Skip to content
no. 80
September 2025

No, Maybe

Thomas Prior, Daniel Arnold, Farah Al Qasimi, Annie Collinge & Rottingdean Bazaar, Bobby Doherty, Molly Matalon, John Wilson, and Rosie Marks
A photograph of a person painting the words “EAT SHIT” onto a piece of paper taped to cardboard that’s leaning on a desk, with other hand-lettered paintings hanging on the wall behind it.

  Jason Fulford: I think of a grudge as a stubborn obstacle, a thorn, an ugly word. I’ve talked to photographers about this before, in a book I edited called Photo No-Nos: Meditations on What Not to Photograph. Consciously or not, most of us have topics that are off-limits—subjects we stay away from for different reasons, whether moral, aesthetic, or personal.

  But it’s better not to have rules, especially in the creative process. Makes you less open. I know this, but still I can write up a short list of my hang-ups without too much thought:

One-liners
My family and friends
Coney Island
Self-portrait, crying
Signage
Out the airplane window
Wigwam Motel
Eyes in the rearview mirror
My lunch
The crumbling Old World
People from behind
The Alps

There are probably many more. My editor suggested that if I confronted my obstacles it might be possible to move past them. (“Take a begrudging photograph,” he wrote, “of something you’re averse to capturing.”) That sounds healthy. He invited eight other photographers to try as well.

 

A photograph of a person painting the words “EAT SHIT” onto a piece of paper taped to cardboard that’s leaning on a desk, with other hand-lettered paintings hanging on the wall behind it.

  To start it off, here’s a three for one. It’s a little blurry because I took it fast (I knew I was being bad). It’s my wife . . . painting signage . . . from behind.

 

 

A photograph of a tombstone that reads “COFFIN.”

  Thomas Prior: I hate that I always photograph low-hanging fruit. I’ll see one of these jokes, photograph it, and then take the exact same photo again two years later.

 

 

A photograph of a bald man holding a flip cellphone over his eyes, surrounded by a crowd of other people wearing masks. In the background are buildings with large columns.

  Daniel Arnold: Protests and parades. So moved by the energy, so bored by the pictures.

 

 

A photograph of a sunset in the distance, obscured by a blurry pink flowering bush on the right hand side and a used green grocery bag on the left.

  Farah Al Qasimi: I’m enamored by sunsets, but they’re too beautiful to make interesting pictures. I think most photographers share this sentiment—beauty needs to be offset.

 

 

A photograph of various cardboard cutouts of people in formal wear from the thighs-down stand in a field of short grass.

  Annie Collinge & Rottingdean Bazaar: We find photographing groups of people a challenge. The more people you add, the more complex the puzzle is.

 

 

A photograph of a gardening glove smushed into the ground, covered in dirt and dead leaves.

  Bobby Doherty: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but I need four hundred photos of single gloves that have been run over before I’ll like one of them.

 

 

A photograph of a child’s feet, wearing cherry-red leather shoes with white socks and blue jeans, with one foot resting on another person’s thigh. In between them are a child’s hands holding a yellow stuffed animal.

  Molly Matalon: I want control, to make sure things look how I saw them. But moving too fast might produce the truly candid picture.

 

 

A photograph inside a cavern of a camera fixed on a pole with a blue cord attached to it. The cavern has stalactites and stalagmites throughout.

  John Wilson: Caves. I don’t like being on guided tours, and I started to feel very claustrophobic after I saw The Descent.

 

 

A photograph of a person wrapped in a baby blue blanket, wearing a hoodie and laying on a couch, with blue and pink pajama tops and bottoms hanging behind them.

  Rosie Marks: I avoid making work directly about myself. My photography is already a reflection of who I am. But when you’re exhausted and suffering from a photographic writer’s block, sometimes the personal is the only thing you can muster up.