I spent a pleasant afternoon gallery sitting for the Monalog Collective Show at the Hicks Arts Center Gallery, Bucks County Community College.  The gallery space was truly beautiful and so was the show.  The quality of the work was first class and I was truly proud to be a part of it.  The Monalog Collective is unique and special. Members only produce fully analog-based black and white images for their personal and exhibition work.

As I looked at the silver gelatin, platinum, carbon transfer, albumen and tintype prints I thought about what I wrote last week regarding the easy way vs. the hard way.  Finally, it struck me. It’s more than that. What we’re really talking about is convenience vs. craft.  Digital is really about convenience and speed. And why not? That’s what we look for in the rest of our daily lives, from fast food, to home delivery, to zoom meetings.

Easy and convenient go hand in hand.  It seems to be what most want in working and personal lives. But let’s face it, we know that easy and convenient doesn’t always work out, or produce the best results, let alone the most satisfying outcomes.

Somewhere there needs to be a place in our lives for something that isn’t easy or convenient. There needs to be a place in our lives for something that is hard and inconvenient.  For me it is my photography, how I go about creating my work and the craft of it.  The ends justify the means and I am truly happy. I have a similar approach to listening to music. Only vinyl played through tube electronics.  Very inconvenient but the results are sublime. My wife does her best to understand me (I suppose my vinyl habit is a bit much), but many others who know me think I am a little obsessed and just a bit out there when it comes to my non-working life.  That’s all right because I know what’s important to me … and I think to many others … that is the satisfaction that comes with doing it the hard way, the longer way, the right way, through proper craft.

Laugh if you will, but I’m convinced I live a charmed life.  I have a great balance between my family life, my work life and my creative life.  If I chose to live my creative life based on convenience it might make things a lot easier, but it just wouldn’t be the same. I wouldn’t be satisfied with the results and my life as a whole would not be so special.

In the end there are very few shortcuts in craft, and nothing really good is easy.

Stay safe,

Michael