Photography Is a Beautiful Mess
Come celebrate the chaos with Vantage
I don’t even know what photography is anymore.
Over my six years as the founder and editor of Raw File, Wired’s photography blog, I saw thousands of photo projects. Everything from hard-hitting photojournalism in places like Mexico and Ukraine, to wacky art projects, including a photo series of dog poo bags. After delving into this ocean of imagery, I sometimes lose sight of land. But it’s not just the volume of photos out there that’s disorienting, it’s the ever-changing definition of what a photo is.
Photos are no longer just objects—they’re simply a form of information. They’re manipulated and transmitted as freely now as text, speech, or any other basic form of communication. A photo can be a screenshot of Google Street View or a frame capture of a video game. It can be an image file distorted by corrupted data. And even as these new boundaries are being pushed, people are bringing back elaborate and antiquated photography techniques like daguerreotypes and wet plates.
It’s a golden age. As a species we’ve gone from cave paintings to camera obscuras to smartphones. The manipulation and capturing of light has shown us invisible realities and taken us to nonexistent worlds. It has blown open our perception of time and physics while also giving us new ways to tell stories and connect deeply with what makes us human.
At Vantage we love it all. There’s no right or wrong, and if you can take your hands off the wheel and just enjoy the ride, it’s awesome.
We’re going to show you amazing images, videos, GIFs, and whatever else we find that can pass for photography. We are aesthetic omnivores with a refined palette (or at least we hope). Our one requirement is that the work has to make us feel something.
Why Medium? Here we have the opportunity to have photographers and artists contribute directly to Vantage by creating their own posts and submitting them. Not only that, but Medium is a gorgeous platform for photography—something we’ll be showcasing again and again. If you’re a photographer, your work will look its best here.
This allows us to be inclusive and part of the photography community. Thus Vantage will only be as cool as you—the reader, the viewer, the photographer—make it. So let’s work together to make it great.
If you’d like to contribute, email us at vantage@medium.com.
To get email updates when we publish new stories, follow the Vantage collection on Medium.
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Cover photo by Josh Valcarcel
