What is avanaut.com?

Lots of things have happened since the summer of 2009 when I put my first photographs on Flickr. The arrival of the affordable DSLR cameras was just in, the rise of social media and the ebbs and flows of popular culture and the entertainment industry were making a huge impact not only to toyphotography but on everything. The noughties now feel like a different world entirely.

I was very lucky with timing. Posting my photographs online when Flickr had just peaked, giants like Facebook and Twitter were still basically taking baby steps and Instagram didn’t even exist, it couldn’t have been much better. The new platforms were attracting people by the millions, it was all new and exciting. With my images I had managed to find something that hadn’t been seen before, there was originality which tangled with the new platforms and the users’ desire to find something new. That's how I see it, timing and originality, they both had to be there.

My fifteen minutes of fame were years 2011 to 2016, or thereabouts. The photographs made rounds on most of the big news media platforms with interviews to boot. I tell you, it was truly wild at times, quite an adventure. 

Of course, on the shallow internet event horizon all of this is already ancient history.

My photographs are are here and there, scattered on several platforms, now also on Bluesky and Mastodon, as if it wasn’t confusing enough already. Flickr was my first platform, the photographs are there in their most raw form, warts and all, original posts never polished or re-edited after their original time of posting. I've never manipulated the Flickr galleries to make it look better, the misfires and regrets are all still there. I think there is value in that, that is if one appreciates a transparent process and a visible learning curve. Instagram has a bit more muddled timeline and honestly the small format does not do justice to anyone’s photographs there. On my Facebook page there are other posts as well, it’s not a gallery at all, it’s more like a chatroom. These all platforms have their perks but thinking of the big picture, something has been missing.

Avanaut.com is a long overdue project. I mean LONG overdue! It is designed to host a curated selection of my photographs the way I’d like you to see them. It’s not all the photographs, just a selection which I will update from time to time. The photographs on this website are bigger than they’ve ever been online. This is a bit unnerving but if I don’t do this you’ll never see the images as they’re meant to be seen: in big size. That’s what I photograph and edit them as and it bothered me that there was no way to let you in on that. Not before this, that is. I have made some of the older photographs look better than they were at the time I first released them, but in my defence the original versions are still on Flickr and Instagram. 

This website is about the viewing experience, like any gallery should be, physical or digital. The web page design is calm and simple, decorative elements have been left out to focus on the content. I heartily recommend to view the galleries on a big monitor full screen, that’s what it was designed for. The page is responsive for portable screen viewing also, it was designed separately to be as good as it can be. 

My photographs are often accompanied by stories. They practically write themselves as I post the images. It’s a lot of fun, actually. We made a decision to prioritize the gallery experience here, keep it as clean as possible, therefore we moved the stories to a separate compartment below the gallery. They are there if anyone’s interested but they do not interfere with the main thing.

There is also a blog. Does anyone read those anymore? I don’t even know. I felt I should write down something about the models I built for my photographs however, perhaps a few words about the things that the photographs have brought my way over the years too. So, the blog is a chronicle of a sorts and with the gallery I hope it paints a cohesive picture of what I’ve had in mind with the photographs I do.