Ideas for a new “On Photography” site
Blogging is dead… except not really. Look at how many people blog at Medium. Web forums are dead… except that there are plenty of active members at sites like the Large Format Photography Forum, or the APUG (Analog Photography User Groups).
Thoughts after being banned by the LFPF
I am seriously considering creating an online site where meaningful conversations, reviews, and various topics on photography can be discussed.
The site should be structured as a blogging+forum. For blogging, perhaps we can use Medium for that purpose (yes, I understand the danger that Medium may flame out in 5, 10, 20 years, but it is not any more risky than using wordpress, tumblr, etc.). This forum’s emphasis would be on photography, rather than photography gear — not that we would disallow discussions of gear, just that it would not be “the tail that wags the dog”.
The site would explicitly be Not For Profit, in that any stakeholders will not be expecting to make any money out of the endeavor, although we may look for sponsors to help keep the servers running.
The ground rules are simple:
- No ad-hominem attacks, ever.
- No bigotry or harassment regarding other people’s ages, appearance, race, gender, orientation, etc. ever.
Politics? Hmm…. all photography can be viewed as political. Even a photo of “peeling paint” door may be an indictment of the danger of lead paint. Then we have images like this:
This photo, taken by Nick Ut in 1972, arguably changed the course of history; and yet Facebook deleted the photo from the Norwegian daily Aftenposten Facebook’s profile featuring the image, and then doubled down by removing even the post from Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg complaining about such an action.
(Update: Facebook has now said the image will be allowed and presumably the deleted post may be restored?)
Politics and photography are often intertwined, but it does not mean that reasonable discussions cannot happen. Will it be a failed experiment? I guess we will try it and see.
Photography means something, and perhaps we can preserve some of its meaning(s) on this new site. The site is http://on.photography (don’t click on it; it is not even “under construction”, AKA it’s not there except that I have the domain.)
My vision for the site includes being able to review and discuss works from “Old Dead Photographers” as well as new photographers.
…Interested in joining me in getting this vision to unfold? Please comment here with suggestions, or contact me: richard@richardmanphoto.com
“Some People Drive, We Are Driven”
