No One Cares
1869 images, one track, and someone I've never met
No One Cares
The other day I spent 45 minutes with an AI trying to figure out how to download every post I’d ever liked on Tumblr. It didn’t work. So I did it by hand drag and drop, one image at a time. 1869 images total. It took an hour and a half.
The second time slower than the first.
I was talking with J about photography, about images. I told him, in a rambling way, my idea of using other people’s images. The Tumblr book. The self-portrait through other people’s taste.
J co-runs Brighton and Hove Creatives with E a community of artists of all kinds that meets once a month at POST, a lens-based photography space. The theme that month was NOSTALGIA. I’d brought photos from Like a Bittern.
I wish I'd brought the Tumblr book instead: all 1869 images, printed.
That’s the idea: a zine made from all my Tumblr likes. A portrait of taste. How the image circulates, lands, gets kept. The nostalgia for a time when posting wasn’t a performative act to get likes or visibility, but a way to share, to express yourself, to personalise your own corner of the internet. No format wars. No algorithm.
I didn’t make the zine. Too little time, not enough commitment.
Instead I opened Premiere, put all the images on a timeline in no precise order, and pressed play. Images flashing past, fast enough to lose track, slowed only by the occasional GIF
⚠️ The following video contains rapidly flashing images. If you are sensitive to flashing lights or have epilepsy, please skip ahead.
C was one of the first people to appreciate my work on Tumblr. He made music and asked me, without hesitation, if I could make a video for one of his tracks. I said yes immediately. From that came other collaborations with musicians a series of music videos, all free, independent labels, music that lived only on Bandcamp.
That’s what I want to remember about that version of the internet when a label could find you through a like and ask you to collaborate. I didn’t know that was going to go.
C lives in New York. I went in September. I’d asked if maybe we could meet. It didn’t happen: partly the time, partly my own failure to be proactive.
We still haven’t met.
So when I had to choose what to put under the images - 1869 of them, flashing past in no precise order I used one of his tracks.
A collaboration that never happened in person. But it happened anyway.
This is an open invitation to anyone reading this: don’t hesitate to write to me. I want to collaborate, to play, to make things for the sole reason of making them without turning every hobby into something that needs to be monetised.
If you’re making something and want to experiment: I’m here. And if something comes out of it, it might end up in this newsletter.
Your friend
Federico