Thread by @mediasres

[thread] We know the drain of feeling after working hard on something only to post it on a platform, & just have it languish...or worse, responded to lightly, superficially. This was Instagram all day for me. I'd have a powerful artistic experience, photograph all day, then 1/12

dove into the editor and produced what felt like a swarm of really beautiful images that somewhat reflected my experience with the camera. I'd post them on IG and there would be an immediate depression that would follow. It's like throwing paper boats onto a rushing stream. 2/12

It's all just GONE. I'd try sometimes to slow the stream by writing something word-rich, pulling important ideas from my heart, but it was all gone. 8 hrs. 12 hrs. 24 hrs. Gone. Then I lost my Instagram account and it was literally gone. I lost it either thru some glitch in 3/12

the platform, or thru some malicious actions, who knows, but the first thing I felt - after confusion & frustration - was immediate relief. Just a rush of it. I hated Instagram. I was glad that the feeling that all my posts were being lost became factual. I went looking 4/12

for Instagram alternatives and stumbled onto Behance, an Adobe sharing platform for visual artists. I really didn't think it would satisfy me, but I was pretty shocked. Everything is in "Projects", and projects gave me a space into which an entire series of photos can speak 5/12

to each other, in a relation. On desktop the images are just bold and amazingly presented, and that I could do modest designing with text opened up each project to a very essay'd expression. I just shot the last couple of days, my drive full of big, rich photos and ideas. 6/12

If I still had Instagram I would have just done the same, fairly depressing thing and watched my work float down the stream. Instead, it found a home, and shape as well. This is that project, but that isn't what this is about: behance.net/gallery/129280… 7/12

It's about the experience of handling my files, relating to my intent in taking photographs. Instead of squeezing everything into squares and loading them on a conveyor belt, the editing of photos themselves shaped each other one, because they would sit in an essay. 8/

They were of a piece, just as my experience of photographing them was. And, to be sure, you would not go to @Behance for massive audience, the artistic satisfaction of editing & having your work seen by even a few other artists was huge. & the work is THERE, it isn't flowing 9/12

down a stream hoping to be picked up by an algorithm. It stays there. And its project can be read in the context of my other projects, my other photo essays. It's a pretty powerful emotional transition, from artistic depression to giving your work a home. 10/12

So I'm just putting this out there. If there are visual artists who are very dissatisfied with Instagram, or Facebook, or even Twitter, there is a real place where you might find a different and honestly satisfying digital experience. 11/12

@Behance is not about followers, its about appreciation

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