RUIN YOUR LIFE
FIXATE ON WHAT HATES YOU
Nobody tells you that the idea will fight you back.
At first, it's just an idea. An image. Something that taps you on the shoulder and says, "Hey, wake the fuck up!" Then it follows you home. It sits at the dinner table. It rides shotgun in your truck. It wakes you up at 3:00 in the morning because the frame is wrong, the light is wrong, and it knows it.
Most people think creating something is an act of control. It isn't. The best photographs take control away from you. They become a parasite, a religion, a debt that demands payment. You start rearranging your life around a thing that doesn't even exist yet. Friends and family think you're distracted. They're right. You are. You're somewhere else, chasing a version of light that only you can see in your mind.
And that's the curse of it. You can see the finished image perfectly in your head. You know exactly how it should feel. But every click of the shutter falls short.Every attempt is another fistfight between what exists in your imagination and what ends up for the world to see.
Most people quit when they realize the image is bigger than they are. They don't have that gnawing feeling in their chest that forces them to create, that physical sensation that feels like you can't breathe unless you're making something.
If you do it for the Gram, we don't want you here.
If you do it for the likes, the fame, the notoriety, fuck off.
This isn't about attention. It's about obsession. It's about chasing something you'll probably never catch, and getting up every day to chase it anyway.
The rest spend their lives trying to capture it.
Welcome to RUIN.
Join us.
We can ruin our lives together.
When Did We Start Asking Permission?
I don't remember exactly when it happened, which is probably why it bothers me so much.
There was no announcement, no meeting, no moment where someone stood up and declared that creativity would now be measured, categorized, optimized, and ranked according to systems designed to maximize attention. Well, no meeting that we were invited to anyway. I'm sure there was some exclusive retreat attended by the shadier elements of the corporate oligarchy and their technocratic counterparts, held in a dark, smoke-filled room where everyone knew the secret handshake and someone in the corner was quietly dealing with the lingering side effects of kuru.
Film Doesn't Expire. Your Expectations Do.
Everybody talks about expired film like it's some kind of horrific event.
A roll hits a date stamped on a box and suddenly people act like it's a rotting bunch of bananas you bought because you wanted to start eating healthier. Eww the brown spots. They look at it with suspicion. They wonder if it's still good. They ask if it can be trusted to take those extremely important pictures of your cat and a door knob that looked cool.