In a new post, Alec brings up the “if seeing too much contemporary work is problematic.” Which I want to call the photo blog scene’s strange attractor: “Does it do more harm than good to read all these blogs?”

I think that’s a very valid question to ask, but the answer needs to be given by every person individually. For example, not only do I not mind looking at as much art as possible, I also don’t mind looking through the dozens and dozens of updated blogs in my rss reader every day. But I would never imagine that I am typical in any given way. I know that lots of people get tired and cranky after looking at too much art (and if you’ve ever done a gallery crawl in Chelsea you’ll easily understand the “cranky” bit).

What I want to argue is that the inherent flexibility and openness of the internet needs to extend beyond what you can find on the internet: Just like how “a blog” really is just some sort of format that can be filled in many different way, how anyone digests (if you think “consumes” is the right word, you might want to think again) blogs needs to depend on each person’s personal preferences. If reading lots of blogs drives you nuts, simply don’t do that. If you can’t get enough dig right in.

This all might sound rather trivial. But for me, it’s something that’s very important, because often, people ask me how many blogs or which blogs they should read. You don’t have to read any blogs if you don’t enjoy doing that (just like not every photographer needs to have a blog btw!), and if you want to read blogs go out and discover which ones you’ll enjoy (and which ones not).