Artist Blog

Every week an artist whose single image was published by Der Greif is given a platform in which to blog about contemporary photography.

OK, I will be blowing my own trumpet here. Then again, it's exactly because I believe this project can have a real impact on the issues it's addressing that I joined it in early 2014 by setting up my own Everyday Eastern Europe account and inviting photographers from every corner of the region to participate.

Taking its roots from Everyday Africa instagram feed, initiated by photographer Peter DiCampo and journalist Austin Merrill in 2012, when, frustrated by the one-sided representation of the continent in the traditional media, the duo decided to take initiative in their own hands, the everyday gradually grew into a truly global movement.

We have sometimes been criticised for the lack of a stronger agenda, but, in my opinion, the democracy of the project is its key strength. It involves hundreds of professional photographers and photography enthusiasts from various corners of the world, and, while we do some basic checks for quality and relevance, there is really nothing we can (or would want to) do to stop people doing it 'their way'. This is not about owning expensive equipment (any device that takes pictures will do the job) or traveling to far-away lands in search for undocumented stories (we are mostly interested to know what does your everyday look like), the project is open to anyone, who has a story to share.

Moreover, the fact that images have been mainly distributed through various social media channels opened it up to a wholly new audience, most of whom would never have had a chance to see the photographs, were they exhibited in a gallery or published in a traditional media. I see it as an important platform, where people can not only look at pictures, but interact, share and have discussion and where captions and comments are a crucial part of the shared visual archive we create.

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