saunter i.

Images I took in January 2026, and meandering commentary about image making in the age techno feudalism

It’s so difficult to share work online these days. Images in particular. My brain is inundated with image after image, and it all just slips over my increasingly smooth brain and lands somewhere in a data set accounting for how long my eyes lingered (or didn’t) on any given stimulus. I imagine yours is the same.

And my images are in the same slop troff as everything else’s.

Hallela in the shadow of a tree, shot through a red filter. Glendora, California.

The question of why I create, in this last couple of years, has become increasingly existential. I remember the moment it happened, actually. Bradley, my fiance, and I were doing a cross-country drive, moving our lives from Illinois to California. It was right after October 7th, and we were watching closely as the horrors trickled in through our phones, beaming nightmares onto our faces, pressed between all the ads, memes, art. We stopped in Zion for a couple of days.

I made an image the second night, a self portrait of myself on my phone leaning against a dead tree, transfixed by my phone, a look of grief on my face, the countless stars blazing passed me in the back.

Wild cucumber flower during a night hike. Alta Dena, California.

Making this image (you can go find it on my instagram if you like, I eventually posted it) naturally felt trivial in the face of what was going on. Earnestly, I was trying to express the horror of our predicament—being in complete safety and comfort and yet having a window to the beginning of a genocide thousands of miles away. But in the end, what I had was a somber, beautiful and ambiguous image. An image, when cast alongside the countless images of limbless children, felt at best meaningless and at worst complicit. This was the moment I started to unravel a naive sort of belief in my own ability to speak clearly and concisely through symbols and imagery alone.

Reflection of a power line in rain water. Malibu, California.

I know there are arguments for why art has great meaning, a profound impact, etc. I don’t really care because the way the world is feeling right now is that me adding to your daily slop troff isn’t making my life or your life better, it’s maybe only making some billionaire’s stock prices increase? Maybe it’s increasing your phone addiction, or mine.

You’ve seen an image of dew on grass before. Here’s another one. Malibu, California.

Anyone can copy and paste a description of my work and AI generate any scene they can think of in my style. We haven’t even touched on AI yet but it definitely ads to the vibes. It’s like the combination of seeing the most horrific imagery you’ve ever seen (and it’s real) and then seeing the most beautiful imagery you’ve ever seen (and it’s not real) back and forth on your feed that you look at for hours a day has for sure led to a mini psychosis within all of us.

What we train ourselves to believe is real world: bad scary. Digital world: yummy pretty.

Somewhere on the way to Joshua Tree, California.

What’s funny is that it felt like I had just established myself as an artist who had a niche in bringing imagery to the real world that only existed in the dream realm. Now, it’s like everything is a dream and nothing is real. Consequently, I’ve become disinterested with my own subject matter.

And what am I even interested in? I don’t even know these days. It doesn’t feel like images.

So me rn! Alta Dena, California.

But alas, we are all trapped by it now. I, for one, am a digitally native artist. Not only do I rely on subscription-based tools (tools I do not own) to create my artworks, I also rely on a subscription-based identity through social media platforms.

None of my accounts actually belong to me, despite them having my name, work, and countless hours of my labor attached. The actual infrastructure of my digital identity is owned by Meta and X and Tiktok, stored in data centers I will never visit or have access to. So this ‘identity’ lives in a body not my own. A body of which I have no control.

What Hallela was looking at out the window. Somewhere on the way to Joshua Tree, California.

There’s an element to all of this that of course has a particular tinge because I am an image-maker, and images are facing a truly existential moment in general. But the greater feelings for me are what everyone is feeling. It’s not just about me feeling irrelevant, cast-aside, disenfranchised, it’s the fact that we all feel that way.

Banana slug on Geneviéve’s face. Big Sur, California.

I feel like great art responds to whats needed in the world. It doesn’t need to do so intentionally. In the best most cathartic moments, it’s intuitive. But intention also doesn’t hurt.

Clouds. Malibu, California.

So now I’m trying something new: what if I gave you all of these slop-thoughts to go with your slop-images? That way, when you open this essay and read through my stream of consciousness, at least you know my thoughts and images are certified AI-free organic.

Fungus and snail shell on rotting wood. Alta Dena, California.

Maybe this seemed a little hopeless. But really I am trying to find a way to pull my art away from the vampiric grip of the techno-lords. I can’t end this system by myself. But I can move in the direction I think we ought to go. I want to spend less time on platforms that give us no ownership of our own images. Less time on platforms that operate on our labor with no compensation. Less time on platforms that train us to look away if there is no hook, nudity, or exaggeration. All art has a life. And I want mine to be planted somewhere less toxic. Less sludge, waste, and slop.

I want to plant my images somewhere better.

A picture of me taken by Bradley wearing the balaclava Hallela made. Malibu, California.