I’ve been preparing for my first solo gallery show over the last couple of months! It opens tomorrow, which will be yesterday by the time this post is published 🙂 While preparing for it, I’ve thought a lot about printing. Yes – printing. You know, the process of turning that digital image on your camera phone or computer into a physical object. Remember prints? Remember how you would look over them, maybe even put them in a photo album, then occasionally take it off the shelf and relive special moments? Remember how you would frame some of them, and display them somewhere where you could catch a glimpse of that face you love? Remember prints?

This is not a post about the evils of things digital, or about the inherent virtues of the past. But I miss prints. If you’re like me, you rarely print anything any more. Maybe every once in a long while…but rarely. I consume so much photography on my screens, swiping and scrolling with very little lingering. What a delight it is to interact with a physical photograph. I love photo books for this. I love museums for this.

So, this year I’m going to make an effort to print more. I invite you to do the same. When you make the photograph, its life does not have to end once it’s been posted online. Give your photographs some life. Don’t let them languish on your computers. After all, you made them for a reason. You probably have photographs of friends on your phone/camera. Print them, and give them as gifts. I have a friend who, as a year-end practice, makes a book of the favorite photographs he made during the year. Another friend gives prints as Christmas gifts and I treasure them. Maybe it’s time to refresh the photographs hanging on your wall. Make more prints!

-Eyes wide open, Chinwe