Photo dumping is an old habit made new. I think back to Facebook albums 60 photos deep of a trip to the mall after school, or the sporadic mobile uploads (muploads) gallery of Blackberry snapshots. A photo dump is defined as a carousel of images uploaded in a single Instagram post. They are often depictions of the everyday, the antithesis of the curated selfie that seemed to dominate our feeds in the before times.
Emilia Petrarca writes for The Cut,
“Dumping,” as opposed to old-fashioned posting, is a way of participating in the Instagram economy without seeming like you’re taking it too seriously; of being simultaneously curated and carefree.
While I’ve never dumped on Instagram, I’ve used this newsletter to share my iPhone photography. I continue the tradition here, officially a LR series called Photo Dump. In these dispatches, I aim to resist the (strong) temptation to curate, refine or contextualize. The irony, of course, is that curation is inherent to the dump — in this way, I’m curating an aloofness that I’ve been searching for in me, an aloofness that I fear doesn’t actually exist.
Veerrryy interesting, Seyse. Some I like; some .... not so much. HA! 💖🤗
Awesome!