A look back at 2022
The last Darkrooms of 2022. I share my Substack story and where Darkrooms is headed in 2023.
This year I started a Substack. I changed my blog (in Dutch) to a newsletter for several reasons. One was the ease of use that Substack offers. No hassle installing all kinds of plugins, no separate account needed to send emails to your subscribers. And above all: from Dutch to English. Since most of the photographers I work with speak English, it just makes more sense to write in English. This year I started working in a multi-nationality team where the Dutchies are the minority and all communication is in English. So it is a good exercise to improve my writing skills.
This may be a retrospective, but my Substack journey began in July, after hearing the podcast Deep Natter by Jeffery Saddoris (
) and Sean Tucker in which they talked about Substack. It was meant to be, as I was a bit unmotivated to continue with my Dutch blog due to lack of interaction and all the (technical) things I had to take care of to keep things running. The switch to Substack seems logical and I have not regretted it. On the contrary!So far, I've written 24 newsletters, which included four episodes of the interview series ‘The Dark Rooms of...’ and three episodes of ‘Un/Taken’ about the picture you did not take. There are more to come, because I love hearing about other photographers' photographic process. I'm still open to suggestions, so drop them in the comments.
What are the plans for the coming year?
First of all - as I wrote above - I want to continue with both ‘The Dark Rooms of...’ and ‘Un/Taken’. Furthermore, I want to invite interesting guest authors who write about photography topics and I want to start reviewing photography books. I am a huge fan of photo books and collect as many as I can. The year 2022 has been a great year in getting new books. Especially this month with my birthday and Christmas appeared to flood my bookshelves with new photo books.
In addition to all the monographs I added to my collection this year, I also bought a number of other photography-related books, such as Sasha Wolf's PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practise in which she interviews 40 photographers or David DuChemin's The Heart of the Photograph which features 100 questions for making stronger, more expressive photographs.
But there is one book that stands out for me this year and probably for years to come, because I'm sure I'll reread it a few more times: ‘The Meaning in the Making’ by Sean Tucker. I mentioned him above in the podcast that drove me to Substack. Sean is an English photographer and filmmaker. He has a popular YouTube channel where he focuses not on gear but on the "why of photography. Highly recommended. In his book ‘The Meaning in the Making’, he offers a philosophy for the creative life. It is applicable not only to photographers but to all creatives who produce artwork. It is a manageable 320-page paperback packed with wisdom and interesting lessons. If there's one book you really need to buy, it's this one. Thank me later.
By the way, the links I provide above land on Amazon. If you purchase the book, I will receive a small affiliate fee. It costs you nothing extra, but you are supporting the time and effort I put into this newsletter. Thanks.
Something else I'm excited to start in 2023 is Darkrooms Chat. This functionality of having a subscriber-only chat has been introduced by Substack over the past few months. I think it could be a fun way for us to converse and connect. It’s available in the Substack app, both iOS and Android. More on that in the coming months.
That's it for this newsletter. That's it for this year. I want to thank all subscribers and I hope you enjoy this newsletter as much as I enjoyed writing it. Let's make Darkrooms in 2023 even more interesting by inviting your photography friends as well. I guess that's up to you…
Have a great year ahead.
Till next time,
Marcel Borgstijn
Hi Bas, Thank you. It's a pleasure for me as well to read these stories. More to come next year!