2026 SPE Annual Conference: Catalyst for Exchange
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print this pageThe Pleasure of Being Wrong
Andrew K. Thompson
Friday, November 07 - 3:30PM to 4:00PM
When a colleague once asked Andrew K. Thompson, "When are you going to start making good pictures?" the question sparked a deeper inquiry into what constitutes "good" photography—and who defines it. Thompson's intentionally cut, punctured, and sewn photographs resist conventional norms of exposure, composition, and perfection. His practice challenges the assumption that technical mastery alone produces meaningful work, instead embracing imperfection as an aesthetic and philosophical stance.
Having maintained a modest commercial practice—photographing artwork for galleries and fellow artists—Thompson is familiar with the discipline of disappearing behind the lens, prioritizing accuracy, polish, and neutrality. Yet, in his personal work, he seeks the opposite: a raw, imperfect visual language that reflects both material process and ecological truth.
Drawing upon the legacies of photographic modernism—from Ansel Adams to Edward Weston—Thompson interrogates the ideal of the "perfect print" and its entanglement with industrial history. He considers the environmental costs of image-making, from the extraction of silver for analog film to the mounting e-waste of digital technology.
Through experiments with biodegradable developers made from household materials, Thompson explores alternative, sustainable photographic processes that mirror the fractured state of the natural world. His practice proposes that if the environment itself bears the scars of exploitation, then photography must too. Rather than striving for flawless images, Thompson embraces "beautiful disasters"—works that acknowledge rupture, decay, and contradiction as essential to honest visual storytelling.
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Andrew K. Thompson
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