I'm not much in favor of art school speak, but that doesn't mean one cannot talk about art at all, nor that one cannot find meaning in art!
LuLa has always been a bit kitschy for my taste. Contrary to popular opinion, I never thought Michael's photography was particularly special, nor Kevin's. They did, after all, make a business of teaching more or less any moderately dedicated hobbyist how to shoot more or less like that, no? So, solid, appealing, but ultimately fairly straightforward pictures signifying not very much.
There's a lot of this in the world, and a tremendous number of people find great pleasure in it, and more power to them.
Josh seems to be finding a stream of more or less the same sort of thing, albeit more in the "graphically strong, colorful" line, and less in the landscapes lines. That's fine. If he comes around to telling us about Miksang, then the circle will be complete, because Miksang is more or less a simple mindfulness technique which lets you crank out colorful, graphically, strong, minimalist photos more or less like donuts.
The difference is that Josh seems to have no personal connection here. When Michael, and then Kevin, were running things they at any rate had the claim that this was the kind of photography they did and loved. "Here" they would say "is some more of this kind of picture, which I love to make, and which I can talk about at length and even teach you to make." It hardly mattered if the pictures were particularly deep, they were appealing and personal and you could learn to shoot them right here.
Josh doesn't seem to have that same warm personal connection to the work, so it feels like he's just throwing up one more or less competent practitioner after another, at random. There are other web sites that do that, and they are terrible, uninteresting, and have no traction whatsoever. Now, Josh can throw up practically anything on the front page, and because of the built-in authority that has, people will look closely at the pictures. It is the nature of photography that for practically any picture, especially a competently made one, someone is going to like it quite a bit. The trouble is, someone isn't everyone or even most people. Sometimes it's just one person, surrounding by other people who are rolling their eyes.
Josh seem not to muster up many relationships to people doing work that is better than the solid, well-made, appealing pictures. There is work that is better, but it's rare. Finding it requires taste and work. Forging the relationships necessary to showcase it, more work. The exception here is Eaton's work, which although not to my taste, seems to have passed muster with a coupld of gatekeeper types, and it, even to my jaundiced eye, was distinctly different both in the nature of the work and the way she was able to talk about it.
More or that, please, and fewer instagram randos, please.
