Ideally I envision a future where people are supporting themselves and each other using the things we already have - perhaps a place where one can fully support oneself with the help of others within smaller, sustainable communities. Being interdependent instead of relying mostly on machines for the things we need.
I think photography is a universal language as far as storytelling goes, and I think that's what it's most successful at.
The way that I rationalize making photographs is because you're countering what's offensively mass-produced with something that you just want more people to see.
If everyone used the Internet to share the things they created themselves, what would that look like? I think it makes objects special again. I guess I'm not really advocating for no objects in the world, but rather the idea of creating within our present means.
I feel like most of the objects coming through the ports are pretty useless. It sort of speaks to this larger point of how much we're actually taking in versus how much we really need.
I wanted to make a site where I wasn't mailing physical things to people, but I was still giving people things, and I would have this relationship with that person, and if that person was interested in the object, they would have to email me and I would send that object digitally to them. So, I wanted the relationship with that person, however brief, and I wanted to spread the digital record of the things I have.
We're at a point in time in our history of humanity where the systems we use for mass production have to be reevaluated, and it first struck me that online communities are a way to have local production with a universal reach.
You can carry a photograph with you on a thumb drive, and you can make it bigger or smaller - it's a very malleable form of mass production.
