Why do artists even need to make art?

On the act of creating without sharing.

I was at the Open City Documentary Festival recently, waching a panel discussion with some filmmakers and artists. They were talking about the difference between mediums (media?) and an enthusiastic member of the audience asked for some questions they could ask themselves to determine the format of their next project.

The answer, I think, was surprisingly enlightening.

The artist on the panel - Suneil Sanzgiri - said the first question you should ask yourself is “why does this thing need to exist at all?”

The audience laughed, but he doubled down. He said, in words to this effect:

“I’m serious. Why should it exist? There is so much art. There is so much art in the world. There is so much content on the internet. There is more stuff that can ever be looked at, watched, seen in an entire lifetime. You could do literally anything else with your time. Why should you spend it creating art?”

This stuck with me, possibly because the fact that I haven’t written anything for you in four months has been gnawing at me for a long time. For that, I apologise. It also echoed in my mind as I was taking photographs of the bluebells in Highgate Wood in London. Here’s one of them.

I guess I haven’t written for a while because I simply didn’t have anything to say.

I vented in December about my frustrations and bafflement at the direction of human society, and nothing has changed since. If anything it’s got worse. The only thing that world leaders consistently prove to me is that humanity hasn’t changed in ten thousand years. The bully with the biggest stick takes what he wants, everything else be damned.

The world is noisy, and I don’t know how useful it is for me to add to it. Seriously, have you been on social media recently? It’s like the ramblings of a lunatic moments before they run screaming off a cliff. Watching the news gives me the same vibe.

I don’t want to keep banging this drum because it’s interminable and you already know this, and there are much more intelligent people than me writing very informed analysis about the state of the world right now.

But I’ve also discovered that the internet’s content machine is utterly insatiable. The system relies on an endless churn of stuff which is rewarded by likes and comments - for what? Well, for audience engagement which drives advertisement revenue for tech companies, that’s what. But for me, what does having a few hundred extra followers on Instagram or Substack or YouTube tangibly mean? It seems to mean that I have to keep churning out the stuff to get more followers, ad infinitum.

I found myself just reaching for any old thing to write or make a video about because I felt compelled to by the system, not because I had anything meaningful to say or explore. The last four months have been paved by a litter of half-finished drafts and scribbled ideas, but the longer it took me to find something to post about the less I wanted to post anything.

Besides, everything posted on the internet now gets gobbled up by AI bots and vomited back out again. Not engaging with the content machine has been my own personal rebellion, of sorts.

Here’s another photograph.

Oh yes, the photographs. Why have I taken photographs of bluebells in Highgate Woods? The bluebells are there whether I take photos of them or not. They are lovely, lush carpets of purple (they should be called purplebells) and the dappled sun through the spring-leafed trees at this time of year is just wonderful - and difficult to photograph.

I could have looked at them with my eyes and not been burdened with the frustration of my photos not turning out exactly how I wanted.

Yet, I took photographs. I wanted to practice in difficult conditions. I wanted to document my trip, not for you or the algorithm or for anyone else, but for me. I might print some of them and stick them in a book and look at them the way photos are meant to be looked at - slowly and deliberately in real life, not as a blur as someone scrolls past a pixellated version on their phone.

In fact, there are tonnes of photos I’ve taken in the last four months that I’ve barely even looked at myself, let alone shown to other people.

But again… I like taking photos.

And when I take one that I really like, which is maybe one every one or two hundred, it gives me a lot of joy. And sharing that joy with others should be encouraged, right?

So here’s some blossom outside my flat in March. In’t it nice?

I quite like this one of a cafe I had lunch in.

Back in January, the River Lea froze over. I took some photos and didn’t do anything with them.

I explored the muddy estuaries of Essex in January, too.

A couple of weeks ago I visited my wife’s uncle in Yorkshire. He has a chicken that enjoys sitting on the windowsill. This pleased me greatly.

I suppose I haven’t shared any of this before because a) I couldn’t think of a convincing reason why these photos needed to be shared online, b) I didn’t want to feed the content machine, and c) you’re not my boss and I can do what I want.

But that said, I’m beginning to feel something. I might finally have something to say. Or at least, explore.

I have an idea for some art, and it’s been in my mind for a while now. It is not something I have seen someone else do, and as much as I try and ignore it, it keeps coming back. So I want to make it.

But I’ll need your help.

I love bookshelves. I think somebody’s bookshelf says a lot about them. Bookshelves are private places made public. They are shaped by aspiration, memory, guilt, pride and habit. People’s choices of books and other objects that share that space show us how they construct their identity, intentionally or otherwise. That is fascinating to me.

This year is the National Year of Reading, and to mark it I want to document our bookshelves. I want to create portraits of people without them ever appearing in those portraits.

Here’s one of mine. What do you think it says about me?

I want to build up a collection of these portraits over the rest of the year, and try and put together an exhibition, or a book. Something in person, something tactile, something people can engage with in a genuine way that doesn’t mean feeding the content machine for our dystopian tech overlords.

So my question to you, is would you like to be involved?

I’m looking for willing contributors who won’t mind me showing up with a camera to photograph their bookshelves. Just their bookshelves - not their faces. But their real bookshelves, warts and contradictions and embarassments and all, not their carefully curated Instagram-aesthetic bookshelves.

Because I’ve got this deep itch in me to create some art, and I’d love to create it with you.

So if you want to take part, please message me on Substack or email me at hello@thomaswinward.com. We’ll take it from there.

In the meantime, you can find me taking more photos and making films.

I may or may not do anything with any of it.