Escaping the Algorithm, Missing the Buzz

Nigel Cooke

15 years as a commercial sports photographer based in Cambridge/London, it was a move back to my birthplace of Ireland in 2016 that reignited a love affair with the landscape. After 4 years running workshops I decided against starting things up again post Covid, instead hitting the road in the campervan, first 3 months at a time, and since 2023 full time - 20 countries and counting. 

My relationship with photography has changed a lot over the past few years, growing deeper and more complex than I ever thought possible. I find it challenging to articulate my thoughts on this relationship, so I make images. Constantly. Often no more than moments of time that perhaps one day, as I look back, will help me understand the why. Or perhaps they will forever remain just that, moments.  I'm okay with that either way. 

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I think we have all become tired of it. The algorithms, the endless tweaking of hashtags, and the feeling that our creativity was being filtered through a faceless server farm— the gatekeeper who decides if our work is worthy of being seen. We are tempted to pay to play, if not with currency, at least with a compromise in our art. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. It’s certainly not what was sold to us in the beginning, when likes came easy, giving us the boost to carry on making.

So we went back to our blogs and newsletters. Slower, quieter platforms, where there was no barrier between our work and our audience. No tricks, or gamification of the system. We wrote from the heart, our true voice for the first time in months, perhaps years. We felt a renewed creative energy as we hit send and closed the lid on the laptop.

But then came the silence. Growth slowed. Likes and comments became rare. The small audience we had, while somewhat engaged, felt invisible in the wider world. And a new kind of doubt crept in;

Without the algorithm, was anyone ever really listening?

This is the quiet contradiction of modern creativity. Autonomy, but not obscurity. We hated the algorithm, but also missed its forward momentum, no matter how slow of late. Now, we're caught in a strange middle ground, lost somewhere between the cracks. We asked ourselves a question.

Are we true creatives or simply churners of content and number counters?