This week we got into something we'd been circling for a while: what happens to the work when the work and the content share the same camera, the same hours, the same brain. We used the image of food coloring dropped into water — once it's in, you can't pull it back out — and followed that wherever it went. Which turned out to be pretty far: the scarcity feeling that keeps you posting, the fantasy that a YouTube channel is a path to an artistic life, whether conflict and economic pressure are actually what fuel the thing rather than what threaten it.

We also spent time with a more slippery question — what is it you're actually after, and have you looked at that honestly enough to know? We talked about photographers who worked monastically and ones who burned through marriages and health, about Vivian Maier nannying in obscurity, about whether patronage would free you or just kill the plant in a different way. And we kept landing on the same uncomfortable place: you can logic together a roadmap, but that's not what gets you anywhere.

We closed on what we're calling is-ness — that quality in certain photographs where something just is, and you feel it, and there's no accounting for it. It's part of what drew us into this conversation in the first place. We didn't solve anything. But we got closer to knowing what we're actually asking. -Ai

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Links To Everything:

Video Version of The Podcast: https://geni.us/StudioSessionsYT

Matt’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/MatthewOBrienYT

Matt’s 2nd Channel: https://geni.us/PhotoVideosYT

Alex’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/AlexCarterYT

Matt’s Instagram: https://geni.us/MatthewIG

Alex’s Instagram: https://geni.us/AlexIG