The cesspool that we all know as “instagram” has proven to be a wasteland of algorithmic pandering of ads and posts from people you don’t follow. As an artist on this platform, it’s been a bit of a sad, monotonous landscape of things that aren’t of interest. Even with careful curating of who you follow, interact with and so on, chances are very high that you won’t see posts from most of the people you follow. This is all on the side of user, but what about an artist who wants to share?
For a while, I had been posting pretty much any of my photos on instagram. From photos in completed series to photos that are still in a pool of uncertainty. I had upward of almost 700 posts on the platform and had consistently drawn the interactions of the same 20 to 40 people liking those posts each time. This tells me that at least those people consistently see my work. However, with over 1200 followers, that’s such a tiny percentage of people actually interacting with the work — as for impressions and reach, my posts would typically reach around 100 to 200 people — still a very small portion of those who actually follow me, and about 20 to 30 percent of those 100 to 200 people weren’t even following me.
None of this is really news to most people who have been on the platform for years. As we’ve seen Meta change their image sharing app, we’ve seen it turn into a ghost of what it once was. Believe it or not, there was once a time where artists could actually build up a strong base of admirers, find potential publishers, exhibitors, gallerists and more. People would share posts with each other and there was a real community — and most importantly, we would actually see posts from everyone we followed. This is but a memory now. There are people attempting to make apps that bring back what we once knew Instagram to be, such as the early-stages development of the app Foto (Which I am a beta user of). A lot of what I’ll be talking about applies there too, but thankfully Foto is really straight-forward and actively makes sure that who you follow is all you see in your feed — and that you’ll actually see all of their posts.
All of this has built up alongside a change in perspective to sharing work online. As my practice has progressed and I dive deeper into research, making new work, submitting pieces for exhibitions and publications, I’m starting to realize that I need to be more protective about my work. I’m very far from an influential artist and it will be a long time before I even possibly reach that point, alas that isn’t my goal. I want to make my art and share it with people through means of physical interaction with the work — this means books and galleries. Even with thousands upon thousands of photographs on my hard drive, only two series are actually 100% there (in regard to shooting and concept), and only one of those has been exhibited. I also have my ongoing Polaroids work that has been exhibited but also is a perpetual project — always adding more polaroids to the box they live in when they’re not on display.
If you’ve been on my website before, you may have seen a lot more pages for projects, including ongoing work. I chose to take those down to allow myself more breathing room for them and allow for more focus on their research and continual shooting. That other series that’s 100% done with shooting and concept is one that I’ve been working to get published but have had many road blocks that have delayed its progress. That project has had a couple pieces published or exhibited, but it hasn’t been shown in the format I want it to be — a book that one can experience. Once that’s been done, I’ll share the work.
Protecting your work is not just a means to share things as they’re published or exhibited, but it’s also a way to keep your cards close to your chest — make sure you aren’t giving too much away, as not to spoil any ideas or images. I like what Rahim Fortune said in his recent (live) interview with Sasha Wolf on her podcast, and I’ll paraphrase that he said if you share everything you make and publish a book, people are going to be done with it quicker and want whatever is next. This rapid digestion of images has caused us to not spend enough time with art of any medium. Sometimes that works, especially in journalism where you have text and the images to tell the story, it also works in very dramatic work such as Gregory Crewdson, where you can get a lot of information in a few seconds due to how he makes his images — however in cases like Crewdson and others of that style, you still have the option to slow down and digest it.
I’ve been thinking about how there’s an excitement behind when a photographer is making new work and we don’t actually see it. I saw a post earlier today from Bryan Schutmaat where he was sharing some (presumably) smartphone photos of places he was (presumably) taking new photos in, as well as a fun portrait of himself. There wasn’t any context beyond the caption “Prairie color” and scenes that Bryan typically makes his work in. That alone was enough to get me (and many others) excited about the thought of new work from him.
I think that approaching social media as a way to share the “behind the scenes” as well as just passing moments while you’re working (in the field or in the studio) can help churn that excitement from people who follow you. Now someone like Bryan Schutmaat has a few books behind him and many many followers, so it’s easier for someone of his social stature to generate anticipation of new art. However, back to the idea of not spoiling new work, I feel that it’s vital for a smaller artist to adopt this mentality sooner than later. This does not mean you are holding all of your work back, never showing it to anyone beyond your friends you trust to receive feedback from, but rather that you are actively sending new work to calls for art, publishers, and so on.
It’s also something that whenever an artist is making new work that there is such uncertainty behind it. Ideas change at the drop of a hat, discoveries are made and processes change. A body of work you started in color may suddenly make more sense in black and white. If you’re sharing the images online while these changes are happening, it can harm how it is received. However, we’ve seen in photo books that have been published and re-published years later that there can still be changes in the images. One photo published in a book from 1980 then re-published in 2010 may have very different color control than the other, but it’s ultimately the same photograph. This is a very different situation to that of unpublished, unexhibited work shared on social media. If I were to see an artist share one photo I enjoy as a color piece suddenly a few months later it’s black and white, perhaps I like it more in monochrome but there’s the questioning that comes about the foundation of that image’s idea. I feel that once an artist who works in bodies of work rather than single images has been working with a publisher or gallerist, you start to develop a clear direction of how the images should look in that vessel.
All of this rambling to say that there’s a lot of positive that can come out of holding your cards close to your chest and carefully sharing new work on social media. I’ve been trying out a method of “one in, one out” where I share up to 3 new, unpublished, unexhibited photos at a time, whenever I post one new one, i delete the oldest of those 3. Any images I share that have been exhibited or published will remain up. Since starting this about a week ago, I have not seen any change in my analytics, if anything they have moderately improved. It also adds an ephemerality to what I post. Once you see it, you won’t know how long it will be until I take it down to post a new image. I also enjoy sharing photos of my process and studio work. I recently shared a makeshift mini-studio where I had photographed a dead honeybee that was in my office at work. I have no anticipation of sharing the actual photograph any time soon, but it allows people to know that there is a photo I took of that subject. It’s just like Bryan’s simple instagram post — it doesn’t say much more than he was somewhere, presumably with his camera.
It’s about protecting you work and developing anticipation. Share your work delicately, make sure people are aware that you are making new work, and on occasion, posting a new piece that you’re proud of can show that you’re not all talk, once you get those photos you held behind closed doors published, you’ll show that you’re all game.