MANHATTAN – This is the seventeenth anniversary of the start of my daily photo project. 17 years without missing a day.
The ideas for this project had their genesis in a class that I took in the 1990s at the International Center for Photography. The course was entitled “Roll a Day” and was taught by Harvey Stein, an accomplished street photographer who became a friend and mentor. The class met weekly; the assignment was to shoot one roll of film every day; we were required to show up in class each week with seven contact sheets of negatives which were critiqued by Harvey and the class. The program was demanding. I produced some of my best images ever in the class and as a result of it. The class ended with a student show at the ICP.
17 years ago, I decided to create my own roll a day program in a digital format. Most days I try to have four or five ideas, each of which may require a half dozen images to explore and to realize the concept. In other words, roughly 20 exposures or a roll of film every day. Some days I have many more exposures, some days many fewer (occasionally as few as one).
I’m not the first person to shoot daily photos. Photo-a-day projects over long periods of years or decades are common: these projects are a species of “endurance art”. Photo-a-day artists typically offer daily selfies. The practice occupies a space between conceptual art, documentary photography and performance art.
Daily photo projects share DNA with conceptual art’s emphasis on systems and predetermined rules. They are less about individual photographs than about the accumulative effect – the significant is made visible through sheer repetition. The commitment itself becomes the artwork, but there is a risk of fetishizing duration for its own sake. Endurance is not necessarily profound. The question becomes: what does daily methodology reveal that couldn’t be shown otherwise?
My practice differs significantly from others in that I don’t limit myself to self-portraiture or single subjects. In fact I don’t do selfies at all. I’m creating an archive of attention, of awe in the face of the large, the beautiful or the unfathomable, rather than a document of personal decay.
The photo-a-day format is perfectly suited to social media’s hunger for regular content. My practice of delayed, sporadic posting protects my project from becoming mere content generation. I photograph for the practice, not for the feed.
My photo a day project ultimately asks: What does it mean to pay sustained attention in an era of distraction? It’s acts of resistance against the accelerated, amnesiac nature, banal nature of contemporary life. For some endurance artists, banality is the point. But not for me. I sometimes achieve banality, but it’s accidental, a product of the compulsion to produce a new image every day.
Day 6,210 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.
Looking back exactly 17 years to the first day of my photo a day project. Looking up on Wall Street. Day 1 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.
