The Spinning Head

A few friends and fellow photographers have stepped away from Instagram and other social media platforms for their work. In fact, I too have not posted on any social media platform for a while because of a nagging sense that by constantly feeding a structure of information dissemination that relied on the ‘likes’ of random strangers (a large number of whom seem to be prepubescent or barely adolescent boys and girls), i was being dragged away from a more considered, and measured way of working. There was this realization that at some point feeding the beast become more important than patiently producing the work, and that any and all measure of its success and its relevance becomes reduced to ‘# of followers’ or ‘likes’. In fact, I remember distinctly a couple of major editors criticizing my work in Pakistan for not being ‘accessible’ enough, and for being too difficult. They were concerned that I had no ‘social media’ strategy, and wondered what I was going to do to bring tens of thousands of followers to my site. The fact was that I wasn’t really even interested in that. In fact, there is a distinct intent in my works to be difficult, and demanding. I design these projects to be hard to view, and engage with. They are never meant for a vast audience, and I can’t even see the value of the audience of ‘social media’ that I am being told I need to pursue. Details »