When I started this page I didn’t commit to any particular number of posts. The thinking was (is), if I don’t feel compelled to say something, I’m not going to have a deadline force me to take up digital space. I also just want to be considerate of other’s time.

Unexpectedly, I’ve ended up spending more time with photography than writing this summer. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised.

What’s also happened is that this platform, Substack, has started to resemble the social media environment that I’ve long sought to get away from. I am seeking a more deliberate form of working and thinking, and the Substack app and website seem to line up less with this than I’d originally thought. I’m not sure what this means for the long term. Perhaps I will end up hosting all of this work on my own website eventually. Either way, I’m always trying to find a way to work that rejects the content churn as much as I can.

That said, as I’ve been in my studio printing a lot this summer I wanted to share some older pictures that have been on my mind. I’ve often thought that if I had the skill I might be a painter or a drawer (I have dabbled), but instead life brought me to the camera. More specifically I have often thought about photographs as drawings or sketches. This isn’t novel - photograph means to draw with light!

But when I learn about an artist I love to see their sketches, their journals, their ideas before they are fully realized. To me, the journal alone is an art. Perhaps under-appreciated. Some of my favorite photography books elicit a personal journal. (We Make the Path by Walking by Paul Gaffney, Wintereisse by Luc Delahaye, as it is by Rinko Kawauchi to name a few.) The size, the intimacy, the lack of fuss about it all has a particular charm. Sometimes the full realization of a work even speaks less to me than the journals and sketches leading up to it. At some point an idea loses magic after too much polish, perhaps.

But anyways, with this in mind I started to make pictures that sought to elicit some of the qualities of these journals drawings, and later, more specifically something more like charcoal or pencil drawings. The oldest of these pictures is probably 2016, but I’ve been toying with the idea since before I even made my first artist’s book in 2012. The photographs I’m showing here are about form and place, primarily. They’re from Illinois, North Carolina and Michigan. The three states I’ve lived in the longest. They are texture and light and possibly, hopefully, to some degree, start to articulate a worldview that finds the uncanny in the ordinary. If you’re interested, I’ve put up a few more on my website which I am always working on.

Thanks for reading and looking.

- Peter

The above picture was made in the evening at the beach in North Berwick, Scotland on the first of July. Our family spent some time there earlier this summer, mostly to see other family. Most of the pictures I made were with, and of family.

Earlier that day amongst a pile of old books in the home we stayed at, I stumbled on a retrospective book of the work of Don McCullin - a brilliant (British) photojournalist that I’ve long known about but never deeply studied. He switched to photographing the landscape later in his career, and his landscapes still carry the mood of the conflict that he is most well known for chronicling.

While my son and his cousins struggled to make a sandcastle in the tide pools, I turned around for a few minutes. I must have had Don’s pictures in back of mind as the winds whipped sand into my eyes under the heavy light of the late day Scottish summer.

When the rains come heavy, especially in the middle of the night, my heartbeat tries to keep up with the drops on the roof. It feels like my heart will give out first. The winds sound vicious, but they’re not my concern. 

What I’m afraid of is the flood. 

The flood punctures the idea of security with every drip that pries its way through the seams in the foundation of our home. The flood doesn’t come very often, not even every year, but it comes more than it used to, and it will come more often still. The chances of the flood are 1%, or even 0.1%. They call it a hundred year or a thousand year storm. But what does it mean when you get several of them in three years? Those numbers are relics from the time that the changing climate was moving at a slower pace.

The flood is small by most measures. It is just in the tiny backyard. But when the pavers and hostas and the sedges are totally and completely drowned by the rain, even if only for minutes and not hours, I know it might be coming for our home. 

The storm came in late summer. The radar kept telling me that the rain was going to end. I paced around the house at four o’clock in the morning waiting for the deluge to end. But it seemed too content to write its own rules as it hovered over our town instead of moving east as a storm should do. 

Eventually the water came trickling in, then it began to stream. At the same time, the rain finally relented. I frantically rearranged furniture, laid towels, filled buckets until the pace went back to a trickle. I went out to the flood and tried to push the water down the small hill, anywhere, away from our home. Down the drain. I couldn’t tell if it worked but I had to try. Soaked and up to my calves in standing water only, hours before the sun came up, I gave up. We were fine. So far, we always are. Some scrap pieces of carpet were the only real casualty. At least until the next thousand year rain.

Not far, roads were submerged and turning into rivers. Parking lots, lakes. Creeks above their banks, swales failing, carrying concrete, plastics, temporary and forever chemicals and whatever else lodged loose during the deluge.

Nearby, in the tree covered slopes near the river it looked like a path was carved out by God but it was just the wind. Or maybe not just. It was the wind, though. I don’t know how long those trees had stood strong in the seasons prior to this late summer but so many in that path gave way on that night. Destruction doesn’t look so stark when it is masked by a full green canopy but in winter the brokenness and uprootedness is on full display. More than one hundred mature trees were gone. 

Now the bare trees reach towards the heavens and have more space between them. The cracked and felled trunks intersperse between them. The forest floor is a denser cacophony of root masses, tangles, and holes. 

I couldn’t imagine the broken trunks when the storm came, I was only worried about the flood. Now the forest has partially collapsed, except in some ways it feels total. Every uprooted tree leaves a mass that looks like a displaced heart. It lies bare in the dirt, ventricles cut off. Eventually, or in some cases already, it will be a new home to the animals of the woods and the cycle will start over.

These storms will keep coming. Is the forest going to collapse each time? I guess there would have to be an end point. When so many hit their breaking point what will the rest endure? If the protection is in groups, each and every tree is more exposed, more vulnerable every time. 

But before the storm the canopy was too dense for young oaks, a pillar of the forest. They have a chance now. Very little seems absolute.

After injury there needs to be recovery. If there is enough time, maybe.

Not that long ago, a friend of mine referred to the act of photographing waves derisively - as if it weren’t a serious photographic act. It wasn’t directed at me, it was a generalized statement in the context of what constitutes real photographic work.

I don’t much remember what preceded or followed it, because it stopped me in my tracks. This is a person that I have a lot of respect for - another person who’s given much of their life to the art and craft of photography and tried to use it in ways to affect positive change. The conversation was over beers, and sometimes, over beers, it’s easy to trot out a sort of dogma of industry in a reflexive manner.

Too much time in the industries of media and journalism can give one a sense that certain types of photography, (or writing, or filmmaking etc) are not serious pursuits. Pictures of waves are not news. They have no timely utility. From that perspective, the speaker wasn’t wrong. But I’m only assuming that perspective, and why should it be so limited?

From a general perspective? So wrong!

What is serious is what the photographer takes the time to look at. It doesn’t matter what it is, or what any particular market sector may value it at. If the photographer senses wonder, fun, joy or pleasure, if they come from a place of concern or curiosity, it is serious. The act of truly attending to something phenomenological is one of the more rebellious acts available to us. It is a rejection of everything that ultimately holds no meaning and an act of love to everything that does.

The idea that photographing waves isn’t a serious act hit me personally. I’ve known since my time in journalism school that some of the most important parts of life worthy of daily discussion and reflection have no place in the industry. I’ve lamented this since.

As a poor but enthusiastic surfer, I have admired looking at waves since before I first paddled out on the Atlantic Coast when I was eighteen. For years, I’ve made a point of attending to the waves I see in southeast Michigan. Only occasionally are they the sort I could surf on but that’s not the point.

The point is the act of looking and imagining and photographing. The Lake1 is relaxing, it is tormenting, it is mysterious. It is a balm and a battle, often in the same day.

Doing my best to do these ideas justice might not pierce the veil of a political problem, but also - it might.2 The Lake is significantly threatened (by industry, by invasive species, by climate change generally) just like much of what is good right now.

What is the right way to show what we need to save? Does the act of looking and appreciating have a role in this? I suspect it may.

Anyways, I can’t think of many things that are more serious to photograph. I can think of plenty that are just as serious, but the waves are not less so - and I fear the world where we think they are.

Just a brief note to welcome and thank both the new subscribers and those of you who opted into a paid subscription - gestures I am humbled by.

I’ve never been a member of the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP). I’ve contemplated it at turns but when I started out, membership felt prohibitive. Later on, I wasn’t sure what membership would really do for my career, as I’d already built relationships with editors and was working with people I’d wanted to.

ASMP recently released an open letter directed at software giant Adobe in response to Adobe advertisements about their generative AI imaging technology. If I were a member, I think I’d be disappointed in the letter1 from the organization that means to come to the defense of my livelihood. As I’m not, take this for what it is.

The evident reason for the open letter - fearing for the livelihood of member photographers - is well founded.

About two years ago I talked to a close friend of mine about what he made of the upcoming shift in imaging technology. He’s a creative director at a large brand and he consistently produces and attends advertising photo shoots that revolve around product images. I’ve known him since I was about thirteen. We have never worked together, we are friends who grew up skateboarding. I had no professional stake in his specific answer and he gave it to me straight.

If I recall correctly, I didn’t so much as ask - but I fed him a leading question which just betrayed my suspicions. Something along the lines of “Generative AI is really going to change how you guys make your advertising imagery, right?” His response - and I cannot remember verbatim - was something like “Oh, absolutely. And I’m sorry. We’re looking at the ability to just generate backgrounds and drop our product in there. Sure there will be some digital work, but we could be saving five or even six figures per shoot. There’s no way we’re ignoring that.” It’s not the response I wanted, but I expected it.

Now Adobe has upset photographers who use their software because they’re selling their AI technology named Firefly with taglines like “Skip the photoshoot.”2 In other words, skip the cost of commissioning original photography. I think many brands, designers and advertising agencies will be happy to oblige.

(I have to mention that at the moment, if I ran a brand that cared about good imagery, quality standards would save me from skipping the photoshoot. Firefly just isn’t good enough yet. It is better than it was a year ago, and for many purposes it will be there very soon. If you currently use Firefly to generate whole images that are supposed to take the place of real photographs for your ads you are probably running ads that look like you are trying to save money. That’s not a message that I’d want to send.)

I hope you’ll read ASMP’s letter yourself, but it’s a response that feels deflating to me. They frame the ads from Adobe as an attack on photographers, as if a large tech company would be motivated by saving the jobs of people who they don’t rely on, or no longer need to rely on. My guess is that they aren’t attacking working photographers at all, they are barely giving them a thought.

The letter goes on to address what constitutes great photography and feels like a defense of the dignity of work of the advertising or editorial photographer. This is all well and good, but I can’t see Adobe, or the market, caring. Historically, technological disruption, especially cost saving ones, have hit other sectors, there has been little regard for such things.

And here’s where I think they missed an opportunity. ASMP, an organization that represents some of the best documentary photographers past and present has an obvious reference for what AI generated imagery cannot do. AI absolutely will replace a lot of product and advertising work. This has been slowly going on for years. Extensive retouching, CGI, clone tools, healing brushes are normal tools of the trade - they are used to make products shinier and happier. These tools have almost nothing to do with documentary photography. There’s a good reason that photojournalists tend not to be Photoshop wizards.

Whatever one’s thoughts on the technology are, my current position is that it will indeed yield radical change for many industries that have historically used a lot of photography. This will impact a lot of working photographers. It will hurt some more than others, depending on the sort of work one does. It does not, as the ASMP letter claims, offer a “specter of wholesale replacement of their art and craft by AI platforms” - and I think the reasons it does not pose this threat should be self-evident to ASMP leadership. Partial replacement, sure. Significant, even.

Instead of trying to defend the dignity of the work of photographers (which is a notion I agree with), ASMP and any interested parties need to defend what photography can do that AI cannot do. This is documentary work. It seems to me that it will continue to exist and to serve a unique role as a visual medium.3 Instead, they offer a dated scold “Do Better” to a publicly traded company that probably sees very little direct financial incentive to save the job of someone who photographs products for a living, especially when compared to the growth potential of AI.

I won’t venture to predict how the market will continue to value documentary photography, but until we have a robot that can curiously traverse the world and really see and perceive like a sentient human can, the documentary photograph will be unique. That much I know. We should not conflate AI generated imagery, no matter how much it might look like a photograph, with a real documentary photograph.

We can look at this another way. Adobe’s chief strategy officer and executive vice president of design and emerging products says that generative AI is “the new digital camera.”4 I understand the spirit of his comment. But it’s off. If anything, AI is the new collage artist, the new visual remixer. But the new digital camera? A camera makes a visual record. Nothing about AI is a recording.

So I don’t disagree with the sentiment of ASMP’s letter, but I question it as a strategy. I’m not sure who it is supposed to connect with - other than to be a tiny pat on the shoulder to it’s members. I’d hate to be a member cheering on the letter for the sentiment alone, all while I still see my jobs go to the software.

Perhaps I can’t escape the conclusion because of where I am. I am writing this from my adopted home of Ann Arbor, Michigan - where Photoshop inventor Thomas Knoll hails from, and where he did his work to bring this (cost saving, disruptive, revolutionary) software to life. Down the road one way is Detroit, a city that has suffered some of the worst of fates from offshoring to cheaper labor - and only recently showing positive signs with an enthusiastic attitude of adapting to the future. Up the road the other way in smaller Michigan towns like Greenville, the main factory closed because Mexico could pay workers $1.50 an hour to make what the parent company considered to be the same thing. Electrolux and auto manufacturers didn’t save jobs because people pleaded for sympathy or talked about how hard they worked.

What ASMP wants to do is noble. But photographers should look around. No one is going to save the industry from what’s coming. It will keep changing. If I made product still life pictures - for example, I think I would have two options. I could sit there and watch it happen while I hope for the same work I’ve been used to getting even though I’m quickly becoming the slower, more expensive option, or I could be learning how I could take my eye for form, color and composition and combine it with AI, and embrace my likely new role as a computer artist.

There is a future for some photography, but AI has been and will continue to enable brands to skip the photo shoot, whether we like it or not.

I’d love to know what you think of ASMP’s response, especially if you are in the media industry. Am I being too unsympathetic? Am I missing something big? Do you think their open letter is effective? I intend to present these arguments with humility, but I implore people in my industry to see what’s coming, what is here, really, and to grapple with it.

Hi all,

It’s Peter Hoffman - welcome to my new outlet Picture, World.

Some of you are here from my previous outlet that was called Seeing Is Affection. For various reasons, I decided to drop that site and that name. I’ve got somewhat mixed feelings moving to Substack, but after spending a little too much time researching the various options instead of making the work I care about, I landed here.

In the recently concluded 2023/2024 academic year I was a Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellow at the University of Michigan. This afforded me some much needed time and space to gather my thoughts about the part of my life that has to do with photography, writing, and really what I would call my creative practice - for the true lack of a better term. I’ve had to think seriously about how to maintain my practice while I live a very different life than when I started.

I spent the year thinking a lot about what constitutes effective communication about environmental issues and talking to people who could help me understand that better. I read novels, poetry and theory. Can you guess what felt more powerful?

I didn’t look at much photography.

When I did creative work, I focused on short photo essays about local landscapes, but I also became interested in writing about photography as used by the media and practiced by other artists. Since I’ve been involved with photography more or less since I was 16 and working in the industry in some way since I was 18 (a touch more than half a lifetime ago!) I’ve formed a few thoughts on the medium and related matters. So, in addition to sharing my photography, these observations are going to be my guides.

Another big reason for this shift in practice is that since 2020 I’ve spent a lot of time caring for my fantastic 3 year old son. He’s had some significant health issues, mostly last winter. If having a child alone isn’t enough to shake up how I practiced, the health issues he’s had really did the trick. He’s recovered well and has a good outlook, but it shook me up in a way that is permanent, in many ways for the better, I hope. Trying to be a good husband, and caring for him are still bigger parts of my life than my professional work, but gratefully life has since become a little bit more balanced lately. And writing, it turns out, is slightly (only slightly!) more compatible with the life of a parent than being a photographer who needs to be in the field.

I also like to work slowly with my photography. It’s not a pace that fits well with media or social media. Years of work can pop up online, even when published by a great partner, and feel like they’re gone in an instant. This is not the arena that is at the top of consideration. So, while I am working on years long photography projects that I hope to turn into books, I can talk about other things here (or sometimes share some process.)

With this context, if I had to break it down, I would say I intend for Picture, World to be a site of essays both of and about photography.

If none of this seems all that clear at the moment, hopefully it will start to be soon enough. 

As I begin, there is no planned regular schedule for publishing. I will try to see what works for the sorts of things that I’ve been writing, and the pace that my life is going outside of my practice - which is a little bit unpredictable. I hope you’ll stick around as I’m excited to start sharing some work and ideas again.

- Peter