Why I Stopped Chasing Great Photos and Started Archiving My City
What’s poppin’, people? It’s Dante.
Today I want to share some thoughts on using photography as documentary and archival material for your town, wherever you may be.
Lately, I’ve become deeply interested in the act of archiving and documenting change—capturing what a place and time looks like right here, right now. What interests me about photography today goes beyond the single image, beyond storytelling, and even beyond the poetry of street photography.
Now, I’m not saying I’m no longer interested in those things.
Of course I understand what makes a strong photograph. I understand the power a single image can have on a viewer. There’s this common idea that a photograph should prompt questions, create ambiguity, or introduce mystery. And I get it. There’s something about a truly powerful image that can resonate deeply and stay with you.
I’ve spent years traveling the world working in color, photographing scenes that document humanity in a very humanist tradition. I was always looking for those singular images—the photographs that could stand on their own.
But after photographing for more than a decade, I understand what it takes to make those images.
The repetition.
The time.
The effort.
You can photograph eight hours a day for an entire year and come home with only a handful of frames that truly matter.
Moving Beyond the Single Image
What I’m orienting myself toward now is different.
I’m interested in:
- Archiving
- Documenting
- Recording change
- Preserving space and time
I’m embracing streams of photographs that show empty streets, storefronts, architecture, signposts, construction sites, and neighborhoods in transition.
I’m interested in what it feels like to live inside Philadelphia right now.
Not through a masterpiece.
Through accumulation.
Eugène Atget and the Power of Documentation
I’ve been thinking a lot about Eugène Atget.
Atget photographed 19th-century Paris and documented the transformation of his city. He wasn’t chasing great single images. He treated photography as archival material.
And yet, when we look back at his work today, there’s something almost ethereal about it.
The limitations of the medium—the large wooden camera, glass plates, fading tones, imperfections—create a surreal quality that emerged naturally through the process.
I’m interested in that visual sensitivity.
But I’m even more interested in Atget’s systematic approach.
He simply walked through Paris and documented space and time.
There’s tremendous power in that.
The Purest Form of Photography
My personal journey has taken me from photographing around the world—conflict zones, villages, cities, slums, borders—to photographing the most mundane scenes in Philadelphia.
And honestly?
I think this is the purest form of photography.
Making a picture of something and stamping it into space and time.
This is what Market Street looked like on June 1st, 2026.
That’s the project.
That’s the description.
That’s the story.
The metadata becomes the narrative.
A timestamp.
A location.
A photograph.
That’s enough.
I’m no longer concerned with whether an image is visually impactful.
I’m not asking:
- Does the background interact with the foreground?
- Is there enough ambiguity?
- Will viewers find meaning in it?
I’m thinking beyond visual impact.
For me, it’s simply not about that anymore.
Extreme Creative Constraints
To move forward with my practice, I’ve given myself extreme creative constraints.
I use:
- A Ricoh GR
- High-contrast JPEGs
- Small files
- One street
- One day
- One walk
For this particular project I photographed a single street for three hours and made 115 frames.
Everything was geotagged using the GR World app and placed on a map.
You can click any image and see exactly where it was made.
The construction sites.
The storefronts.
The high-rises appearing.
The small details that will eventually disappear.
I’m simply documenting the fleeting change of my city.
Photography as Archival Material
These photographs come from a tradition of treating photography as documentary and archival material.
Similar to Atget.
There’s nothing fancy happening.
I still have my visual instincts.
I still have my aesthetic preferences.
I’m still interested in humanity.
But my primary interest now is preserving change.
Preserving what Philadelphia looked like during this moment in time.
Automating the Archive
What excites me most is building systems around this process.
I go out and photograph.
I come home.
I import the images.
I quickly review the work.
On this walk I made roughly 1,000 frames.
I select images rapidly using small thumbnails. I’m not overthinking.
Then everything moves into my FLUX system.
From there, the entire project is generated automatically.
The system:
- Reads all metadata
- Sequences images chronologically
- Generates a zine
- Creates captions
- Builds contact sheets
- Produces maps
- Creates project pages
- Embeds GPS data
- Generates PDFs
Everything is timestamped.
Everything is documented.
Everything becomes archival material.
Building a Digital and Physical Archive
The goal is to create an archive that exists simultaneously in physical and digital form.
The physical version lives in folders, filing cabinets, and printed zines.
The digital version contains:
- Original JPEG files
- Maps
- Metadata
- Project pages
- Downloadable archives
- GPS coordinates
Every project becomes fully accessible.
The physical object acts as a key that unlocks the digital twin.
The Archive Is the Artwork
I’m building systems that make archiving automatic.
Any day I can decide:
Today I’m going to photograph the entirety of Chestnut Street.
I start at one end.
I finish at the other.
Everything is geotagged.
Everything is timestamped.
Everything is preserved.
That becomes the body of work.
Not because the photographs are individually extraordinary.
But because together they preserve a moment in history.
The archive itself becomes the artwork.
Beyond Street Photography
I’m trying to move beyond the way we often think about street photography.
The constant search for a photograph that asks questions.
The pursuit of visual poetry.
The obsession with the single frame.
I’m not against any of that.
I’m simply interested in something else now.
I want to become a vessel for the medium.
If great photographs emerge naturally along the way, that’s wonderful.
But the goal is different.
The goal is to continue documenting.
To preserve change.
To record what this city looked like right here, right now.
Thinking Like an Archivist
More and more, I think of myself less as an artist and less as a photographer.
I think of myself as an archivist.
An archivist of my town.
I still have my visual language.
I still have my aesthetic preferences.
But what I’m really trying to do is preserve space and time.
That act of archiving—that’s the artwork.
Final Thoughts
These videos are essentially public note-taking.
I use them to think through ideas.
I gather the transcripts.
I turn them into notes.
I add them to a binder that now contains thousands of pages documenting my thoughts on photography.
That’s why I make these videos.
That’s why I share these ideas openly.
It allows me to go deeper into my relationship with the medium.
And right now, this is where my thinking has landed:
The archive is the artwork.
Thanks for watching.
I’ll see you in the next one.
Peace.