Author: Georgia Weston

Some people arrive at protests without a sign, without a prepared chant, and without any plans to march in the front row. As the crowd moves around them, they reposition themselves every few seconds while standing slightly to the side with their eyes fixed on a viewfinder. It’s simple to wonder what precisely they believe they are doing. Keeping records? Taking part? Something more difficult to identify? Even seasoned observers were taken aback by the sheer number of people who showed up at the “No Kings” protests that swept through American cities last spring. Not photojournalists in the press pool…

When you open a long-form photo essay, a certain kind of silence descends upon you; it’s not the artificial tranquility of a meditation app, but something more genuine. You are sitting with a doorway that a photographer in a village you’ve never heard of has been observing for three weeks at six in the morning. Only a few uninterrupted minutes are required of you. That quietness feels almost radical after years of content that practically begged for attention. For a very long time, the consensus was straightforward: shorter is smarter. The single image was viewed as the building block of…

The majority of people will never see this particular photo. It was taken in an unglamorous setting, such as a kitchen table in the middle of a fight, a waiting room, or a roadside. The light was not set up by anyone. No one double-checked the frame. Whoever took the picture most likely didn’t consider their personal brand at the time because it was just a person, a moment, and a camera. Finding that kind of image is getting more difficult, not because cameras have gotten worse, but rather because the platforms we share them on have drastically altered what…

Once you recognize it, there is a specific moment that sticks with you. As you browse through the pictures of a friend, coworker, or even a stranger, something seems a little strange. The face has too much smoothness. The jawline is too sharp. The eyes are a bit too bright. Technically, it is a real person. However, it is also not exactly anyone. An increasing amount of research indicates that the consequences are more severe than most people would like to admit, and the gap between the filtered image and the real human being is growing. According to a study…

The majority of people have seen this picture without realizing it. Photographed on January 20, 2017, from the summit of the Washington Monument, it depicts the National Mall during Donald Trump’s inauguration, with large expanses of space and sparsely populated areas. The same view from Barack Obama’s 2009 ceremony is next to it. The clarity of the contrast is almost unsettling. A press secretary stood in front of the nation and declared that the photograph was incorrect, which was even stranger than the image itself. Some people simply stopped caring about the image, even though it was clear and documented,…

You’ll eventually notice them if you stroll down practically any street in a city with a vibrant neighbourhood culture. This is not because they demand attention, though they frequently do, but rather because they just won’t be ignored. A face the size of a structure. Reaching across a crumbling wall were faded hands. What was once a utility maintenance facade was crossed by a timeline of a community’s sorrow and resiliency. Although murals have been used for centuries to accomplish this task, there seems to be a recent renewed awareness of the strength of a painted wall. This is neatly…

Walking through a field of dead signs has a subtle, unsettling quality. The letters are massive, their glass tubes cracked or missing completely, and their edges are rusted. Some still have names you only vaguely recognize, such as casinos that are now only visible in old photos and the recollections of people who drove down the Strip in the 1970s and believed it would last forever, and hotels that collapsed years ago. It is difficult to avoid feeling as though you are in the middle of a cemetery and a museum when you are standing in the Neon Boneyard in…

When you spend time in a city that has been closely observed for decades, you notice something right away. Most people no longer find the cameras fascinating. They are pieces of furniture. The amount of conscious thought recorded by a CCTV unit mounted above a London Tube entrance is comparable to that of a drainpipe. A generation of artists has been attempting to address and, in certain situations, take advantage of this indifference. It wasn’t Facebook, Edward Snowden, or the enactment of the Patriot Act that sparked the idea to create art from surveillance. It is at least 20 years…

Somewhere, there’s a pediatric hospital. It’s the kind of place where the clinical, grey hallways used to feel like an extension of the diagnosis itself, with no help from the lighting. Someone decided to repaint. Vibrant hues arrived, including yellows, delicate blues, and intentional greens. It was not referred to as a mood intervention. It was presented as a modern aesthetic. However, the staff observed a change in the rooms. The kids appeared slightly less terrified. It’s difficult to quantify and discount that kind of thing. It’s not quite as abstract as it sounds to ask whether a building can…

The air on Hackney Road beneath the railway arches has a subtle linseed oil and clay scent. A pot is being thrown upstairs, and it won’t be finished until next week. A violin maker is working on a seam down the hallway that is so accurate it hardly seems like work. This is Hoxton, but it’s not the Hoxton of tech co-working spaces and cocktail bars; rather, it’s the quieter, older Hoxton that existed before the glass buildings came and, hopefully, will continue to exist after they do. Craftspeople are reviving traditional disciplines in East London, which has long been…