2026 SPE Annual Conference: Catalyst for Exchange
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print this pageBad Moon Photos: On collective acts of photographic failure
Ariel C. Wilson and Dustin Shores
Friday, October 20 - 11:00AM to 12:00PM
Corn Center, Room 158
In this presentation, Ariel C. Wilson and contributor, Dustin Shores, will discuss the participatory project, Bad Moon Photos, that began in the summer of 2021 when Wilson solicited bad cell-phone photos of the moon from friends, colleagues, family, lovers, and strangers. Since its beginning, over 800 photographs have been submitted to the live archive, which remains open for contribution.
It is nearly impossible to take a good photograph of the moon with a cell-phone camera, but that doesn't stop us from trying. As photographers, we of all people know this, yet we may be some of the guiltiest in this futile pursuit. What motivates us to keep trying in the face of certain failure?! It seems that we project so much of our wonder and longing upon the moon. As our only natural satellite, we look towards the moon to mark the passage of cycling time, to un-ironically ground us during untethering seasons, perhaps in response to not knowing what else to do, or for a lack of sufficient words. The celestial body that we are most intimate with is often within sight but nearly always out of reach, evading our attempts to compress its 7.35 x 1022 kg mass into a mere megabyte's worth of image to live in our pockets. Through our repeated failures, the question arises, Does photography inherently reduce any vast entity through capture and compression?
Building upon Thomas Ruff's series, JPEGS, Hito Steyerl's notion of the Poor Image, and Penelope Umbirco's project, Everyone's Moons, we further consider the value of a collective, low-resolution archive of jpgs over the fetishized, high-resolution, unique, raw image. Ahead of, and during, the presentation, attendees will be invited to submit their own photos to the archive and share their motivations for photographing the moon, however pixelated and out-of-focus the photos may be.
speakers
Ariel Wilson
Dustin Shores
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