Wednesday, July 10, 2024
You've probably seen the phrase Al slop already, the term most people have settled on for the confusing and oftentimes disturbing pictures of Jesus and flight attendants and veterans that are filling up Facebook right now. But the current universe of slop is much more vast than that. There's Google Slop, YouTube slop. TIkTok slop. Marvel slop, Taylor Swift slop, Netflix slop. One could argue that slop has become the defining "genre" of the 2020s. But even though we've all come around to this idea, l haven't seen anyone actually define it. So today I'm going to try.
Content slop has three important characteristics. The first being that, to the user, the viewer, the customer, it feels worthless. This might be because it was clearly generated in bulk by a machine or because of how much of that particular content is being created.
— Ryan Broderick via @jenniferxdaniel
Tuesday, July 9, 2024
WIFE IS MAKING QUARTERS OF HERSELF
— Flyer by Alan Wagner via @welcome.jpeg
Monday, July 8, 2024
He was photographing the medium of photography as much as he was photographing the subject before the camera.
— Philip Gefter, What Becomes a Legend Most: A Biography of Richard Avedon
Sunday, July 7, 2024
Work grows out of work.
— Stephen Shore, Modern Instances
Saturday, July 6, 2024
It's not like we're throwing mom out, it's just her things.
— C*
Friday, July 5, 2024
We did it Joe.
— Lily whispering to me as I put Wally over my shoulder and he did a big poop
Thursday, July 4, 2024
How you spend your days is how you spend your life.
— @harshalduddalwar
Wednesday, July 3, 2024
Authentic teak from Surrender Deck USS Missouri (BB 63) Tokyo Bay - September 2, 1945
Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz signs the surrender document.
— Lucite block with wood fragment
Tuesday, July 2, 2024
1972 Chicago Stock Exchange Building Lucite Block Souvenirs
— eBay listing
Monday, July 1, 2024
I'd rather be a sparrow than a snail.
— Simon & Garfunkel, "El Condor Pasa (If I Could)"
Sunday, June 30, 2024
Both document and monument.
— Philip Gefter, What Becomes a Legend Most: A Biography of Richard Avedon
Saturday, June 29, 2024
Szarkowski and I once discussed what distinguishes a photograph from an illustration. He said, "an illustration is a picture whose problems were solved before the picture was made."
— Stephen Shore, Modern Instances
Friday, June 28, 2024
And, you know, we knock on wood, wherever we may have wood.
— Donald Trump, CNN Presidential Debate
Thursday, June 27, 2024
This time, when I seated myself across from his desk and he asked me how things were, I told him my father had just passed away, a year after my mother. He said, "You know, some people believe you don't become your own person until both of your parents have died." This meant more to me than all the sincerely offered condolences from friends.
— Stephen Shore, Modern Instances
Wednesday, June 26, 2024
Carry that weight a long time.
— The Beatles, "Carry That Weight"
Tuesday, June 25, 2024
Like Bobby Troup's rolling list of place names, this has some of the incantational quality seen in American poetry from Walt Whitman to Allen Ginsberg.
— Stephen Shore, Modern Instances
Monday, June 24, 2024
No anecdote better epitomizes this paradox than the one recounted about Picasso's portrait of Gertrude Stein. When confronted by someone who claimed that the portrait didn't look anything like Stein, Picasso said with imposing confidence: “It will.”
— Philip Gefter, What Becomes a Legend Most: A Biography of Richard Avedon
Sunday, June 23, 2024
One of the threads running through the history of the medium is the redefinition of meaningful content. Photographers find meaning in something where it hadn't been recognized before, and then, over time, that content itself becomes a convention. And when it becomes a convention, it lacks the immediacy of the original picture.
— Stephen Shore, Modern Instances
Saturday, June 22, 2024
We made a lot of money. We made George a lot of money. We made a lot of people a lot of money. Made lots of people happy. Made lots of people forget the mundane, enjoy themselves for an afternoon or a day. Hopefully, it means something to him.
— Jeffrey Baldwin, Ren Faire
Friday, June 21, 2024
The relationship of content to form—a relationship that underpins all art.
— Stephen Shore, Modern Instances
