FOAM Amsterdam's Blog

It’s funny that I am going to be blogging about blogging, but I have some exciting news that I want to share. That will come in a minute.

Columbia is all about the blog. Whether it is for this ambassador position, recounting my experiences over my first year in the graduate photo department, or one of the classes that I am required to blog for each week. The teachers here love to have you blog. Then there is, of course, my own personal blog, which I use to keep track of shows, publications, new work, or events that I am involved with. That is a lot to maintain on a weekly basis, but I think it has a positive effect. One thing that comes with wanting to be an artist is being able to express your ideas and thoughts through writing. A blog is a great way to practice that, mostly because it is an informal space, as opposed to a research paper setting. It is a place to organize your thoughts, kind of like a more formal sketchbook.

Where a research paper may take me several days to write, I can write a 2500-4000 word blog post (which is about the average length for our weekly history posts– about 7-12 pages double spaced) in several hours. Those tend to be mostly thoughts and opinions.

Now, when I am writing larger, more formal papers, I usually begin like I am blogging to get the general ideas down, then go back and insert all the details and rearrange the structure later.

On to my big news. I have been asked to contribute to yet another blog. However, this time it is not for school. I will be a contributor to FOAM Amsterdam’s blog. For those that don’t know, FOAM is a fantastic photography museum in Amsterdam. They are doing a lot of things with new media and trying to create a discussion space online. They also produce an amazing quarterly publication, which I had the honor of being included in two years ago.

They are a well-known and prestigious institute, and I am extremely excited about the opportunity (they have 20,000 regular readers). I will be a monthly contributor starting in May. The subject matter is open, and I will probably write about issues with current photographic practice as well as the occasional post about what I’m up to.

I have been wanting a larger arena to try out some writing, and ideas and I think this will be a good venue for that.