Most of the work I make begins with some kind of boundary. A place, a period of time, an area, or a question that keeps returning. Often, it’s about the exploration of the boundary itself, be it geographical, aesthetic, or psychological.
I don’t always know what a photograph will become when I make it. Some appear spontaneously while I am looking for something else. Some begin as part of a project and fail within that context, but hold value on their own. Others are single explorations. They may be research, the beginning of something new, or simply something I wanted to try at least once.
I tend to leave those images in the archive.
Part of that comes from waiting. I assume a photograph may eventually find another image, a place, or a reason to become part of something larger. Sometimes it does. A connection appears later and gives the earlier photograph a role. Other times nothing follows. The image remains where it was, not unfinished, but without a clear place to go.
I find projects easier to present when they are bound by time or place. A trip ends. The wonder of a location is gone. Access closes. The limits are already there. Other work grows from things I return to naturally, which makes it harder to know where one project ends and another begins. I want to explore that separately, but it also explains why I sometimes hesitate to call a photograph a “single” too early.
Being mostly absent from social media has made this more noticeable. Whatever its limitations, social media gives single photographs an ordinary place to exist. They can appear between assignments, projects, and other concrete work without needing much explanation. A photograph can be shown because it is worth showing, even if nothing comes before or after it.
The website works differently. At least how I envision it to be. It requires a bit more structure. Projects need titles, edits, sequences, and some sense of completion. Assignments have their own boundaries. Everything has a place because it belongs to something.
Single photographs do not fit as easily.
There are images I remember making that still feel complete to me, but that I have never shown because I could not decide where they belonged. I kept waiting for them to become part of something larger. In some cases, that waiting was useful. In others, it was probably just habit.
A photograph can fail inside a project without failing as a photograph.
Maybe it interrupted the sequence, repeated something already said, or pushed the work in a direction that isn’t the one I have in mind. Removing it may improve the project while leaving the image itself intact. But once removed, it becomes harder to account for. It returns to the archive carrying a history that is no longer visible.
Other singles begin without that history. They are one-time explorations. Something catches my attention, I photograph it, and there is no need to return. They follow a movement closer to these Notes. A thought appears, holds for a while, I try to put it to words, and it all quickly ends without becoming a larger body of work.
I don’t think every single photograph needs to become public. Most images still benefit from time, and many should remain unseen. Editing matters more than output. But there is a difference between withholding a photograph because it is not strong enough and withholding it because the structure around the work has no place for it.
I have probably confused those two things more often than I realised. And doing a test print of a photography book where so much of my work felt more accurately portrayed as a part of a wider group of singles made me reconsider not only the relationship between single and project, but also the evolution from one to the other.
I plan to create a place for single photographs on the website. I don’t yet know what form it should take. A loose archive could become too broad. A recurring series might try to force a project of its own, when the whole exercise is about being ok with the existence of single photos. Too much explanation could make each photograph feel heavier than it is. Too little could turn the page into a stream without any real attention behind it.
I also don’t know how often it should change, or whether older photographs should remain visible once new ones are added. And how I should treat the eventual photos that “graduate” from singles to projects. The practical questions are still open because the relationship itself is still open.
The photographs often come from the same tendencies as the larger work. The same places, subjects, habits, and unfinished lines of thought. They are not separate from the practice. They are simply not always part of its visible structure.
For now, most of them remain external to the projects while I try to understand where they fit into the larger shape of the work.
Some are waiting for context. Others may not need it.
