Ephemera
Seeing as how inspiration right now is a little scarce for my usual posts (combination of increased workload, studying, annual crisis of purpose, and really crap weather…more on that later), I thought now would be an opportune time to highlight another side ‘project’ that exists at ryecroft.
In college, I would stumble across photographs in books or magazines that I would then photocopy for future reference or to use as a series of ‘flashcards’ when I needed a spark of inspiration. My wife still uses some of these when she’s making ‘mood boards’ for various projects. Now, that I have a monitor and wi-fi permanently attached to my head, its a simple ctrl-c, ctrl-v. Initially via iPhoto, but now its being fully propagated to the interwebs.
There is plenty of commentary about online design curation and presentation – and hundreds of sites floating around right now focused on imagery. The newest are interesting because they concentrate on a steady-stream of eye-candy and the architectural “money shot,” but offer not much else. It’s a new culture of sites easy to create, bookmark, and mimic. Some one described it as though we’ve “collectively walked into the great karaoke lounge of design–all of it somehow comforting but unlikely to result in anything of substance.”
I’m proud to say I’m now a part of that karaoke circuit.
ephemera.ryecroft is purely personal curation and it’s not trying to be anything more. But just maybe, you might find something of interest in what I’ve skimmed from all of this transitory visual matter. The clippings are intended for inspiration, for work…or for avoiding work.
Somewhat related to this idea of personal collection and curation is this point made by Dian Hanson at wallpaper.com regarding one’s personal collection of work (apologies to those who might disapprove of the work – it’s still an interesting point): ‘I worry about what legacy modern photographers [will] leave, having worked their entire careers in digital.’ The physical archives that lurk in boxes, chests and drawers around the world will cease to exist as singular, unique entities.
Will our archives exist as portable, or possibly impermanent – external and flash drives that contain an artist’s work of cast-off shots, multi-layered Photoshop files, clipped jpgs, corrupted files and downloaded mp3s? The idea of restoring or reconstructing work (the LIFE series Artists At Work) becomes a question of retaining antiquated computer hardware and running the obligatory back-ups. How many of us have held on to that old VHS player, sitting beside the new Blu-Ray because of this legacy issue?
A small, but related tangent. Anyways, I hope you enjoy: ephemera.ryecroft
Please note: Ephemera is purely to share what inspires me with as many people as possible. The images hosted on ephemera.ryecroft have been hunted, culled and collected from the world wide web to be presented as visual stimulus. This imagery is not being presented as my own, unless noted under the specific work. Copyright still belongs to the owner / creator of said work and ephemera.ryecroft is receiving no financial benefits from it’s use.
If you see your work on this blog and wish it to be referenced, please email me at memo@ryecroft.net with the post url and I will add your details to the piece.
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