It doesn’t happen very often that I get the feeling I’m missing out on something. I can happily sit on my couch and watch the cheering crowds in the Olympic stadiums without craving to be there in person. I can read about ventures into hipster wonderland, which is Brooklyn, New York, by the way, where every young man supposedly has a beard, a bun, a bamboo bike and an irritatingly incomprehensible book, without necessarily wanting to go there myself.
But.
These last few days something inside me has been gnawing. Something has been nibbling at my peaceful feeling of aloofness, which I was enjoying so much. Here’s what it is: it’s the photo collective. Boy, what a world that is.
Of course – I’ve had the occasional encounter with groups of people working together, where I had to shake I don’t know how many hands at once and had to somehow remember which photographer made which photograph, but somehow it never struck me as something I ought to be genuinely excited about.
Until I actually started to read about them. Then it suddenly dawned on me: photo collectives are the bloody future. They must be. I mean: just reading about them made me so… happy, made me want to join in that very instant.
Let me read to you a couple of sentences I stumbled upon and which rocked my world. I hereby gratefully quote from an article that photography publicist and blogger Pete Brook wrote for Wired two years ago. It consisted of interviews with members of ‘7 budding photo collectives’, that I, according to Pete Brook, simply Had. To. Know.
Here goes.
image: 1962 Cannes Film Festival, via Vintage Everyday
