Shout Out to Dimitri
Dimitri Wessendorf printed his first volume of FLUX using Blurb.
Super cool to see.
He even integrated Greek text into the project, which I thought was really beautiful.
I’m just happy seeing people experimenting with sequencing and making books.
That’s the goal.
Lars Grawlow — North Germany Work
One of the strongest submissions this week came from Lars Grawlow from Germany.
The work was deeply personal.
Quiet. Ethereal. Subtle.
These photographs felt like memory fragments.
Black and white abstraction transformed ordinary moments into something emotional and surreal.
And honestly, these kinds of visual diary photographs are becoming some of my favorite images to look at these days.
Not spectacle.
Not perfection.
Just emotionally honest observations.
There was even this chaotic cow photograph that I absolutely loved.
And another frame using reflections and nature that genuinely made me stop and think.
That ambiguity matters.
Mystery matters.
A photograph doesn’t always need to explain itself.
Dawson — Surrealism & Community
Dawson submitted some really interesting work this week.
I honestly think we’ve got a surrealist in the community now.
One portrait in particular was extremely strong.
What I love is that Dawson is photographing people in his local small town and building relationships with them.
That matters.
Photography opens doors when you engage with humanity directly.
Another frame used reflections and layering with a mannequin in a way that created this strange psychological tension.
There was so much happening from foreground to background.
Really intriguing work.
Chris Walters — Mystery & Texture
Chris submitted one of my favorite frames this week.
The lighting was surreal.
The shadows crushed into mystery while the highlights guided your eye perfectly through the frame.
There’s something very cinematic happening in his work lately.
I also loved the self-portrait shadow frame with flowers.
It elevated an ordinary patch of grass into something poetic.
That’s photography.
Finding meaning in places people overlook.
One abstract image reminded me of religious iconography from Rome — almost like Veronica’s veil from Christian history.
That ambiguity triggered association.
And that’s what fascinating photographs do.
They activate the imagination.
Igor — Landscapes & Cohesion
Igor continues building a really cohesive body of work.
That’s difficult to achieve.
His landscapes have this emotional consistency to them that makes the work feel unified.
But he also balances that with energetic street moments.
There’s variety without losing identity.
And honestly, that’s something I think all photographers should think about:
Build your own world.
Photograph what genuinely excites you.
That joy translates into the work.
Dmitry — Raw & Punchy
Dmitry submitted some very aggressive, impactful photographs this week.
They punch you in the face.
There’s a rawness developing in the work that feels different from his previous submissions.
And I think it’s worth following.
Sometimes photography changes direction suddenly.
And when you feel that shift happening, pay attention to it.
Red Fox — Philadelphia & Preservation
Red Fox submitted some beautiful work from Philly.
There was one gesture-based image that immediately reminded me of Anders Petersen’s The Left Shore.
I also challenged Red Fox to think about documenting Philadelphia itself.
Its architecture. Its fleeting nature. Its neighborhoods.
Because these buildings won’t exist forever.
Photography can become preservation.
An archive of a city.
A memory system.
I’d honestly love to see a project documenting the walk from Rittenhouse Square to Washington Square.
Photograph everything:
buildings
people
details
textures
transitions
Treat yourself like an archivist.
The Goal of Weekly Witness
Long-term, I want these Weekly Witness videos to evolve into physical zine reviews.
One zine per week.
Printed. Sequenced. Held in the hand.
That’s the direction.
This week was update-heavy because so many things have been happening inside the FLUX ecosystem.
But eventually I want these videos to slow down and become more intimate.
More focused.
More reflective.
Final Thoughts
The mini-zine generator is live.
The Dispatches tab is live.
The catalog is growing.
People are printing work.
Making books.
Meeting up.
Building projects.
That’s the whole point.
Not perfection.
Participation.
And honestly, that’s what excites me the most right now.
Oh, and one final thing.
Tomorrow at 10 AM we’ll also be doing the weekly call, so if you want feedback on your work, want to talk about sequencing, zines, projects, ideas, or photography in general — pull up.
A sequence of seven MINI FLUX dispatches produced through continuous movement, repetition, and instinctive response.
Each issue functions as an isolated emotional fragment — compressed field documents generated directly from lived experience without over-analysis or revision.
Six photographs. One folded sheet. One immediate response to the world.
No InDesign. No sequencing software. No waiting for perfection.
The objective is not polish.
The objective is momentum.
Generate the object while the emotional residue of the moment still exists.
Every dispatch becomes a timestamped psychological trace — evidence of movement through space, emotion, labor, memory, isolation, encounter, and human presence.
Today I’m thinking about instinct and photography.
This thought has been rattling through my monkey brain over the past few days about instinct. And I just wanted to articulate some thoughts around it because ultimately instinct isn’t necessarily something you can think about or talk about.
I mean, obviously you can, right?
But I think instinct is all about doing. It’s about action. It’s about removing your mind and responding to your gut.
And so in order for me to talk about instinct, I almost feel like I have to demonstrate it. I have to be out there moving. Photographing. Responding. Because that’s kind of the paradox of instinct — the second you over-explain it, you leave it.
Photographing Blind
One thing I’ve been thinking about lately, especially while using a camera like this with no viewfinder, just an LCD screen…
I’ve actually stopped looking at the screen most of the time.
Like 90% of the time now, I’m photographing blindly.
And honestly?
I think that’s closer to how we actually see.
When we’re walking through the street, we’re not seeing perfect compositions. We’re not walking around analyzing Fibonacci spirals or leading lines. We’re not rationally arranging geometry in real time.
Life is too fast for that.
The moments we photograph are fleeting fragments of reality.
The camera interprets them for us.
And our experience of life moment-to-moment is imperfect. It’s unstable. It’s moving. It’s embodied.
So when I photograph, I’m not thinking:
“Does this follow compositional rules?”
“Is this balanced?”
“Is this technically correct?”
I’m responding physically.
The Physicality of Photography
What interests me most about photography is the physicality of it.
You have to be outside in embodied reality. Moving through life. Actually existing in the world.
And I think compact cameras amplify that feeling because they integrate with your body so seamlessly.
A compact camera on a wrist strap is the closest thing to not having a camera.
It becomes part of your body.
When I’m photographing, I’m adjusting the flick of my wrist. Leaning into scenes. Moving left. Moving right. Bobbing and weaving through moments.
And I think compositions emerge from that.
Not from intellectual thought.
But from physical positioning.
The photograph becomes a reflection of:
where your body was,
how you moved,
when you clicked the shutter,
and the irrational instinct that pulled you toward the moment.
Style emerges where thinking dies and instinct begins.
That’s what I believe.
Ping Pong & Flow State
Honestly, the best analogy I can think of is ping pong.
If you’ve ever played ping pong, you know there’s no time to think.
The ball is flying at you and your body just responds automatically.
You flick your wrist. You move. You react.
Your body understands before your mind does.
And I genuinely think instinct in photography works the same way.
Mediocre photography often falls flat because the photographer is trying too hard. Thinking too much. Rationalizing every frame.
But when you let go…
When you forget everything you think you know about photography…
That’s when something interesting can happen.
You enter flow state.
And flow state is where instinct lives.
The Footprint Photograph
I remember photographing this footprint on the ground while people were climbing a greasy pole in South Philadelphia.
There was chaos everywhere.
People screaming. Bodies climbing. Emotion on faces.
And instead of photographing the obvious action, instinct pulled me downward toward this footprint in the dirt.
Rationally, it didn’t make sense.
But instinctively, it felt right.
And I think we should trust that feeling more often.
That irrational pull.
That strange sensitivity we develop while photographing.
Because sometimes your body notices meaning before your conscious mind understands why.
Photography as a Way of Seeing
I don’t think we truly see reality with our naked eyes.
Everything moves too quickly.
Moments vanish instantly.
Photography almost becomes a tool for seeing beyond normal perception.
The camera captures these split-second fragments that we could never fully process in real time.
And through those imperfections — the blur, the timing, the awkward framing, the accidents — we discover something magical.
That’s what keeps me going back out there.
The surprises.
The mystery.
The enchantment of seeing reality transformed through the medium.
Flow State Is the Goal
For me, photography is really about entering flow state.
That’s the peak human experience.
No past. No future. No overthinking.
Just:
you, the street, and the shutter.
When you’re fully in flow, your body begins responding automatically.
You stop forcing.
You stop calculating.
You stop trying to make photographs.
And suddenly the photographs begin making themselves through you.
That primal bodily response… that vitality… that instinct…
That’s what excites me most these days.
Because honestly?
You don’t need your brain to arrange a frame.
You need your body.
Flux Mini Zine Generator
Also — quick side note.
I just dropped the Flux Mini Zine Generator on my website.
You basically drag six photos into the generator, add your title, issue number, photographer name, optional QR code URL, and it automatically creates a printable mini zine.
Shout out to Igor from the community because he described these mini zines as almost being like an EP in music terms.
And honestly?
That’s exactly what they feel like.
A small photographic album.
A tiny visual statement.
I also have another zine generator that creates 36-frame zines arranged like contact sheets on 8.5 x 11 paper — kind of an homage to 35mm film.
I’m accepting submissions to the catalog too, and I invite people into the private community where we’re sharing work and discussing photography.
Still figuring everything out technically though.
I’m basically learning in real time and throwing shit at the wall every day while building these tools.
So bear with me if stuff breaks.
Folding the Zine (Disaster)
I tried folding the mini zine on camera for the first time and completely failed.
Like absolutely catastrophic.
I had no idea what I was doing.
I folded it backwards. Cut it wrong. Started improvising. Somehow invented an entirely new fold by accident.
It was honestly hilarious.
But also weirdly beautiful because that’s kind of the spirit of all this stuff:
making things, messing up, figuring it out physically.
