Notice any similarities?

Recently the app BeReal has gained traction around the world. While I’m sure the founders have worked hard to get it into the Top-10 most downloaded app, I have to admit it’s a hard pill to swallow since much of the concept is borrowed from our anti-social media app minutiae.

We wanted to create an app that celebrated the mundane ordinary moments of life.

My co-creator and I created minutiae in 2015 as a counter-reaction to the highly curated life we often see on social media. We wanted to create an app that celebrated the mundane ordinary moments of life. The type of moments that make up 99% of our time but rarely get documented because they don’t seem worthy of documenting - like watching TV, doing the dishes, being stuck in traffic, etc. 

"if it's free - you are the product"

In order to create a true "Anti Social-Media" experience, we decided to make it anonymous and remove likes, comments, and profiles. We limit the interaction to one minute per day and made participants pay for the experience - "if it's free - you are the product". The app was released in the App Store in 2017 and thanks to features in Wired, Financial Times, Monocle, and Vice, we got a lot of participants who have helped to spread the word about the project. 

"Hey, I think someone stole your concept"

Fast forward to earlier this year when I started to receive emails from our participants with subject lines like "Hey, I think someone stole your concept". Someone compared it to an Instagramified version of minutiae, others accused them of theft and asked if we called our lawyers yet. To be honest, even though it’s frustrating that they borrowed much of the concept and talk about “Authenticity” I still believe that a rising tide lifts all boats. Minutiae is a long-term self-portrait but also a way to document society. 

If you want to support self-funded projects such as ours then next time you hear someone talking about BeReal share our manifesto

If you want to support self-funded projects such as ours then next time you hear someone talking about BeReal share our manifesto (you might be surprised by the similarities) and remind them that minutiae is a marathon, not a sprint.

Financial Times global technology correspondent Tim Bradshaw first wrote about minutiae back in 2017, now 1440 days later he wrote a second column about his experience calling it:

“The result is a document of my existence unlike any I would otherwise photograph, let alone post on Instagram.”

Read his full column here.

Me and my co-creators anti-social media app minutiae is the first app to ever be included in Columbia University’s Rare Books and Manuscripts Library collection, as part of their Oral History Archives.

As Kimberly Springer, curator at Oral History Archives at Columbia, puts it: “minutiae will be a collection heavily used by future researchers and students interested in tech, art, publishing and a host of other topics. And integral to pushing our collections in a more cutting-edge direction.”

This is quite a unique and exciting accomplishment for minutiae!

I never thought I would write a blog post about machine learning, after all, I'm a professional photographer, with zero background in coding or computer science - I didn’t even go to college! However about two years ago, I decided to learn the basics of coding to build an app prototype. After all - how hard can it be? (Pretty hard it turns out)

After a couple of months of YouTube tutorials, I managed to build a scrappy camera app that could take photos (although I hadn’t figured out how to save them). One day I came across a tutorial on how to build the “not-hot dog” app, an app made famous in the TV show Silicon Valley. The basic idea is to create a dataset containing images of hot dogs, then use a machine learning model to “see” if what is captured is a hot dog or not. The usability of the app was of course pretty limited, but I realized the potential machine learning could have in creating more interactive photography projects, especially if hot-dogs were replaced with something else.

“I realized the potential machine learning could have in creating more interactive photography projects, especially if hot-dogs were replaced with something else.”

At the beginning of the 20th century, Picasso and George Braque revolutionized painting by introducing Cubism. Marcel Duchamp, also known as the father of conceptual art, believed that despite the sweeping revolution, painting was still a purely “retinal” affair - something whose appeal was directed solely to the eye. In other words, something that’s visually appealing but lacks deeper meaning. As a response to the “retinal” art, Duchamp went on to create readymades which shocked the world and expanded the notion of what art could be.

If there’s one platform that’s been the champion of the “retinal” in today’s world it would be Instagram. The platform was built around the idea that your iPhone photos could look professional by slapping filters on them (an idea much despised by professional photographers). On Instagram, photography is purely a shiny object (preferably in millennium pink) with very little room for connecting ideas and concepts to the photos. Sure you could add animations or write captions but why would anyone read those when there are a million photos just screaming for your attention a scroll away.

“On Instagram, photography is purely a shiny object (preferably in millennium pink) with very little room for connecting ideas and concepts to the photos.”

What really makes me excited about machine learning and more specifically computer vision is the capability to transform photography from a “retinal” artform into a truly interactive one. With the help of machine learning, photographers can communicate concepts and ideas that go beyond gimmicky filters and effects. Kind of like mixing photography, video, performance, installation, and conceptual art into a single medium. 

For me, this revelation started with the hot-dog app but quickly grew into something more ambitious as I switched the dataset from hot-dogs to my own images. I didn’t include my images to help me identify them or anything instead it the decision was based on years of growing frustration. As we gain more experience and knowledge, performing creative tasks becomes easier and easier. Once we reach a certain level, we tend to go into creative auto-pilot mode. I became curious about what my work would look like if I outsourced the creative decision-making process to a machine learning algorithm.

“I became curious about what my work would look like if I outsourced the creative decision-making process to a machine learning algorithm”

To accomplish this, I built a camera app that on the surface looks very similar to the iPhone’s native camera app. However, in the background is a machine learning model called “feature extraction”. The model analyzes the frames coming from the viewfinder and decides whether or not the photo about to be captured is too similar (unoriginal) to those already taken by the user. If the answer is yes - the app removes the capture button rendering it impossible to take the photo and displays a rather annoying message. The user is then forced to choose a different angle or approach in order to capture the image. The point is not to take “better” photos but to pause the creative auto-pilot and challenge the creative decision-making process.

Sort of like reversing the learning curve making it harder and harder to come up with original solutions to capture what’s around you. The result is a quite frustrating journey sprinkled with bits of occasional satisfaction. The experience can be described as “performance art meets photography”, where the user is prevented from relying on past experiences, creating a feeling of learning something for the first time. The camera app/bot project is called Svetlana in honor of my very stoic third-grade gymnastics teacher who believed that shortcuts are for lazy people. 

“The camera app/bot project is called Svetlana in honor of my very stoic third-grade gymnastics teacher who believed that shortcuts are for lazy people. ”

At this point you might ask yourself, what does this have to do with Duchamp and his crusade against “retinal art”? Well, until recently there haven’t been many tools available for photographers interested in creating work that primarily non-retinal or “to service the mind” as Mr. Duchamp would have put it. But with the capabilities of machine learning, it’s all of a sudden possible to create work that stretches beyond the limits of the medium while still retaining the accessibility and familiarity that photography offers. 

I will be the first to admit that learning code without any previous experience can at times be an uphill battle, especially if you had a C in math! However, the developer community can be very helpful as long as you show a genuine interest in learning the craft. Also, full disclosure I co-created the anti-social media app minutiae a few years ago, and even though the coding was done by professional developers, understanding the complexity of creating an app proved to be a very valuable experience. Even though the learning curve is still quite steep when it comes to code and Machine Learning for those who have patience (and time) the reward can be a newfound sense of creative freedom. 

Svetlana in action

So is there a label for photography projects that put ideas ahead of visual representation? “Non-Retinal”, “New Photography”, “Computational Photography”, “New New Photography” or “Photography 2.0” ?? I’m not sure but whatever label the future gives it, Machine Learning will be just as revolutionary to photography as readymades were to the art world a century ago.

Interested in testing the app?
Request a beta invite here.

What’s this? See the story behind the project here.

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Year: Sept 2010
Location: Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York
Left: John Francis Peters photographed by Martin Adolfsson
Right: Martin Adolfsson photographed by John Francis Peters

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Year: Aug 2020
Location: San Diego, California
Left: John Francis Peters photographed by Martin Adolfsson
Right: Martin Adolfsson photographed by John Francis Peters

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Q&A with John Francis Peters

How would you describe your work?
My work is rooted in the documentary, art, and journalistic traditions but I tend to just call myself a photographer. I don't think I fully fall into any of the general photographic genres. At the core of my work process is an effort to make multi-dimensional photographs that may inform and while also embracing some mystery. It's a conscious effort to balance between these two dynamics.

Is there anything you want to shoot more of?
Right now I'm just looking forward to traveling again to make work. I'm an explorer at heart and normally travel consistently around the US and internationally. So now as I approach almost a year of not having traveled as usual, because of the pandemic, of course, I'm feeling anxious to get out. This time has definitely made me more aware of how important being out in the world is to me.

Looking back 10 years, what has changed and what hasn’t changed?
So much has changed in the past decade. The big thing is that I moved to Southern California and began working as a freelancer. That has totally shifted my life in so many ways and especially in the direction, my work has taken. I've been able to live in a dynamic part of the country and focus on building long-form bodies of work.

The move had also really inspired me to become a healthier person, both physically and creatively. It's a huge difference from where I was when I was living in New York. What has not changed at all is my passion for photography. My work process has evolved and I've learned more about what I'm best at but I'm still just a wanderer, embracing intuition as my guiding force.

What’s the one thing that has surprised you the most of the last decade?
Many things have been unexpected, to be honest. I've been able to work on incredible projects with so many talented editors and writers. That has been something I've worked towards but never fully expected. I've lost loved ones that I was very close to which was unthinkable even a year ago.

I've watched my country grow more extreme but also come together in ways I've dreamt of since I was young. As we say 'life is full of surprises' and sometimes those unexpected experiences may render incredible beauty and other times unthinkable darkness.

Going back to 2010, is there anything in terms of your career you’d have done differently?
Not really too much. I'd maybe have left the desk job I was at a bit earlier but I'm grateful to have had that opportunity too. It taught me a great deal about the editorial industry, its good and bad sides. I've had a very unconventional career path in general because I did not start off as a photographer in school. So my creative life has really been about taking chances to do what I care most about and love.

Has your approach to your work/profession changed - if yes, how?
Well at this point I'm shifting into a zone where I really want to hone in on my true interests and strengths. But, I will forever be a student of the medium and will always try to avoid drifting into conceptual or aesthetic stagnation.

So the journey as an artist will continue to evolve. I hope to make new discoveries as time goes on and continue to fully focus on producing long-form projects. Moving forward with photography, I just always want to stay true to myself and as long as I'm allowing my heart to guide the path ahead all will be ok.

Has your approach to your non-professional life changed - if yes, how?
I mean you hear it all the time, moving to California is for many about embracing a healthier lifestyle and I can definitely vouch for that now. I'm an outdoorsy type and into running, playing basketball, boogie boarding, hiking, and I can do those things here all year long while also engaging with a big city.

This as opposed to my past lifestyle which consisted of commuting on a bus 3-4 hours a day, 5 days a week, into a stressful environment, drinking alcohol, and often eating like shit. I made the decision to live that way for 5 years and it just really wore me down. I love New York, it's where I'm from and my heart will forever be there but I don't think I could ever live my life that way again.

What do you know now, that you didn’t at the time you took the last portrait?
I feel I now have much more control of and a better understanding about my photographic process. I've produced a lot of work since that time and of course, have refined the direction in how I make portraits. At the core of my process is the goal of finding unexpected moments and producing nuanced images and maybe I just have a better sense of how to hopefully achieve that outcome.

Has your relationship with photography changed since 2010, if yes, how?
The experiences I've had working as a freelance photographer for the past 10 years have taught me more than words can express. I've learned about my purpose using this medium to communicate and now know true art-making is completely intertwined with everything else in life from family, to my relationships with friends and communities.

I've grown more intimate with the medium and like any long relationship that works, your journey through life and make discoveries together over time. For me, photography is really that balance, the synergy between the inner and outer worlds. When it works it speaks to the greater unknown, that which is experienced in birth or death, but as artists, we are blessed with an ability to experience every day.

Bio
John Francis Peters is a photographer based in San Diego, California. His diverse body of work ranges from projects that explore emerging culture and environments in transition, to the portraiture of influential personalities. John’s work has been profiled by The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harvard University, and TIME magazine and he has been appointed to produce original works for public venues such as Grand Park in Los Angeles.

https://www.jfpetersphoto.com

Apologies for the low image quality, the event organizer accidentally saved the images as low res jpegs.

I’ve always been interested in human behavior - why we do the things we do, what triggers certain decisions etc. Unfortunately for me, I have the concentration span of a five-year-old so going to college to study behavioral psychology was never my thing.

Instead, I began using my camera and eventually technology to document patterns that I found peculiar, funny, strange, and interesting. I did a talk at Fotografiska NYC about how I use photography and technology to create awareness around our strange human behaviors. And tried to answer questions such as:

Why did model homes built for the new middle class in emerging economies all look the same?

Why do most of us only capture images of extraordinary moments when 99.9% of our lives are made up of boring, mundane ordinary moments?

Why do almost all photos on Instagram feel like variations on the same image?

What makes us capture a moment in a certain way?

What will your images look like if there was an app* that prevented you from repeating your previously captured images?

*Turns out there is one.

What’s this? Read the story behind the project here.

Year: July 2010
Location: Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York
Left: Andreas Gehrke photographed by Martin Adolfsson
Right: Martin Adolfsson photographed by Andreas Gehrke

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Year: Oct 2020
Location: Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York
Left: Andreas Gehrke photographed by Martin Adolfsson
Right: Martin Adolfsson photographed by Andreas Gehrke

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Q&A: Andreas Gehrke

How would you describe your work?
muted not loud 

Is there anything you want to shoot more of? 
Everything 

Looking back 10 years, what has changed and what hasn’t changed?
I think the game is the same but it seems to be way easier to start a career, mainly because of the digital revolution in photography and in media. Also, there are a lot more people in the digital world who deal with photography (or images) who have no idea about copyrights or the value of an image.  

What’s the one thing that has surprised you the most in the last decade?
The photography medium is more important and popular than ever but the single image itself is deteriorating in value (and the more we all use Instagram).

Going back to 2009, is there anything in terms of your career you’d have done differently?
Good question … publishing fewer books and do more art shows instead? I don’t know ...

Has your approach to your work/profession changed - if yes, how?
Maybe when I became a father my approach to my work changed unavoidably too, simply because of time management.

Has your approach to your non-professional life changed - if yes, how?
My life definitively changed when my daughter was born ...

What do you know now, that you didn’t at the time you took the last portrait?
I’m afraid I haven’t learned much since then. Haha! 

Has your relationship to photography changed since 2009, if yes, how?
Surprisingly I’m still fascinated simply by a good photo. Doesn’t matter if it’s my own or from a colleague.

Bio:
I was born in 1975 in East Berlin. In 1988, at age 12, I joined a photography club in my neighborhood. The darkroom became my sanctuary during my high-school years when the Wall fell and my hometown suddenly became a different city. Berlin in the mid-1990s was a wasteland in many ways, including the job market, so I moved to Hamburg and became an assistant to a photographer working in advertising, fashion, and portraiture. Aged 24, I began working primarily for magazines taking portraits, and architecture, and landscape photography. 

Parallel to this commissioned work, I constantly worked on my own personal projects. I photographed places whose stories are characterized by deprivation, disorientation, absence, or indeterminacy: empty spaces, wastelands, and edgelands and regions. I enjoy exhibiting my work, but I have always retained a special affection for the photography book – in my eyes, the perfect medium. In 2013, I founded my own publishing house, Drittel Books, to produce my future monographs independently and to build a platform for my artist friends’ work.

While I have taken maybe over 100 portrait commissions for magazines during my career, my personal work features few humans. This is based upon a sense that the power of the environment in which we live – from the world’s most populous cities to its most desolate landscapes – is to reveal who and what we are.

www.noshe.com
www.andreasgehrke.de

The idea that a portrait uncovers something about the person being photographed never really resonated with me. I always felt it was the other way around, the choice of lens, angle, light, and the interaction with the subject was really a reflection of the person behind the camera not the person in front.

In 2010 I began playing with the idea of creating a dual self-portrait project. Over the next two years, I would invite other photographers to my studio to sit as my subject while afterward, I became their subject. The rules were simple - I would photograph all my subjects (the photographers) the exact same way, using the same lens (24-70 mm), the same aperture (f/8), the same light setup (three lights, one large reflector). I even approached the interaction the same way, (focused, and serious). They could photograph me anyway and at any location they wanted.

In 2019 while I was creating a website to collect all my personal work (you’re looking at it right now). I looked through my archive and re-discovered this project, The Portraitist. Some projects don’t age very well but this one felt different, the portraits had become more interesting over time. Not only because of the way I had photographed or been photographed but also because the portraits marked the beginning of events that at the time of capture were still unknown.

Monika Sziladi's portrait of me was captured at a bar where I had invited a girl on our first date (the girl later became my wife). Some of the invited photographers became close friends others I haven’t seen since the portraits were taken.

But what’s perhaps even more interesting, has the extra decade of experience (both professional and personal) changed how they capture their portrait?

See for yourself

Andreas Gehrke 2010/2020

Interested in beta testing a different type of camera app?

Threshold is an artist-led camera app project with a two-folded mission - to create awareness of the conscious and subconscious decisions that occur the moment before an image is captured while at the same time advancing creative thinking towards new directions worth exploring.

The vehicle for the concept is a camera app stripped of filters and effects but with an underlying Machine Learning model that performs image analysis on the moment which is about to be captured by the user.

If the moment is identical to what has previously been captured by the user, he or she is prevented from repeating the image and “forced” to reimagine a different way of capturing the moment. 

Interested in becoming a beta tester?
Sign up here.

What is a "boring photo?" Join photographer and Studios member Martin Adolfsson for this talk on the merits of the mundane in photography. 

"This talk takes the audience on a somewhat absurd journey from the suburbs of Bangkok, to a digital ritual for thousands of strangers and how I re-discovered the power of photography by putting away my own camera."

Bio:
Martin Adolfsson is a photographer and artist working at the intersection of photography/technology and behavior. By disguising as a potential homebuyer Adolfsson used his camera to document the search for identity among the middle class in eight emerging economies resulting in the book Suburbia Gone Wild with foreword by Joseph Grima. 

He co-created the anti-social media app minutiae which makes it possible for thousands of strangers around the world to participate in a daily ritual of documenting their own ordinary moments. Most recently Adolfsson created Threshold, a camera app that uses Machine Learning to detect visual patterns we might not be aware of.

Adolfsson is also a commercial photographer and director with clients including Monocle, Facebook, US Army, Hyatt, BMW, Conde Nast Traveler. His projects have been featured in Wired, Financial Times, The Atlantic, Hyperallergic to name a few. 
www.insanelittleprojects.com

Lunch will be served.

February 12, 2020 |  12:00PM– 1:30PM

https://boringphotos.splashthat.com

One early morning a while ago I’m woken by a text message from my mother in Sweden “a guy is talking about your anti-social media project minutiae on the radio.” My first thought was “what!?” followed by “I really hope it’s something positive”. I knew it wasn’t my co-creator Daniel - who doesn’t speak a word of Swedish and probably would have told me if he was being interviewed. Since the app is completely anonymous and free from profiles, likes or comments I had no clue who the person might be or why he was talking about the project on Swedish National Radio. 

As it turns out the guy who was doing the talking was not just anybody but the actor Adam Lundgren - who is perhaps more familiar to a Swedish audience but also played a role in the HBO drama Chernobyl. Adam was being interviewed about his new TV-show “Vägra Social Media” (Refuse Social Media) when by a pure coincidence the daily minutiae alert occurred during the interview and the conversation turned to minutiae instead and how the project made him look at his surroundings in new ways. The project has received some good press (and reviews) yet hearing a complete stranger talking about it on National Radio was really special.

Most artists and creatives probably know how hard it is to make something other people care enough about to devote more than a few seconds of their time. This is especially true if your work isn’t about something that immediately engages (enrage) people (politics, religion, etc). I’ve made several projects that died a lonesome death on a hard drive somewhere partly because no one cared out what I had to say ( I don’t blame them). But after listening to the interview I began wondering why did this strange little project end up being more appreciated than others I’ve done in the past? 

There might be a few factors but I think the most important one is that minutiae return a direct value to the audience/participants. Minutiae is perhaps the first project I’ve done that’s truly interactive and where the participants actually get something back by interacting with the work. So, the lesson is, create work that returns a value to the audience and they might end up talking about it on National Radio.

Thank you Adam

Unfortunately, the interview is in Swedish only but perhaps it’s a good reason to practice if you don’t already speak the language. 

Alright, there’s a bit of showboating going on in this post but it’s also about the importance of having your ideas validated by people outside of your circle especially when embarking on a project in a space you're unfamiliar with. In 2018 I realized I needed to learn to code to test some ideas I had. I’d never written a single line of code but thanks to GitHub, YouTube tutorial and approximately 3000 cups of coffee I managed to build what could be described as a passive-aggressive camera app an achievement (I have to admit) I’m quite proud of.

The app uses machine learning to detect patterns in the users’ camera view and simply prevents the user from repeating those patterns as a way to encourage creative thinking of what, how and why we capture the things we do.

In early May the prototype version was ready and a friend recommended me to submit it to the “Video and Beyond” category during the Cortona On the Move Photo Festival in Cortona, Italy. Before submitting the project I had showed it to exactly four people so I wasn’t sure how the photography world would respond to this concept - after all the concept is to challenge people to capture their surroundings in a different way of what they’re used to. But to my great surprise, not only did it generated a really interesting discussion around memory and photography among the reviewers but it also became a runner up to the National Geographic Society Prize which was awarded during the festival.

Director of Storytelling Scholarships at National Geographic Society Rachael Stretcher described the project as following: “The definition of great artwork is one that changes your perception of your surroundings“ (if you need proof see the video below - I’m the one screaming here!)

It’s now been a few months since this ceremony took place and it’s really given me the confidence to continue with these weird little projects and perhaps that’s the most important thing after all.

This post is really written for an audience of one, namely “the google machine”. I intend to tell “the google” that InsaneLittleProjects is not about photography or technology or behavior but instead, a smorgasbord of all three areas mix together in one juicy sandwich (smorgas means sandwich in Swedish). I hope to convince “the google” that I’m not a developer interested in photography but a photographer and artist interested in technology (here’s my photography work I do).

In a not too distant future I plan to share work in progress, upcoming talks as well as those rare moments when I receive some sort of attention, preferably for a well-respected blog or institution (“the google” loves that type of stuff I heard). I also have a very ambitious goal of writing about the creative work process and the unintended consequences of relying too much on algorithms for inspiration and references. Of course there will also be photography, machine learning and behavior (it’s often said on motivational blogs that you need to state your goals so that’s what I’m doing here). Last but not least, I also have a new found love for embracing unpredictability so I might throw that in from time to time.

If you made it this far (which I highly doubt), I want to thank you for your interest in my projects and encourage you to send me an email. I much prefer to have a conversation with real persons about these topics than writing about it but hopefully “the google” caught some of it and maybe this post appeared as a result in your search result?